During World War II allegedly 200,000 women and girls were coerced into sexual slavery in the military brothels or “comfort stations” of the Japanese Imperial Army. Euphemistically called “comfort women”, these girls were trafficked from different parts of Japan, the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam with the majority of them being abducted from Korea.
Military correspondence of the Japanese Imperial Army from the time has demonstrated that the purpose behind the establishment of comfort stations was primarily the prevention of sexual crimes by the military against local residents which could lead to heightened anti-Japanese sentiments in the areas under Japanese occupation. The need to prevent loss of troop strength by sexually transmitted diseases, and the need to prevent espionage was also counted among factors that motivated the setting up of comfort stations, stated the Japanese Cabinet Councillors’ Office on External Affairs in 1993. The comfort stations were established in every territory conquered by Japan. Started as early as 1932 with the setting up of the first comfort station in Shanghai, it is counted amongst the world’s biggest and most shocking cases of human trafficking.
However, the unreliable history of the Second World War covered by our familiar history books have failed to incorporate the narratives of the comfort women who braving shame and stigma had started to come out from the early 1990s. The historical exclusion of their narratives into the mainstream of the history of Second World War has made the denial of the atrocities easier by the Japanese government and the deliverance of justice dangerously difficult.
On 14th August, 1991, after nearly four decades of silence, Kim Hak-soon spoke publicly about the years she spent as a comfort woman of the Japanese Imperial Army. Soon after, many women who had hitherto been oppressed by silence and the fear of shame and stigmatization, followed suit. As a result, the issue of comfort women, which had only been discussed in hushed tones thus far, became a subject of serious public discontent and led to widespread protests across Korea. The Wednesday Demonstrations particularly bear testimony to how much the narratives of comfort women had moved the people of Korea. Beginning the same year that the first comfort woman came out, demonstrations began every Wednesday in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. The demands raised there included acknowledgement of the war crime by Japan and legal apology and compensation for the surviving victims by the Japanese government.
The Wednesday Demonstrations which saw enthusiastic participation of activists and supporters alike along with the surviving comfort women was declared as the longest running rally on a single theme and has been recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records. The 1000th demonstration meeting was held on December 14, 2011. Despite the intensity of the agitation that had started and the clear evidence in support of its righteousness, the Japanese government has consistently tried to deny the active role of the Japanese military officials in drafting comfort women for the army during war. The blame was put on private contractors for running comfort stations. Moreover, the Japanese government also claimed that the matter of legal compensation for the surviving comfort women had been settled by the Korea-Japan Normalization Treaty in 1965. However, when in 1993, Japan’s then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono issued a statement admitting and apologizing for the involvement of military authorities in establishing and managing of the comfort stations, and recruitment of comfort women against their will by military personnel, the matter was complicated further. The Kono apology was considered insufficient to resolve the comfort women issue as it was neither an official apology by the government nor was it one which led victims to be directly compensated.
Instead, Asian Women’s Fund was privately created where the Japanese government made annual donations. Moreover, many Japanese prime ministers have been dismissive of the “Kono apology” succumbing to domestic, and often international pressure. In 2007 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stated that there was no evidence to prove that women were coerced into serving in the comfort stations by the Japanese military thus undermining Kono’s apology and acknowledgement of the wrongs meted out to the women in comfort stations. During several Diet sessions, Abe has been heard arguing that the mass abductions of women in Korea that the Imperial army is accused of are false as the purpose behind the crafting of such fictional accounts is to “disgrace” Japan’s national image in the international arena. Since versions by the likes of Seiji Yoshida—who claimed kidnapping hundreds of Korean women under the instruction of an Imperial army commander—have been falsified by existing evidence, it has been easy for Abe and other Japanese authorities to downplay the involvement of Japanese military in the comfort women issue. However, it is worthwhile to mention here that Abe has never denied the fact that women were indeed forced to work against their will in the comfort stations. But he has never admitted the involvement of Japanese military officials in the abduction of comfort women despite evidence suggesting otherwise.
Many Japanese historians, media and South Koreans argue that the Japanese authorities should be held directly responsible for the predicament of comfort women. In China, the Philippines and Indonesia, it is believed that the Japanese military directly coerced victims to work in military brothels, at least in few cases. However, despite such reports Abe has attempted to significantly de-emphasize the role of the Japanese officials in the crimes against comfort women in a bid to protect the sanctity of an untarnished image Japan hopes to sustain in the international domain. However, Japan’s obstinate refusal to accept responsibility has hardly served its intended purpose. Curiously, even though Abe has denied direct involvement of Japanese military officials it still upholds the 1993 government apology issued by Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono. But Abe has neither elaborated on the apology neither had it issued its own. Thus, even though various apologies have been made till date, none had forced the Japanese government to bear comprehensive legal responsibility for crime against comfort women during World War II. Moreover, right wing nationalists would often brand those as “leftist traitors” who dared to speak in favour of the comfort women issue. However, Japan’s refusal to accept legal responsibility has met with widespread resistance from the international community.
The surviving comfort women testified to their years of oppression in comfort stations before the U.N. Sub-Comission Meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1996, U.N. human rights official Radhika Coomaraswamy submitted to the United Nations, recommendations which urged Japan to accept legal responsibility, pay adequate compensation to the victims, make a public apology for the crimes and identify and punish as far as possible the perpetrators involved in the crime against comfort women. A year later, in April 1997, the then U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Walter Mondale, stated that Japan needed to issue a formal apology for its war crimes and adequately compensate the comfort women. In 2000, Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery declared Japan guilty of the inhumane war crimes against comfort women.
Also, in July 2007 the U.S. House of Representatives passed House Resolution 121 which denouncing Japanese military’s enslavement of women, asked the Japanese government to apologize for the same and accept the responsibility for the crimes it has been denying for a shamefully long period of time. Japan stated that the draft of the House Resolution was incorrect in facts and that it’s adoption would harm friendly relations between the United States and Japan. However, the U.S. seemed to not have paid such warning much attention. Backed by the the U.S. House of Representatives’ unanimous agreement, Amnesty International organized a comfort women’s speaking tour in Europe in November 2007. The tour tripped to The Hague, Brussels, Berlin and London and urged the European Parliament and Council of Europe to stand in solidarity for the comfort women cause against the Japanese government like the U.S. government has done.
Following the plea, December 13, 2007, marked the adoption of Resolution B60525/2007 by the European Parliament impelled the government of Japan to sincerely acknowledge, apologize and accept historical and legal responsibility unambiguously for sexual slavery that the Imperial Army initiated. Also, the lower house of the Dutch Parliament also passed a motion on November 20, 2007, prodding the government of Japan to financially compensate the women forced into sex slavery during World War II. Canada’s lower house also unanimously approved a draft motion on November 28, 2007 which necessitated the Japanese government to issue a formal apology to comfort women survivors and compelled it take full responsibility for the involvement of its Imperial Army for drafting comfort women. The assemblies have been quite similar in their demands and have unanimously emphasized upon the need of an apology and adequate compensation to the victims pressurizing the Japanese government to take prompt action on the issue. However, little progress has been made by the Japanese government which seems to remain unfazed by international pressure.
As the ruling elites of Japan are busing making political calculations, what has been deliberately overlooked is the increased vulnerability of women in conflict situations. The need of the hour is to abandon focus on the technicalities which were involved in the process of drafting comfort women and concentrate instead on the sufferings endured by these women. Not only were women gang raped in the comfort stations, they were made to serve multiple men in a day routinely. Needless to say, this regularity of violence caused the women, and often very young girls, excruciating physical and emotional trauma. Pregnancies were illegally terminated and abortions were frequent in the comfort stations. Moreover, some comfort women were also required to serve in the battlefields. After the end of the war, many comfort women could not be sent back home and lived a life of oblivion in a foreign country.
Narratives of comfort women present before us a glimpse into spaces where civility are made out to be so insignificant that they make little impact on human actions. It is in these spaces that women find themselves most insecure. Seen throughout history as sex objects, women are dominated by men for the satisfaction of most primal desires which include, among other things, an assertion of male supremacy. The “comfort” the soldiers received in these women are akin to rewards one receives otherwise for an impressive and successful display of valor. Women are victimized twice.
The violence starts even before the act of violence has been committed. When women are seen as rewards good enough to enliven a fatigued soldier’s spirits, their bodies become legitimate territories of coercion or violence. It is the cultural perception of women’s bodies being sexualized wherein the possibility of violence germinates. However, the dynamics behind socio-cultural victimization of women is hardly discussed in the mainstream. Women’s rights have especially failed to find significant articulation when it comes to politics as every attempt towards that direction has met with dismissive neglect from administrative authorities. The comfort women issue and the subsequent politics of denial by the Japanese government has again succeeded in proving how little significance gender and women’s rights issues hold in international politics. Feminists today, with the knowledge of the comfort women issue and the dismissive attitude towards it, stand vindicated in their assertion that politics and the history of politics are made to be gender blind exercises quite purposely to create male centered narratives which maintain and sustain the status quo. Until the world witness justice being delivered to the comfort women, this claim can hardly be challenged or debunked.
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