"Comfort Women": Their Experience and Moments of Resistance
Purpose:
This activity teaches students about the Japanese military sexual slavery system euphemistically known as “comfort women” during WWII. It allows students to look at the dehumanization behind one of the horrors of the Pacific theater of WWII. It also allows students to see the ways that the victims resisted dehumanization and reclaimed their humanity.
This lesson is recommended as an activity to be included in the Pacific War portion of a unit on WWII
Grades: 9-10. High school students taking a modern World History course.
Objective: Students will understand how the Japanese military was able to dehumanize the women used in their sexual slavery system known as “comfort stations.” Students will understand methods of resistance available to the “comfort women” victims.
Standards: See end of document
Suggested Time: 1-2 class days (at least one hour of class time)
Unit context:
This lesson is designed to go at the end of a mini unit on early WWII in Asia. It is highly suggested that the educator use the lessons developed by Facing History and Ourselves on the Nanjing Atrocities, specifically the lesson on the growth of Japanese Imperialism as well as the lessons on the Nanjing Atrocities themselves.
Background Information:
Background information may be found in this 4-page reading containing salient excerpts from 25 Years of Wednesdays: the story of the “comfort women” and the Wednesday Demonstrations by Mee-hyang Yoon and Koeun Lee. Excerpts were edited for clarity. Teachers may want to give the background reading document to their students. Graphic imagery is limited to the words ‘rape’ and ‘raped’ throughout the piece. More specific information that might be considered disturbing was deliberately excluded.
Procedure:
The materials in this lesson can be adapted to fit a single 55min class, spread over two days, or used in a single “block” class of 85-100 minutes.
Do Now: There are two options. If the lesson is going to be confined to a single 55min class period, or spread over two days, then the ‘Option 1’ “Do Now: When you think of the term “comfort woman” what comes to mind? What do you imagine her responsibilities might be?” should be used. The ‘Option 2’ Do Now using the visual thinking strategies should be used for either a second day of the lesson OR as the beginning of a 85-100 min class block. Student discussion of the statue images can be expected to take approximately 15 min.
Trigger warning: There is a trigger warning on this lesson. It is also important to discuss with students why this lesson is being taught when it is a difficult topic and mentions violence.
Short lecture: Timeline: Students need to be told/reminded of Japan’s victories in the Pacific which led to their having military control over most of East and Southeast Asia. Japanese War Tactics: Japanese attitudes towards their enemies are contrasted with the ‘comfort women’ system. The ‘comfort women’ system is introduced. “Comfort Women:” The “comfort women” system is elaborated on in more detail. Map of Japanese military’s “Comfort Stations”: Map of the ‘comfort stations’ within a map of the extent of the WWII-era Japanese empire. Imperialism Through Systematic Military Sexual Slavery: students see how even the condoms the soldiers were given contributed to the dehumanization and violence against the girls.
‘Herstory’ video: (Optional if limiting lesson to one 50-55 min class). Students will watch this 3:19 video and take notes on how each of the two women were brought into the ‘comfort’ system and what it was like for them at the very first (this video is NOT graphic).
Silent Conversations: Print out comfort women testimonies from http://www.e4sjf.org/survivors-testimonies--legacies.html. I prefer to have at least one from each country, and print out others that I think help complete the story. You may want to copy the text from each testimony into a blank doc in order to change border widths or spacing so that students have space to leave comments. You may also want to edit out the explanation of the “comfort system” in each testimony as it gets to be repetitive. If you copy the testimonies to a blank doc be sure to include a photo of the survivor to remind students that it was a real person.
Students should be in even groups of 3-5, depending on class size. Give each group as many testimonies as there are students. Explain to students that they will be having a ‘silent conversation’ with the papers. Each student has two minutes to read their testimony silently, and write down their thoughts/feelings/questions. At the end of two minutes you tell them to pass their paper to the right, and take their neighbor’s paper from the left. Repeat the reading/writing. Students should now be responding to what their neighbors wrote as well as to the original text. Continue until all students have read each of the testimonies their group has.
Share out: Ask students to share out any similarities they noticed. Any differences. Was there anything that stood out to them?
If you are only doing one lesson in a ~50 min format skip from here down to the last bullet point/slide entitled “Journal”
Comfort women deprivation slide: A reminder to students about the dehumanization that exists under extreme nationalism. Something that can be tied to family policies in Mussolini’s Italy.
Forms of Resistance: tell students about the small acts that “comfort women” were able to do in order to resist Japanese dehumanization (could be a good time to ask them what things they did during the pandemic to keep their sense of self)
Examples of Resistance: Partner work. Pass out the ‘Examples of Resistance’ sheet. One person reads the text in the top half, the other partner reads the bottom half. Have students summarize for their partner what the resistance activity was. Discuss: how were these forms of resistance to dehumanization?
After the war: Tell students what happened to the survivors once the war ended.
Resistance after: Let students know how survivors continue to resist Japanese government efforts to deny the fact that the “comfort woman” system existed, or minimize it as “old history”
Journal: This topic is “hard history” and it is important to give students time to process it. Ask them to name their emotions and write them down and then give them time to write down what else is going through their head. I give 5 min for this task.
Materials/Handouts:
Further work: This lesson could be followed by a lesson:
On the Wednesday Demonstrations (see lesson 2, here: http://www.e4sjf.org/collective-activism.html) or
looking at contemporary issues of human trafficking (here: http://www.e4sjf.org/a-global-plague.html) or
Examining Japan’s continuing refusal to admit that the comfort women system existed and apologize for it (coming soon to Education for Social Justice Foundation). That goes on to another part of WWII.
Standards:
2017 History-Social Science Framework:
“Comfort Women” is a euphemism that describes women who were forced into sexual service by the Japanese Army in occupied territories before and during the war. Comfort Women can be taught as an example of institutionalized sexual slavery; estimates on the total number of Comfort Women vary, but most argue that hundreds of thousands of women were forced into these situations during Japanese occupation. On December 28, 2015, the governments of Japan and the Republic of Korea entered into an agreement regarding the issues of Comfort Women
California History-Social Science Content Standards:
10.8 1. Compare the German, Italian, and Japanese drives for empire in the 1930s, including the 1937 Rape of Nanking, other atrocities in China, and the Stalin-Hitler Pact of 1939. 6. Discuss the human costs of the war, with particular attention to the civilian and military losses in Russia, Germany, Britain, the United States, China, and Japan.
This activity teaches students about the Japanese military sexual slavery system euphemistically known as “comfort women” during WWII. It allows students to look at the dehumanization behind one of the horrors of the Pacific theater of WWII. It also allows students to see the ways that the victims resisted dehumanization and reclaimed their humanity.
This lesson is recommended as an activity to be included in the Pacific War portion of a unit on WWII
Grades: 9-10. High school students taking a modern World History course.
Objective: Students will understand how the Japanese military was able to dehumanize the women used in their sexual slavery system known as “comfort stations.” Students will understand methods of resistance available to the “comfort women” victims.
Standards: See end of document
Suggested Time: 1-2 class days (at least one hour of class time)
Unit context:
This lesson is designed to go at the end of a mini unit on early WWII in Asia. It is highly suggested that the educator use the lessons developed by Facing History and Ourselves on the Nanjing Atrocities, specifically the lesson on the growth of Japanese Imperialism as well as the lessons on the Nanjing Atrocities themselves.
Background Information:
Background information may be found in this 4-page reading containing salient excerpts from 25 Years of Wednesdays: the story of the “comfort women” and the Wednesday Demonstrations by Mee-hyang Yoon and Koeun Lee. Excerpts were edited for clarity. Teachers may want to give the background reading document to their students. Graphic imagery is limited to the words ‘rape’ and ‘raped’ throughout the piece. More specific information that might be considered disturbing was deliberately excluded.
Procedure:
The materials in this lesson can be adapted to fit a single 55min class, spread over two days, or used in a single “block” class of 85-100 minutes.
Do Now: There are two options. If the lesson is going to be confined to a single 55min class period, or spread over two days, then the ‘Option 1’ “Do Now: When you think of the term “comfort woman” what comes to mind? What do you imagine her responsibilities might be?” should be used. The ‘Option 2’ Do Now using the visual thinking strategies should be used for either a second day of the lesson OR as the beginning of a 85-100 min class block. Student discussion of the statue images can be expected to take approximately 15 min.
Trigger warning: There is a trigger warning on this lesson. It is also important to discuss with students why this lesson is being taught when it is a difficult topic and mentions violence.
Short lecture: Timeline: Students need to be told/reminded of Japan’s victories in the Pacific which led to their having military control over most of East and Southeast Asia. Japanese War Tactics: Japanese attitudes towards their enemies are contrasted with the ‘comfort women’ system. The ‘comfort women’ system is introduced. “Comfort Women:” The “comfort women” system is elaborated on in more detail. Map of Japanese military’s “Comfort Stations”: Map of the ‘comfort stations’ within a map of the extent of the WWII-era Japanese empire. Imperialism Through Systematic Military Sexual Slavery: students see how even the condoms the soldiers were given contributed to the dehumanization and violence against the girls.
‘Herstory’ video: (Optional if limiting lesson to one 50-55 min class). Students will watch this 3:19 video and take notes on how each of the two women were brought into the ‘comfort’ system and what it was like for them at the very first (this video is NOT graphic).
Silent Conversations: Print out comfort women testimonies from http://www.e4sjf.org/survivors-testimonies--legacies.html. I prefer to have at least one from each country, and print out others that I think help complete the story. You may want to copy the text from each testimony into a blank doc in order to change border widths or spacing so that students have space to leave comments. You may also want to edit out the explanation of the “comfort system” in each testimony as it gets to be repetitive. If you copy the testimonies to a blank doc be sure to include a photo of the survivor to remind students that it was a real person.
Students should be in even groups of 3-5, depending on class size. Give each group as many testimonies as there are students. Explain to students that they will be having a ‘silent conversation’ with the papers. Each student has two minutes to read their testimony silently, and write down their thoughts/feelings/questions. At the end of two minutes you tell them to pass their paper to the right, and take their neighbor’s paper from the left. Repeat the reading/writing. Students should now be responding to what their neighbors wrote as well as to the original text. Continue until all students have read each of the testimonies their group has.
Share out: Ask students to share out any similarities they noticed. Any differences. Was there anything that stood out to them?
If you are only doing one lesson in a ~50 min format skip from here down to the last bullet point/slide entitled “Journal”
Comfort women deprivation slide: A reminder to students about the dehumanization that exists under extreme nationalism. Something that can be tied to family policies in Mussolini’s Italy.
Forms of Resistance: tell students about the small acts that “comfort women” were able to do in order to resist Japanese dehumanization (could be a good time to ask them what things they did during the pandemic to keep their sense of self)
Examples of Resistance: Partner work. Pass out the ‘Examples of Resistance’ sheet. One person reads the text in the top half, the other partner reads the bottom half. Have students summarize for their partner what the resistance activity was. Discuss: how were these forms of resistance to dehumanization?
After the war: Tell students what happened to the survivors once the war ended.
Resistance after: Let students know how survivors continue to resist Japanese government efforts to deny the fact that the “comfort woman” system existed, or minimize it as “old history”
Journal: This topic is “hard history” and it is important to give students time to process it. Ask them to name their emotions and write them down and then give them time to write down what else is going through their head. I give 5 min for this task.
Materials/Handouts:
- Background information on “Comfort Women” excerpted from 25 Years of Wednesdays: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1heFZ_FDPkW-0A-FtvLDdeLz_wGD1YiURHVhA-jkBdoI/edit?usp=sharing
- Google Slide deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/12gnh5XoiOZ62DKdutJcOixhuG2u0b4RlzRrrBWwCEnc/edit?usp=sharing
- The testimonies of surviving “Comfort Women” found at Education for Social Justice Foundation’s website: http://www.e4sjf.org/survivors-testimonies--legacies.html . It is advisable to choose at least one testimony from every country listed so that students may see the range of women victimized. I personally find it important for my students to see that a Japanese girl and a Dutch colonizer were also victims.
- Examples of resistance: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1toTEUYsWhAMC_96p2p0kpQun4w0FBcxLy6JRhsUn_7Y/edit?usp=sharing
Further work: This lesson could be followed by a lesson:
On the Wednesday Demonstrations (see lesson 2, here: http://www.e4sjf.org/collective-activism.html) or
looking at contemporary issues of human trafficking (here: http://www.e4sjf.org/a-global-plague.html) or
Examining Japan’s continuing refusal to admit that the comfort women system existed and apologize for it (coming soon to Education for Social Justice Foundation). That goes on to another part of WWII.
Standards:
2017 History-Social Science Framework:
“Comfort Women” is a euphemism that describes women who were forced into sexual service by the Japanese Army in occupied territories before and during the war. Comfort Women can be taught as an example of institutionalized sexual slavery; estimates on the total number of Comfort Women vary, but most argue that hundreds of thousands of women were forced into these situations during Japanese occupation. On December 28, 2015, the governments of Japan and the Republic of Korea entered into an agreement regarding the issues of Comfort Women
California History-Social Science Content Standards:
10.8 1. Compare the German, Italian, and Japanese drives for empire in the 1930s, including the 1937 Rape of Nanking, other atrocities in China, and the Stalin-Hitler Pact of 1939. 6. Discuss the human costs of the war, with particular attention to the civilian and military losses in Russia, Germany, Britain, the United States, China, and Japan.
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