With no warning, they raped me. I became desperate. One after another, so many of them. And then the soldiers came one after another and I had to have intercourse with them. When it was busy, I just lie down on my back, eating rice balls with legs spread apart, the soldiers come and mount me and leave, mount me and leave. Finally, I am beyond pain. From the waist down I get numb and lose all feeling. It s a struggle just getting up each day.
Chung Seo Woon was a comfort women forced into becoming an opium addict and attempted to commit suicide by swallowing malaria pills. The mistreatment of these women, from rape, to being beaten got so bad for many of them that death was the only way out. Li Yong-nyo was a woman who killed herself by drinking cheap liquor and taking opium. Mun Ok-chu was another girl who wanted to die, but did not succeed. She got drunk and threw herself out of a three-story building and survived. There were even a few cases of double suicide, in which both the soldier and comfort woman die or she is forced into suicide.
The women were not the only ones using drugs to escape reality. Many soldiers were opium addicts and drunks. Although regulation strictly prohibited the entrance of men under the influence of alcohol, they still managed to get in. Many women experienced several acts of violence while having to service drunk men. One woman was taken away by a drunken soldier and shot. Other women speak of experiences of being stabbed, beaten, or made to do humiliating sexual services.
There are very few cases of women having good healthy experiences. Some veterans however have come forward with their views on the matter, describing it as being exposed to a grotesque world. But an example of an opposite and rare situation was that of a comfort woman taken care of by a Lieutenant who taught her to read and write or those excused to serve as auxiliary nurses for those injured in combat. Stories like these are very few of the thousands of stories. Most women lived through traumatizing experiences that would harm them for the rest of their lives.
The end of World War III
The end of the war did not mean the end of the nightmares of these women.
At the end of the war, many soldiers either murdered the comfort women, or made their sex slaves part of their own mass suicides in order to avoid embarrassment after Japan s surrender. A majority of those women who survived felt too humiliated to return to their families, and lived the next forty to fifty years of their lives in shamed, anonymous silence.
There were instances as well, when the military attempted to cover up their ill doings by immediately registering the women as civilian employees of local hospitals. Those that were too ashamed to returned home were left to starve and a majority was killed to avoid them from speaking of their experiences. In a case, a sergeant threw two grenades into the stations to kill them all before his troops committed mass suicide. The Japanese Army thought it would be an embarrassment to them, if the Americans were to hear of the grim stories that occurred at the comfort stations; so murdering the women was the best alternative. Several women were shot one by one at point blank. A group of comfort women committed suicide by drowning with the rest of the village women, rather than be caught by the enemy army, in the Marianas. Other women ran away with the Japanese troops who escaped to the jungle. Hiding in the jungle, they lived off the earth for about four months until resorting to cannibalism. Several faced death by Filipino guerillas. Other women had trouble getting off the Philippine islands when the war had died out.
Those who remained were badly raped and then killed, or left behind with nowhere to go. The postal orderly in Hupei reports that at the end of the war some comfort women in his area were robbed by local people, down to their underwear. Some women remained as comfort women because that was all they knew how to do, after all. With all the years of physiological torment, these women found nothing else to do with their lives, but remain the women they were made to be. After so many years of being treated like whores , they started to believe they were nothing more than whores .
When women started returning to their homelands, they were not welcomed with open arms. Many were faced with attitudes of disgust or rejection. Attitudes as these can be seen in remarks such as; There is no need to treat them as human. They re less than cattle , which were the way most comfort women were viewed. These attitudes as well as cultural beliefs, made these women have to bury their secret. For them, the war had not ended. They had to face the patriarchal views of their culture. These women were afraid to show their face. They worried about preserving their dignity.
In a society dominated by patriarchal views of chastity and morality, and a lack of openness about sex, the shame of the whole repugnant experience silenced many women. Many may have felt themselves to blame for their fate. Women in such a position were more likely to want to keep their whole wartime ordeal hushed up rather than demonstrate for compensation. The very fact that female chastity has such a high moral value made loss of virginity even more devastating and psychologically more damaging to the comfort women victims. Their prospects for a respectable marriage and a family were dramatically reduced. Those who did marry often kept their shame secret for decades, enduring their conjugal activities as a torment, and suffering severe mental anguish, which could not find release in an open acknowledgement of the wrong done to them. In societies which placed great emphasis on the birth of heirs, many of the women proved sterile, crippled by a variety of diseases, the brutality of their experiences, the drugs they were sometimes forced to consume to abort unwanted pregnancies or to prevent or cure diseases. Sometimes they had been sterilized by the operations done on them to eliminate menstruation, keeping them always available. They had trouble coping with the need to pretend to normalcy.
Many went home and lied about what they had done for the last two to eight years. Many couldn t return home because their families had abandoned them during the war. The pain they felt was great, but the shame was even greater. Many never married because they were no longer virgins, or still infected by incurable venereal diseases that would come and go or irreparable damages was done to their reproductive systems. Those that were able to marry and have children didn t want their children to know of their suffering. The fact that the government shamed them into silence and then pretended as though nothing had happened was psychologically troubling for these women. Without being able to come forward with the truth, these women never let go of the past. They never had the closure and justice they needed to continue normal lives. They were physically, emotionally and mentally scared. The society they returned to did not help them cope with their past, but rather contributed to their troubles. They of course suffered from depression, paranoia, inferiority complexes, mental illnesses and other severe mental disorders. There was no doubt that these women grew to hate men, hate sex, and maybe even life. It is not a surprise many took there lives or never returned home, to live a lie or be rejected by family members. A woman spoke of her experience returning to Korea and described experiencing a guilty conscience because she had known she was a prostitute. Upon returning she suffered the prejudice and discrimination from her family and friends. Nora Okja Keller s novel tell a very profound story of the life of a comfort woman from the times in the camp, to her raising her daughter and not being able to lead a normal life. This was the case for all the women, who had already become fallen women in their own eyes.
Coming Forward and the Governments Response
During the late eighties, Scholars started investigating and researching the past. Women activist groups were formed to encourage women to come forward with their testimonies. By 1990, several comfort women had broken their silence to gather together and share the stories of their years in slavery. In the early 90 s, hotlines were set up for comfort women to call in and to help gather information. Organizations for Justice of Comfort Women demonstrated outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul. They petitioned for the Japanese government to give individual apologies and compensations and the government denied its involvement on national television. That was when a Korean woman, Kim Kak publicly testified and led the way for several others to come forward as well. Since 1991, 160 women came forward.
In 1992, documents from the Self Defense Agency Library were published, proving the link between comfort stations and the Japanese military. With this proof out in the light, the Japanese government saw no choice but to admit government involvement but denied the women compensation. The women who came forward were mocked and rumors spread they were simply after the money. At this point activist continue to fight and picket for the recognition of the comfort women. In 1995, Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto sent written apologies to about 300 such women and the government has agreed to give each of them almost $20,000, plus nearly $6.3 million in medical and welfare services. This seemed as an attempt by the government to hush the women by giving them what they thought they wanted. The women however continue to come forward and insist on personal apologies and compensation. Many former comfort women state that they don t want the money and many refused to accept it. Japan responded to further demands by refusing to comply and arguing that the issue has already been settled by agreements between Japan and the governments concerned. Japanese government is referring to the post war treaty of 1951, The San Francisco Peace Treaty, in which they had already paid atonement money and the compensation paid and apologies made in 1995.
After paying compensations and giving apologies, therefore admitting their wrong doings, the Japanese government continued to deny several allegations. The government claimed comfort women were camp followers (willing prostitutes) who received pay for their services. A percentage of the women did receive pay, but that was the evil ploy during the war to make it look as if the women were legitimately employed, or consenting prostitutes. Another one of the government arguments was that civilians ran the stations. By saying they were brothels, created and managed by private operators, they would relieve themselves of the responsibilities of the crimes committed at the comfort stations. This however was discovered untrue with the publication of the 1992 documents.
In October 1998, Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi apologized to the people of Korea for the behavior of the troops and the pain it may have inflicted. In November, Japanese courts rejected the claims of 46 women who served as comfort women in the Philippines during the war. It continued to be a constant battle for all the women who came forward with their haunting stories. Recently, this past December, Japan is still being asked for compensation and apologies for state-sponsored crimes. Japan however responds to this by asking non-governmental organizations to pay a petty amount of money to former CWAs in a bid to keep its past crimes buried in oblivion and avoid governmental responsibility for the sexual slave-related crimes.
Military involvement and the Crimes Committed
The chain of command linked officers in the field supervising the provisioning and operation of Military comfort stations to the highest reaches of the War and Foreign Ministries, where the transport of comfort women was approved and organized. Most elite members were responsible for the setting up of the comfort stations. Someone with power (Ministry of War) had to actively approve and promote the establishment of these camps. A document issued in 1938, entitled Matters Concerning the Recruitment of Women to Work in Military Comfort Stations, confirmed the participation of the Ministry of War s involvement. According to this 1938 document, the Ministry of War was aware that the procurers entrusted by army units in the field with the task of rounding up comfort women were resorting to methods akin to kidnapping in Japan. To diminish such problems, the North China Area Army and the Central China Expeditionary Force regulated the rounding up of women. They ordered procurers to gather women with the help of the local police or military police. This turned into a growing problem because the recruiting of women was unsupervised, or many who recruited women claimed to act with military consent. It turned into a market of women. The trafficking of young innocent girls, in the name of the war and military, was a problem the government could have had more control over. The military continued to recruit, knowing others were taking advantage of the war situation and the high demand for prostitutes at comfort stations. If the girls were bought in illegally, the government could have turned them away once they arrived at the camps, but instead they didn t question anything and made them into sex slaves.
At first the military must have not expected the war to escalate as it did. They did not expect the size of the army to grow as large as it did either, and therefore did not foresee the problem these comfort stations would grow to be. Regardless, the government made little effort to control it. On the other hand, they continued to promote it. Around 1939, Strategies on Setting Up Comfort Stations, was taught in an accounting course. In this course the army was taught such things as; the endurance of the women rounded up in local areas and the rates at which they would wear out . How long they would be in use . Setting different prices for different ranks and prices for overstaying. Women were looked at and treated like commodities. As the military lost control of the running of the stations, consulates were charged with the task of regulating the comfort stations. As more and more got involved in the running of the facilities, it became harder to keep order. As I had mentioned earlier, the government gave civilians the authority to participate in the establishment of comfort stations. The Ministry of War also ordered the cooperation of the military police and local police. As you can see, all those involved with the establishment of comfort stations ranged from high military power to civilian people.
Today there still remains a struggle to make the crimes committed be recognized as War Crimes . The trafficking of women did exist, at the same time as International Treaties banning such activities. By 1933, treaties existed banning the trafficking of slaves, women and children. Yet it still occurred because of loopholes in International laws. Laws existed prohibiting forced and compulsory labor, yet this slavery of women was allowed to happen. Rapes, beatings, slavery, forced prostitution and several other occurrences were crimes against humanity, committed during World War II. In 1948, 13 officials were found guilty and punished. What happen to the rest of the thousands involved?
Conclusion
This issue was very easily laid to rest in by 1950. It seems to me as though all government and military men were well aware of the occurrences but chose to ignore them. The government turned their back on their own women. The issue of ethnic annihilation was also bought up, but it wasn t an attempt to kill a certain race, rather it was an attempt against women if anything. This shows a miniscule cultural value placed on women. There are many issues that must be considered before pointing any fingers. The study of Comfort Women is much more complex than the few major issues I have bought up in this paper. We must consider all that was happening during the time of war. The anger and fear of the war was taken out on the women enslaved to give these same men comfort . An overall madness existed within the evilness of war. We must consider the history of prostitution and what lead up to such a social openness and acceptance in this field. This openness in prostitution was what helped the government cover up many of its doings. We must also consider the economics and the politics of sexual slavery. The loopholes and the sources of income provided by the comfort facilities. Large sums of money were being made at all stages in the establishing of the stations.
There is so much more we do not know about and the military has covered up and history has ignored. Japan cannot avoid its responsibility for the human rights abuses they committed or allowed to be committed. The fact remains that hundreds of thousands of women were forced into prostitution during the war. Some women were taken at very young ages and their whole lives destroyed. But who do we blame and will compensate? The truth is that there is no answer. Matters like this one cannot be settled with money or simple apologies. Punishment cannot be enforced to anyone individual. This issue runs deeper than this. No apology can change the damage already embedded in these women. We can however stop it from occurring again. It has been said that things like this occur at every war. That will never make it justifiable. Women must come forward and tell their stories of the evilness and war and the military. Maybe then they can shame the military as mush as the government has shamed them.