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Facing the History, Facing the Comfort Women
At the beginning of World War II, the Japanese Government instituted a system of sexual slavery (comfort system) throughout the territories which it occupied. The term “military comfort woman,” is a euphemism for enforced sexual slavery for the Japanese troops during World War II. According to Watanabe Kazuko’s article “Trafficking In Women’s Bodies, Then And Now,” it actually meant the collective and systematic rape of women and the regulation of rape by the Japanese Imperial Army. ... The women were originally called "teishintai," which means "voluntary corps," with the Confucian connotation of self-victimization (1).
The first comfort stations under direct Japanese military control were in Shanghai in 1932, following vicious clashes between Japanese troop and Chinese. One of the commanders involved in the Shanghai campaign, Lieutenant-General Okamura Yashui, was the original proponent of comfort stations for the Army. After 223 reported rape cases by Japanese troops, he sought a solution by requesting the governor of Nagasaki Prefecture to send a contingent of comfort women to Shanghai. Then, rape reports fell off markedly, providing a rationale for the the comfort system, which was to enhance the morale of the military by providing amenities for recreational sex. The Japanese Imperial Army believed such amenities would help prevent soldiers from committing random sexual violence toward women of occupied territories. Therefore, the “comfort station” were set up at a fast rate in order to “settle down” disorder. ... As George Hicks writes in his book, The Comfort Women, “Superstitions are universal in armed forces. ... Amulets could be made with the public hair of comfort women, or from something belonging to them. ...
During that time, most of these so-called comfort women were recruited by force, coercion, or deception into sexual slavery for the Japanese military. There is no way to determine precisely how many women were forced to serve as comfort women. In her article “Human Rights and the ‘comfort women’,” author Chunghee Sarah Soh illustrates the estimate ranges between 80,000 and 200,000, and about 80 percent of whom, it is believed, were Korean. ... The rest of the comfort women were former prostitutes, or the volunteers who were willing to offering both body and heart to the Imperial Japanese.
Approximate Word count = 1854
Approximate Pages = 7.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
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