![]() He also asserts that, despite the goal of reducing rape and venereal disease, the comfort stations did the opposite-aggravating rape and increasing the spread of venereal disease. Japanese historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi further states that the Japanese military used comfort women to satisfy disgruntled soldiers during World War II and prevent military revolt. Yuki Tanaka states that local brothels outside of the military's reach had issues of security, since there were possibilities of spies disguised as workers of such private facilities. ![]() ![]() Comfort women lived in sordid conditions, and were called "public toilets" by the Japanese. She also states that the government wanted to minimize medical expenses on treating venereal diseases that the soldiers acquired from frequent and widespread rape, which hindered Japan's military capacity. Carmen Argibay, a former member of the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice, states that the Japanese government aimed to prevent atrocities like the Rape of Nanking by confining rape and sexual abuse to military-controlled facilities, or stop incidents from leaking to the international press should they occur. ![]() Military correspondence within the Imperial Japanese Army shows that there were a number of the aims for facilitating comfort stations: to reduce or prevent rape crimes by Japanese army personnel in an effort to prevent a worsening of anti-Japanese sentiment, to reduce venereal diseases among Japanese troops, and to prevent leakage of military secrets by civilians who were in contact with Japanese officers. Given that prostitution in Japan was pervasive and organized, it was logical to find military prostitution in the Japanese armed forces. Outline of the comfort women system Part of a series on A significant percentage of comfort women were minors. Other enticements were false advertising for nursing jobs at outposts or Japanese army bases once recruited, they were incarcerated in comfort stations both inside their nations and abroad. In some cases, propaganda advocated equity and the sponsorship of women in higher education. In many cases, local middlemen tasked with procuring women for the military deceived them with promises of work in factories or restaurants. Japanese women were the first victims to be enslaved in military brothels and trafficked across Japan, Okinawa, Japan's colonies and occupied territories, and overseas battlegrounds. According to testimonies, some young women were abducted from their homes in countries under Imperial Japanese rule. Many women were coerced into working in the brothels. However, despite the goal of reducing rape and venereal disease, the comfort stations aggravated rape and increased the spread of venereal diseases. Originally, the brothels were established to provide soldiers with a sexual outlet in order to reduce the incidence of wartime rape, a cause of rising anti-Japanese sentiment across occupied territories. A smaller number of women of European origin were also involved, mostly from the Netherlands and Australia with an estimated 200–400 Dutch women alone, with an unknown number of other European women. Stations were located in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaya, Thailand, Burma, New Guinea, Hong Kong, Macau, and French Indochina. ![]() Women who were used for military "comfort stations" also came from Burma, Thailand, French Indochina, Malaya, Manchukuo, Taiwan (then a Japanese dependency), the Dutch East Indies, Portuguese Timor, Papua New Guinea (including some mixed race Japanese-Papuans ) and other Japanese-occupied territories. Most of the women were from occupied countries, including Korea, China, and the Philippines. After the war, Japan's acknowledgment of the comfort women's plight was minimal, lacking a full apology and appropriate restitution, which damaged Japan's reputation in Asia for decades.Įstimates vary as to how many women were involved, with most historians settling somewhere in the range of 50,000–200,000 the exact numbers are still being researched and debated. Many women died or committed suicide due to brutal mistreatment and sustained physical and emotional distress. During World War II, Japanese troops forced hundreds of thousands of women from Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, China, and other countries into brothels where they were sexually enslaved and repeatedly raped. The term "comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese ianfu (慰安婦), which literally means "comforting, consoling woman". Sexual slavery in the Imperial Japanese ArmyĬomfort women or comfort girls were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. Comfort women from Korea being questioned by the US army after the Siege of Myitkyina in Burma, on August 14, 1944. ![]()
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