Japanese Comfort Women

The history of Japan’s procurement and extortion of comfort women during World War II has only been brought to light in the early 1990’s when nineteen of the remaining comfort women survivors broke decades of silence and shared their personal experiences of Japan’s army-run comfort stations. From the development of the stations, the actual procurement of women and the sexism and dehumanization present in the comfort camps, the Japanese government fully supported and approved a war crime “to exploit in warfare” to oppress women and rally the optimism of troops of the Japanese Imperial Army. In the 30's and 40's, the Japanese Imperial Army, with full support from the government, degraded thousands of Korean comfort women by way of forced prostitution, …show more content…
A few women in the comfort stations were of Japanese origin and volunteered due to patriotism and nationalism. The other women in the camps were of many different origins, such as Korea, Taiwan, China, the Philippines, and the Dutch East Indies, and found their way to the camps through deceit and kidnapping. The reality of what it meant to be a comfort women is gruesome and mentally scarring. Women would get raped by men upwards of fifty times a day, and some women, particularly Koreans, would serve upwards of one hundred men a day. Some nights, “twenty plus men would wait outside a room with their pants pulled down, waiting in line.” Depending on the comfort station, lower ranking soldiers would pay for the services of a comfort women, “1 yen.” Because the comfort women would see so many different men in a week, they often felt disposable and unimportant. One comfort woman commented in her testimony, “Once I am dead and gone, I wonder if the Japanese or Korean government will pay any attention to the miserable life of a woman like …show more content…
However, the United States did not recognize the “crime against humanity” that is the abuse towards comfort women “was never dealt with by trial.” Japan “immediately destroyed all records of Ianjos after announcing its surrender in 1945,” therefore leaving a lack of evidence for a trial in the forties as well as in present day,and a lack of evidence for proper history of Japan’s comfort stations. “A total of 150 Korean were gathered in Naha, and then sent back to Korea in November 1945.” Many Koreans who returned to their homes were then slutshamed because of the culture of the camps. Though, this was not the case for the majority of Korean women. “Ex-comfort women in Japan were imprisoned for spreading ‘nasty rumours’ about the Japanese Imperial Army.” Japan also executed a great number of comfort women at the end of World War II to prevent the spread of knowledge of comfort stations to other countries. Ultimately, the life for an ex-comfort woman was isolating, degrading and judgemental, and they often lived in poverty due to health complications. “I have lived with resentment buried deep in my heart for what I was made to go