COMFORT WOMEN
Introduction:
Historically, the Japanese government’s notorious systematized sex trafficking scheme
involved women, girls and boys from throughout the Japanese empire during 1940s. Comfort
women is a euphemism for women who lived under conditions of sexual servitude and
performed sexual services for Japanese Imperial Army soldiers during Japan's militaristic era,
which ended with World War II. Although the actual number may have been considerably
greater, estimates of the number of women engaged usually vary up to 200,000. Women from
China, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia including Japan and Dutch nationals in Indonesia were
also participating, however, the vast majority of them were from Korea, which was then a
Japanese territory.
However, the entire history on the subject of comfort women is baffling. Since the early
1990s, there has been an international effort to comprehend and analyse this past. It is crucial
to acknowledge this subject right away as a global history and reality and which is the prime
focus of this paper. This research paper will analyze the conditions faced by comfort women,
the circumstances that led to their involvement in this system, and the consequences and
implications of their experiences including the perspectives of various countries and
stakeholders. Additionally, it will examine the international laws that both prohibit and, in
some contexts, inadvertently encourage such practices.
Historical Background of Comfort Women:
Beginning in the early 1900s and extending to the end of World War II, the Japanese
Government, on the advice of its military officers, set up a system of military brothels,
euphemistically called “comfort stations”. These establishments were manned by young girls
and women who were tricked, forced, and occasionally kidnapped in order to provide
Japanese soldiers with sex. These poor women and girls were referred to as "comfort women"
or "comfort girls" (Jugun Ianfu, or Ianfu in Japanese).
As the full-scale war was advanced, Japan felt the necessity of the military sexual slaves, and,
ultimately, invented the comfort system for the purposes of (1) protecting the local women
from the danger of rape by its soldiers; (2) preserving the health of the troops by preventing
the infection of venereal disease; (3) the soldiers’ gaining the fighting strength; (4) stirring up
the soldiers’ morale, relieving combat stress and providing leisure; (5) protecting “national
security from espionage”; and (6) increasing revenue through more varied sources such as the
military brothels.
The practice of using comfort women by the Japanese military officially began after the Rape
and Massacre in Nanjing in December 1937. The Japanese Army argued that providing
soldiers with access to prostitutes would reduce their inclination to commit gang rapes
against local women, a practice that had been rampant during the occupation of Nanjing.
From 1931 to 1945, comfort stations were established in many places where the Japanese
army combated or occupied, including China, Taiwan, Borneo, the Philippines, the pacific
islands, Singapore, Malaya, Burma, Indonesia as well as Japan. 1 As approximately 3.5
million soldiers were mainly sent to the pacific islands, the estimated number of the comfort
women becomes 100,000. Nearly 80% of these women were the Korean women, and others
were taken from China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Burma, the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies.
A similarity among the women taken were their Confucian ideals that focused on a women’s
virginity and feminine chastity as her most sacred attributes before marriage. Additionally, for
the majority of comfort women were unmarried. Unmarried young women between the ages
of 16 to 20 were favored by the Japanese Imperial Army. The few women who survived were
unable to be married and create a family after WWII. 2
Life in the comfort stations was a relentless nightmare for these women. They were confined
to cramped cubicles measuring just three feet by five feet, where long lines of soldiers
assaulted them day and night. Heavily guarded, the women had no opportunity to escape; the
security surrounding the comfort stations made any attempt to flee virtually impossible. In
addition to the degradation of being raped, many endured physical violence, including
beatings and torture.
Their agony did not end after World War II. Many former comfort women faced mass killings
at the hands of Japanese soldiers; others perished when underground shelters were bombed.
Many women were abandoned by fleeing Japanese soldiers, left to die in jungles, succumb to
starvation, or find their way home by any means possible. The exact number of women who
never returned home remains unknown. For those who did make it back, many faced
1
Coomaraswamy Report, supra note 2, ¶ 18; GEORGE HICKS, THE COMFORT WOMEN: JAPAN’S BRUTAL
REGIME OF ENFORCED PROSTITUTION IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR 107 (1994).
2
Chin Sung Chung, Korean Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, in TRUE STORIES OF THE
KOREAN COMFORT WOMEN 17 (Keith Howard ed., 1995) (1993).
significant medical issues, including chronic pain and health complications from sexually
transmitted diseases.3 The vast majority of these women experienced an overwhelming, yet
misplaced, sense of shame and guilt, which often led to long-term psychological trauma.
Many who married were unable to bear children, while others developed a total aversion to
sex and men. For over four decades, they silently endured the aftereffects of the brutality
inflicted upon them, often feeling isolated in their pain.
3
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