Available for the first time in English, this is the definitive
account of the practice of sexual slavery the Japanese military
perpetrated during World War II by the researcher principally
responsible for exposing the Japanese government's responsibility
for these atrocities. The large scale imprisonment and rape of
thousands of women, who were euphemistically called "comfort women"
by the Japanese military, first seized public attention in 1991
when three Korean women filed suit in a Toyko District Court
stating that they had been forced into sexual servitude and
demanding compensation. Since then the comfort stations and their
significance have been the subject of ongoing debate and intense
activism in Japan, much if it inspired by Yoshimi's investigations.
How large a role did the military, and by extension the government,
play in setting up and administering these camps? What type of
compensation, if any, are the victimized women due? These issues
figure prominently in the current Japanese focus on public memory
and arguments about the teaching and writing of history and are
central to efforts to transform Japanese ways of remembering the
war.
Yoshimi Yoshiaki provides a wealth of documentation and
testimony to prove the existence of some 2,000 centers where as
many as 200,000 Korean, Filipina, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Burmese,
Dutch, Australian, and some Japanese women were restrained for
months and forced to engage in sexual activity with Japanese
military personnel. Many of the women were teenagers, some as young
as fourteen. To date, the Japanese government has neither admitted
responsibility for creating the comfort station system nor given
compensation directly to former comfort women.
This English edition updates the Japanese edition originally
published in 1995 and includes introductions by both the author and
the translator placing the story in context for American
readers.
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