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This ongoing project examines the issue of Comfort Women in the context of violence against women and the patriarchal sexual culture and militarism. Comfort women are the young females of various ethnic and national backgrounds and social circumstances who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army before and during the Second World War. Field research for this project has been carried out in Korea,1 Japan,2, New York City and the National Archives in Washington D.C.3, and The Netherlands 4. Some of the findings of this research have been published in Asian Survey, Critical Asian Studies, Korea Journal, International Institute of Asian Studies Newsletter, Peace Review, Social Science Japan Journal, Women's Studies International Forum, four entries in The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, twenty-one papers presented to professional meetings, and twenty-two invited lectures. Three papers are available for on-line: Japan's Responsibility Toward Comfort Women Survivors, appeared as Working Paper No. 77 for the Japan Policy Research Institute; Human Dignity and Sexual Culture: A Reflection on the "Comfort Women" Issues; and Human Rights and Humanity: The Case of the "Comfort Women" are available on the web site of the Institute for Corean-American Studies. Parts of the following text have been excerpted from the article in Korea Journal.
| Some Background on the Comfort Women Issue |
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 s Alice said, we should begin at the beginning. However, as Foucault implies, what constitutes the beginning depends upon one's point of view. Rashomon-like, Japanese, Koreans, Americans, and the other parties to the Second World War have very different views of the course of that horrific period. Likewise, feminists, masculinists, nationalists, have very different views of the comfort women issue. One important purpose of this project is to gather, analyze, and attempt to understand as much information as is possible about comfort women and attitudes toward comfort women before time precludes the possibility of conversing with the principals, 5 and before history is too-much sifted through the sieve of selective memory. |
The comfort women, which is a translation of  the Japanese euphemism, jugun ianfu, (military comfort women), categorically refers to women of various ethnic and national backgrounds and social circumstances who became sexual laborers for the Japanese troops before and during the Second World War. Countless women had to labor as comfort women in the military brothels found throughout the vast Asia Pacific region occupied by the Japanese forces. There is no way to determine precisely how many women were forced to serve as comfort women. The estimate ranges between 80,000 and 200,000, about 80 % of whom, it is believed, were Korean. Japanese women and women of other occupied territories (such as Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Burma and the Pacific islands) were also used as comfort women. |
| The Japanese rationale for the comfort system was to enhance the morale of the military by providing amenities for recreational sex. The authorities believed such amenities would help prevent soldiers from committing random sexual violence toward women of occupied territories, which became a real concern after the infamous Nanjing Massacre in 1937 6. Besides its reputation, the military authorities were also concerned with the health of the troops, which prompted their close supervision of the hygienic conditions in the comfort stations in order to help keep sexually transmitted diseases under control. |
 When the war ended, the only military tribunal concerning the sexual abuse of comfort women took place in Batavia (today's Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia) in 1948. The Batavia trial convicted several Japanese military officers for having forced into comfort stations the 35 Dutch women mentioned in the case. However, the same trial completely ignored similar ordeals suffered by native Indonesians and women of other ethnic backgrounds. The photo at the left shows two of the surviving Dutch ex-comfort women participating in the monthly demonstration in front of the Japanese Embassy in Den Haag, The Netherlands, September 18, 1998. The demonstration is organized by the Foundation for Japanese Honorary Debts, a non-govermental organization of the Dutch civilian internees, forced laborers, and POWs in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) during the Japanese occupation (1942-1945). |
| In Korea the comfort women issue began to emerge only in the late 1980s. The international community began to hear about the comfort women issue from December 1991, when a number of Koreans, including three former comfort women, filed a class action suit against the Japanese government on behalf of former soldiers, paramilitary, and bereaved families demanding compensation for the violation of human rights of certain categories of Koreans under Japanese colonial rule. A major political impact of the lawsuit has been widening the bi-national dispute into the universalistic issue of women's human rights. |
The responses of the governments of Korea and Japan: It was the complete denial by a Japanese official at a Diet session in June 1990 of any governmental involvement in the recruitment of comfort women that spurred the formation of the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (hereafter referred to as the Korean Council) in November 1990. The Korean Council then sent an open letter to the Japanese Prime Minister Kaifu Toshiki, which listed the following six demands:
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 The Japanese response on the six demands in April 1991 was that there was no evidence of the forced draft of Korean women, and hence no public apology, disclosure, nor memorial were forthcoming. The Japanese reply pointed out that all claims of compensation between Japan and South Korea had been settled by the 1965 treaty, and that "textbooks would 'continue' to reflect Japan's regret for aggression against the rest of Asia." Angry reaction brought about further action on the part of the Korean Council and the efforts of the women's groups reached a turning point in August 1991 when Kim Hak Sun 7 (photo right) became the first Korean woman to give public testimony to her life as a comfort woman. The December 1991 lawsuit mentioned above has attracted the attention of the worldwide media about the hitherto hidden chapter on the role of comfort women in the history of the Second World War. |
 The documents Yoshimi Yoshiaki, (photo left) a history professor, retrieved at the Library of the National Institute for Defence and his writing about them in the January 11, 1992 issue of the Asahi Shimbun, a major daily newspaper, forced the Japanese government to admit the involvement of the state in the operation of comfort stations. Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi expressed his regret and apologies during his state visit to South Korea in January 1992. While still ruling out any compensation for the comfort women, the prime minister indicated that some measure 'in lieu of compensation' would be considered after receiving the report of fact finding committees being set up in South Korea and Japan, respectively. A woman freelance journalist in Japan criticized that Miyazawa's apologies were ill-conceived because the comfort system was a necessary evil to be adopted in war zones to avoid harm to local women. She further questioned the political and economic motivation of the sudden prominence of the issue. |
| The Japanese report, Results of Investigation into the Question of 'Military Comfort Women' Originating from the Korean Peninsula, which was published on July 6, 1992, was based on 127 documents, including those first found by Professor Yoshimi. These documents came mostly from the Self-Defence Agency and the Foreign Ministry, and those from the Foreign Ministry demonstrated much wider official involvement in the comfort system than could be attributed to the arbitrary initiative of the Armed Forces alone. The fact that there were no relevant documents released from the Police Agency or the Labor Ministry, the two agencies most implicated in the forced recruitment of women, was a source of much criticism on the shortcomings of the scope of the investigations. The Justice Ministry was not even included in the investigation even though it was known to have the full records of all war crimes trials, including the Dutch cases. |
| The South Korean government's report, Interim Report of the Fact-Finding Investigation on Military Comfort Women under Japanese Imperialism, was published on July 31, 1992. It consisted of a survey of the reports by the Japanese government and the United States Army, respectively, and a summary of representative testimonies given by the survivors who registered at the Victim Report Centers set up in two cities. The report also included criticism of the Japanese report for lacking comprehensive coverage as to the establishment and management of the comfort stations. |
| The North Korean report, An Indictment: The Japanese Government Must Fully Establish the Truth on the 'Military Comfort Women' Question and Sincerely Apologize, was issued on September 1, 1992. It included life stories of North Korean survivors and attacked the Japanese government report for claiming to have no evidence of recruitment by coercion. North Korea, which had become involved in the comfort women issue from the time of Miyazawa's visit to South Korea in January 1992, supports for North Korean survivors to be compensated by Japan on the same principle as had applied to the atomic bomb victims. |
 The Korean Council conveyed its reaction to the Japanese report in an open letter to Prime Minister Miyazawa in October 1992. The letter described the report as a mere enumeration of data and expressed a strong opposition to the establishment of a relief fund for former comfort women being considered by the Japanese government It urged Japan to first clear up the comfort women issue and wartime and post-war responsibility before seeking to be a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. (Photo left shows the anthropologist with Lee Hyo-Chae, a co-representative on the Korean Council.) |
| The Japanese government admitted deception, coercion and official involvement in the recruitment of comfort women in a supplementary report issued in August 1993. |
 Some observers predicted the Japanese admission of the use of coercion in the recruitment of the comfort women to be the beginning of the end of the comfort women as a live issue. Unfortunately, the comfort women issue is still contentiously alive today. In fact, it is ironic that the focus of the public debate in Japan during the spring and summer of 1997 was precisely on the issue of the coerced recruitment of comfort women. The nationalist conservatives in Japan assert that there is no evidence for coercive recruitment of comfort women by the military or the state. Moreover, the controversy over the methods of compensation for the survivors continues. For example, the Korean government issued in July 1997 a notification to Usuki Keiko (photo right) that she would be denied entry to South Korea for her actions taken on behalf of the Asian Women's Fund (AWF) to pay the "atonement money" to the seven former Korean comfort women. From the Korean perspective, acceptance of such money allows Tokyo to avoid legal responsibility fot the state's complicity in establishing and maintaining the comfort women system. |
Notes |
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| 1. | This research was supported by a travel grant from the Association for Asian Studies, Northeast Asia Council. | |||
| 2. | This research was supported by a Faculty Development Grant from San Francisco State University, and by a Japan Foundation Fellowship at the University of Tokyo. | |||
| 3. | This research was supported by a travel grant from the Association for Asian Studies, Northeast Asia Council. | |||
| 4. | This research is being supported by a Senior Visiting Fellowship at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden University. | |||
| 5. | For example, the week this page was first posted the following item appeared in Time, September 1, 1997 (Page 25):
Died. MARIA ROSA HENSON, 69, the first Filipina to reveal that she had served as a sex slave for Japanese soldiers during World War II; of a heart attack; in Manila. One of 46 "comfort women" who filed suit against Japan in 1993, Henson was among the few who accepted compensation from a private fund and a letter of apology from Japan's Prime Minister. |
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| 6. | Estimates from various sources suggest that up to as many as 20,000 women were raped, and some 300,000 people died at the hands of Japanese troops at Nanjing (Nanking). As Calvocoressi & Wint wrote:
The ferocity of the Japanese at Nanking amazed the world. The massacre was done for the most part by Japanese conscripts, unfamiliar with war, perhaps neurotically working out of their system the extreme repressions in which they had passed so much of their lives. Some Japanese officers in other centres wept with shame and indignation when they heard the details of the ravage. |
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| 7. | In 1995 Kim Hak Sun told the anthropologist that she thought the Japanese tactics would be to stall the legal proceedings until all the litigants were dead 8. Her words proved tragically prophetic in that the litigation was still pending at the time of her death. She died on December 16, 1997, at the Ewha Womans University Hospital in Seoul. She left all her savings to Tongdaemun Methodist Church in Seoul to help people who were less fortunate than she was. Her funeral procession was routed to pass in front of the Japanese Embassy, where it halted for a symbolic demonstration of her struggle against the Japanese government 9. | |||
| 8. | Soh, Chunghee Sarah. 1996. "The Korean 'Comfort Women': Movement for Redress." Asian Survey 36 (12): 1226-1240. | |||
| 9. | Han'guk Ilbo, December 18, 1997. | |||
Project Publications, Papers and Lectures |
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| Publications | |
| Soh, | C. S., "Japan's Responsibility for Comfort Women Survivors," Working Paper No. 77, Japan Policy Research Institute, May, 2001a. This paper is available on-line at the JPRI web site. |
| - | Prostitutes versus Sex Slaves: The Politics of Representing the "Comfort Women." In The Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II, Margaret Stetz and Bonnie Oh, eds. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., pp. 69-87, 2001c. |
| - | Centering the Korean "Comfort Women" Survivors Critical Asian Studies 33(4): 603-608, 2001d |
| - | From Imperial Gifts to Sex Slaves: Theorizing Symbolic Representations of the "Comfort Women." Social Science Japan Journal 3(1): 59-76, 2000a. [ Return ] |
| - | Human Rights and the "Comfort Women." Peace Review 12(1): 123-129, 2000b. [ Return ] |
| - | Individuelle versus kollective Rechte: Die uberlebeden Zwangsprostituierten [Individual versus Collective Human Rights: The case of Korean " Comfort Women" Survivors]. Korea Forum 9 (1): 6-9. 1999. (An invited contribution, translated into German by Dr. Roland Wein, The editor). |
| - | Japan's Comfort Women. International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter 18: 33, (February, 1999). [ Return ] |
| - | The Problem of "Comfort Women": The Intersections of Gender, Sexuality,Class, Ethnicity, and the State. In Cross-Cultural Communication East and West in the 90's. B. L. Hoffer and J. H. Koo, eds, pp. 83-87. San Antonio, TX: Institute for Cross-Cultural Research, 1998. |
| - | "Uncovering the Truth about the 'Comfort Women.'" Review Article of Hicks, George, The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War; Howard, Keith, ed., True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women; Ruff-O'Herne, Jan, 50 Years of Silence. Women's Studies International Forum 21 (4): 451-454 (1998). [ Return ] |
| - | "Sexual Slavery (Japanese Military);" "The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan;" "Yun Chong-ok;" "Kim Hak-sun." Four entries in The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, ABC Clio, (1997). [ Return ] |
| - | "Review of Hicks, George, The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War." Korea Journal 37(2): 136-141. (1997) [ Return ] |
| - | The Korean "Comfort Women": Movement for Redress. Asian Survey, 36(12):1227-1240, 1996. [ Return ] |
| Papers Presented to Professional Meetings | |
| Soh, | C. S., "Sexual Enslavement and Reproductive Health among 'Comfort Women' Survivors." Paper presented at the American Anthropological Association annual meeting, Washington D.C., November 28 - December 2, 2001a. |
| - | C. S., "Comfort Women Issue in the International Community: A Psycho- Political Perspective." Paper presented at the 2nd International Round Table on the Comfort Women Issue, Tokyo, September 5-7, 2001b. |
| - | "Korean Comfort Women Survivors in Northern China." Paper presented at the 2nd International Round Table on the Comfort Women Issue, Tokyo, March 1-2, 2001c. |
| - | "Japan's Comfort Women as a War Crime." Paper for the Panel on Japanese War Crimes at the Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, Long Beach, California, October 5-7, 2000a. |
| - | "Redressing the 'Comfort Women' Survivors: The Asian Women's Fund Controversy." Paper presented at the 36th International Conference for Asian and North African Studies, Montreal, Canada, August 27-September 1, 2000b. |
| - | "Human Dignity and Sexual Culture." Paper presented at the ICAS (Institute for Corean-American Studies) Spring Symposium, the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, May 1, 2000c. This paper is available on-line at the ICAS web site. |
| - | "Symbolic Representations of the 'Comfort Women'." Paper presented at the International Round Table on the 'Comfort Women', Tokyo, Japan, February, 24-25, 2000d. |
| - | "Human Rights, Nationalism, and the 'Comfort Women' Movement.". Invited paper presented at Georgia Institute of Technology Symposium, Human Rights: Changes and Challenges, Atlanta, Georgia, April 30, 1999. |
| - | "Human Rights and The 'Comfort Women'." Paper presented at the 97th American Anthropological Association annual meetings, Philadelphia, December 2-6, 1998. |
| - | "From Sexual Service to Sexual Slavery: Implications of the Comfort Women Debate." Paper presented on the panel "Sex in Japan," to the International Convention of Asia Scholars, Leeuwenhorst Congres Centrum, Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, June 25-28, 1998. |
| - | "The Politics of Ethnic Pride versus Human Rights: Japanese Responses to the Comfort Women Issue." Paper presented at the 96th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Washington D.C., November 19-23, 1997. |
| - | "'Comfort Women' and Sexual Culture." Paper presented at the 5th Biennial Meeting of the Society for Psychological Anthropology, San Diego, October 9-12, 1997. |
| - | "Multiple Perspectives on the Comfort Women." Paper presented at the Symposium on the Comfort Women Issue, Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, October 1, 1997. |
| - | "Prostitutes or Slaves: The Politics of Representing the Comfort Women." Paper presented at the panel on Comfort Women at the American Historical Association annual meetings, New York City, January 2-5, 1997. |
| - | "Recreational Sex or Sexual Slavery?: A Cultural Analysis of the Comfort Women Problem." Paper presented at an invited session (Association for Feminist Anthropology) of the 95thAnnual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, November 20-24. 1996. |
| - | "Military Comfort Women." Paper presented at ASPAC 1996, A Regional Conference of Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, June 21-23, 1996. |
| - | "The Problem of 'Comfort Women': The Intersections of Gender, Sexuality, Class, Ethnicity, and the State." Paper presented at the 5th International Conference on Cross-Cultural Communication in Harbin, China, August 15-19, 1995. |
| - | "The Problem of 'Comfort Women': From a Bilateral Dispute to a Universal Moral Issue." Paper presented at the Rocky Mountain/Southwest Regional Japan Seminar, Dallas, Texas, March 31-April 1, 1995. |
| - | "Korean 'Comfort Women': Gender, Class, Ethnicity, and the State in Sexual Slavery." Paper presented at the Invited Session of the Society for Psychological Anthropology at the 93rd Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Atlanta, Georgia, December 1, 1994. |
| - | "Korean 'Comfort Women' for the Japanese Imperial Army: Sexism, Paternalism, and Nationalism." Paper presented at the 35th Annual Conference of Western Social Science Association in Corpus Christi, Texas, April 21-24, 1993. [ Return ] |
| Invited Lectures | |
| Soh, | C. S. "The Military 'Comfort System' of Imperial Japan: Toward a Complex Historiography," Scholars Seminar at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Stanford University, April 4, 2001. |
| - | "The Movement for the 'Comfort Women' Survivors." Paper for the Quest for Justice Panel on Korean 'Comfort Women'. Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, California, November 14, 2000a. |
| - | "Sex, Power, and Justice: An Overview of the 'Comfort Women' Issues." Stanford University, May 8, 2000b. |
| - | "Studying the 'Comfort Women' Issue." Faculty-Student Colloquium, Anthropology Department, SFSU, March 2, 2000c. |
| - | "The Subjection of the 'Comfort Women' Survivors." University of San Francisco, San Francisco, February 3, 2000d. |
| - | "The International 'Comfort Women' Movement for Redress." Stanford University, Stanford, May 26, 1999. |
| - | "The International 'Comfort Women' Movement for Redress." Free Library of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, May 13, 1999. |
| - | "Human Rights and Humanity: The Case of the Comfort Women." University of Pennsylvania Center for Asian Studies, Philadelphia, December 4, 1998. |
| - | "Inkwon kwa Ilbon'gun Wianbu" (Human Rights and the Comfort Women for the Japanese Troops). Institute for Corean-American Studies, Philadelphia, December 4, 1998. The text of this lecture is available on-line at the ICAS web site. |
| - | "Japan's Comfort Women: Of Culture, Politics, and Justice." University of Leiden International Institute for Asian Studies, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, September 22, 1998. |
| - | "Japan's Pacific War Responsibility and the 'Comfort Women'." University of California, San Diego, February 16, 1998. |
| - | "Comfort Women and Japanese Society." Special Lecture Series, Soka University, Tokyo, Japan, November 28, 1997. |
| - | "The Comfort Women Issue." University of Tokyo, Japan, June 12, 1997. |
| - | "Korean Comfort Women." Eastfest Speakers Series, Stanford University, Stanford California, February 27, 1997. |
| - | "Comfort Women." Anthropology Colloquium sponsored by Department of Anthropology, the Center for Japanese Studies, and the Center for Korean Studies, and Women's Studies Program at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, April 11, 1996. |
| - | "'Comfort Women': Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military During WWII." World War II Re-viewed: A Lecture Series, Kalamazoo College. Kalamazoo, Michigan, April 1, 1996. |
| - | "Korean Women of Perseverance." East Asian Studies Council Colloquium, Yale University. New Haven, Connecticut, November 13, 1995. |
| - | "Military Comfort Women: The Government of Japan versus the Survivors." The Center for Korean Studies of the University of California. Berkeley, California, April 12, 1995. |
| - | "Korean 'Comfort Women': Gender, Class, and Ethnicity in Sexual Slavery." Department of Anthropology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California, March 3, 1994; Department of Anthropology, Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut, March 16, 1994; Korean Studies Program, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York, March 18, 1994. |
| [ Return ] | |
Dutch ex-comfort women: Photographed by Chunghee Sarah Soh in front of the Japanese Embassy, Den Haag, The Netherlands, September 18, 1998.
Kim Hak Sun: Interviewed and photographed by Chunghee Sarah Soh at the office of the Association of Pacific War Victims & Bereaved Families, Seoul, Republic of Korea, September 1, 1995.
Yoshimi Yoshiaki: Interviewed and photographed by Chunghee Sarah Soh at his office at Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan, June 24, 1997.
Lee Hyo-Chae: Interviewed and photographed by Chunghee Sarah Soh at the office of the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, Seoul, Republic of Korea, August 23, 1995.
Usuki Keiko: Interviewed and photographed by Chunghee Sarah Soh at Ms. Usuki's office in Tokyo, Japan, June 16, 1997.
Link to Chunghee Sarah Soh's Home Page.
Link to Web Documents on Comfort Women.
Send messages to soh@sfsu.edu.
This page designed, coded and maintained by Jerry Boucher. Last update: 3/3/2002
Copyright © 1997 - 2001 by Chunghee Sarah Soh and Jerry D. Boucher
