The Origin and Development of the Military Sexual
Slavery Problem in Imperial Japan
Chin Sung Chung
Introduction
It has been nearly fifty years since the end of the second World War and of the Japanese government’s exploitation of women from Korea and other colonies as sex slaves during the 1930s and 1940s (also Japanese, Okinawan, Filipino and others) While it would seem an extreme violation of human rights, military sex slavery as an issue has been obscured by complete indifference since that time. The problem has recently been brought to world attention as an infringement upon women’s rights; however, reactions are defensive with the Japanese government and remain feeble within the world community and the Korean government itself. The only groups to exhibit considerable concern are immediate victims and some nongovernmental organizations.
This essay will discuss the origin of Japanese military sexual slavery in Asia between 1930 and 1945, the social structures that formed its background, why the issue was suppressed for fifty years, how it h as been and continues to be brought to light and the responses and possible solutions given by the Korean and Japanese governments. Based on the belief that even though military sexual slavery was conducted with a fundamental disregard for women, it has been alternatively concealed and unveiled according to changes in the balance of power between the countries involved. The problem of military sexual slavery intersects with the issues of nation, gender, class, and state. Academic discourses have focused on one of more of these elements depending on the position they take. In this essay, I will simply give an overview of issues – what happened, what has been done about it, and what remains to be done. – as a lexicon of knowledge and terminology with which to discuss them and to move further toward their resolution. I must note, however, that this is a preliminary report, since the investigation of the issue began only recently.
Some facts behind the Problem of military sexual slavery
1. The Problem of Terminology
The term “military sexual slavery” used to describe Imperial Japan’s forced prostitution mobilization in the Asian territories of its colonial expansion, is still not universally accepted. Most commonly, it is confused with some variation on the term chongsindae (voluntary corps or teishintai in Japanese). According to historical evidence, it referred to both men and women who were mobilized for a variety of work including reportage, medicine, and manual labor during the 1940s. The Women’s Voluntary Corps for Labor and the Women’s Voluntary Corps (for the most part, the names were used interchangeably) mobilized women to work in munitions factories both in Japan and Korea beginning in the early 1940s.They gained legal status with the promulgation of the Order for the Women’s Voluntary Corps for Labor in August 1944. Often confused with military sex slavery, the vision of a Women’s Voluntary Corps outlined in the 1944 order nonetheless did not pertain to the majority of Korean women. Because this order specified qualification that were not relevant to Korean women, most Korean women were mobilized instead by ganassen (governmental guidance) and a free application system. Unlike its Japanese counterpart, then, the boundaries of the Korean Women’s Voluntary Corps remained unclear, allowing mobilization under its name for other uses including military sexual slavery.
There is also direct evidence that the Women’s Voluntary Corps was used for the mobilization of military sexual slaves. Some testimonies state that Korean women were transferred as military sexual slaves called Wartime Special Voluntary Corps for Japanese Troops in Manchuria. Yoshida Seiji, a chief in the Department of Labor of Yamaguchi prefecture testified that he had engage in the forcible transfer of Korean women known as the Women’s Voluntary corps for the Comforting of the Imperial Army to Cheju Island in 1943. Several women, appealing to the Korea government for support, testified that they had been mobilized from elementary schools to become military sexual slaves in war areas under the name of Women’s Voluntary Corps.
Most Koreans who lived through the colonial period think of the Women’s Voluntary Corps and military sexual slaves as one and the same. The term “comfort women” (ianfu in Japanese) appeared frequently in army records of the 1930s. However, most Koreans remember terms like “draft of unmarried women,” “service corps” and Women’s Voluntary Corps, all of which. They believe, referred to forced laborers or military sexual slaves. The extent to which this belief is true is difficult to determine, as written records from the 1930s, even those in pro-government newspapers, are scanty at best. In short, the Women’s Voluntary Corps was legally defined terminology but military sexual slaves was not. The extent to which it was used for the mobilization of sex slaves has yet to be determined.
Another problem with terminology arises with the term “comfort women.” Unlike the Women’s Voluntary Corps, “comfort women” was never a legal term. It began to be used in the 1930s along with terms such as barmaid (shakufu), women in the drinking business (shugyofu) courtesan (gijo) or other professional women (tokushu fujo), all of which refer to prostitutes . In Japan the term “war comfort women” was widely used. However, both Japanese and Koreans point out the inappropriate nature of the term “women participating in war (jugun) which means women who follow the army voluntarily such as reporters or nurses. International women’s organizations had decided to use the term “forced war comfort women,” but then they changed it to “military sexual slavery by Japan.” The Korean government used the term “military comfort women” in an official report in July 1992. Recently “military comfort women” seems to have prevailed in Korea, since the media now use the term commonly. The Imperial Japanese Army also used the term “military comfort station.” Recently, the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (hereafter the Research Group) used the term “military sexual slavery” when they published the testimonies of the victims in 1993, and the South Korean government used it when it adopted the law to provide financial support to the victims in the same year. A common argument is that to refer to these women as comfort women obscures their real situation. Yoshimi Yoshiake argues for “war slave.” Kang man-gil opts for “sex slave” The Korean Council and the United Nations adopted military sexual slavery and I will use that term herefter throughout this essay.
2. The Formation and Development of Military Sexual Slavery Policy
Military brothels built by the Japanese Army have been found to date back to 1905; however, their establishment near encampments of Japanese soldiers dates from about 1937, when the Japanese government and Army became more intensely involved in enforcing wartime colonial policy.
A Prototype of a Military Brother, 1905-1937
Many soldiers’ diaries from the 1905 Russo-Japanese War confirm that the Japanese army built brothels for soldiers at that time. They contain entries such as “most of the women at the army brothel where Chinese…” or “the fees at the arm-authorized brothel were very expensive…” However, the army does not appear to have systematically created brothels in its first forays abroad. Diaries recovered from the Japanese Siberian Expedition of
1918-1922 record only that many soldiers caught venereal diseases, a fact insufficient in itself to prove the existence of army brothels.
In 1932, during the Shanghai War, Lieutenant Okamura, the chief of staff of the Shanghai Detachment, asked the governor of Nagasaki Prefecture to send military comfort women to the troops. Okamura later said he was pleased to see that soldier’ rapes of Chinese women decreased after the arrival of women from Japan. He also stated that he had gotten the idea from the Japanese navy, which was stationed in the same area –evidence demonstrating that the Navy had established overseas military brothels prior to 1932. Another record shows that the Japanese Army and Navy in Shanghai established military brothels at the beginning of 1932. By 1934, there were already fourteen Navy brothels in shanghai that limited access to military personnel, and all prostitutes at these brothels were required to undergo regular medical examinations administered by military doctors.
Not all brothels in Japanese-occupied territories may have been army-run, however. Records exist from 1933 that document how the Japanese Army stationed in Manchuria performed regular checks of the sanitary conditions in brothels and prostitutes health to prevent venereal diseases among the soldiers. These brothels do not appear to have been built and run by the Army; however, they may have been prototypes for military brothel established systematically by the Army in subsequent years.
The Establishment of a Systematic Policy by the Japanese Government, 1937
It was not until late 1937 that the Japanese government created an official brothel policy and began to systematically establish brothels in areas where soldiers were stationed. The Japanese occupation of Nanjing was underway, and civilian rape emerged as a serious problem. The war between Japan and China had lasted longer than anticipated; thus the Japanese government began to order the wartime system in Japan and in the colonies to mobilize human resources. Mobilization of military sex slaves thus occurred in the wider context of war efforts throughout the country and the occupied territories.
Many Army records concerning military brothels after 1937 have recently been uncovered. In December 1937 a chief of Japanese troops dispatched to central China was directed to build military brothels in Huzhou. Beginning in March 1938 direct orders from the Japanese ministry of the Army appear. The Department of Military Affairs, a subgroup of the Ministry of the Army, sent order to the chiefs of troops in north and central China to take care in selecting people to mobilize women for military brothels. At an April 1938 meeting between the Ministry of the Army, Ministry of the Navy and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the decision was made for the Army or Navy to manage military brothels directly, without interference from local consulates. The Bureau of Education of the Ministry of the Army ordered the thorough preparation of sanitary equipment destined for military brothels and a ban on soldiers going to prostitutes other than those at the military brothels.
By July 1941, the Japanese Army had begun preparing for war against the United States Great Britain and the Netherlands. As a result if its experiences in China, the establishment of military brothels in occupied areas was part of the plans. The Army built brothels soon after occupying areas in South Asia. Brothels were also created in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines, as well as in China. When the Japanese Army in Manchuria planned special training session to prepare for war against Russia, the army requested twenty thousand women for army brothels from the Korean colonial government and eight thousand women were actually mobilized for that purpose.
As Japan began to occupy larger areas after August 1942, the Ministry of the Army began to systematize its policy for establishing military brothels throughout Japanese-occupied territories. A chief in the Department of Rewards at the office of personnel in the ministry of the Army said that he had wanted to put 100 military brothels in north China, 140 in central China, 40 in south China, 100 in South Asia and 10 in the South Sea Islands, and 10 in Sakhalin, for a total of 400 military brothels. The Ministry of the Army also regularly sent condoms to military brothels and supported them financially.
The Role of other organizations in the Japanese and Colonial Governments
Along with the Ministry of the Army, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the home Office also participated in enforcing the policies of military brothels. The military brothels were controlled directly by the Ministries of the Army and the Navy; however, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs investigated the situation of Japanese citizens and colonized [peoples abroad, intervened into immigration affairs and ultimately controlled the consulates. The Ministry of Internal Affairs encouraged women and brothel managers to go abroad and controlled women’s mobilization.
Records of the time show that the colonial government, too, was aware from 1938 onwards that Korean women and brothel owners were being transferred to China. As mentioned previously, the Korean government sent eight thousand Korean women to the Japanese Army in Manchuria in 1941. Another record contains a report by the chief of police in the Korean colonial government detailing shipments of Korean women and brothel owners to China. As of December 1994, 167 victims had been reported to the Korean government, and of those 51 or 32.4 per cent testified tht they had been mobilized by policemen, local officials, and other officials from the colonial government. Some testified that they had been mobilized as members of the Women’s Voluntary Corps to become sex slaves.
3. Characteristics of Military Brothels, their Establishment and Management
Characteristics and types of Military Brothels
With only a few exceptions, military brothels were created exclusively for soldiers’ use and were thus separated from the public prostitution system. Soldiers were allowed to frequent only military brothels, and regularly check-ups on prostitutes’ health by military doctors guarded against diseases being transferred to soldiers.
All administrative details, including the transfer of women, were conducted strictly by the Army; however, not all brothels were run directly under Army command. Some brothels were both established and managed by the Army while others were established by the Army and then handed over to civilian management or both established and maintained by civilians with Army permission. Some brothels were built after their civilian managers applied for permission to do so, and some were pre-existing public brothels redesigned for military use. Many preexisiting brothels in remote areas were also put temporally to military use for the duration of the troops’ stay in their area.
Evolution of Brothel Establishment and Management
Many different brothel establishment and management styles existed; however, they followed a pattern. In the early stages, brothels were established and run by the Army, but with increasing civilian investment. In later years, the Army reclaimed its direct control of military brothels, but brothel management descended into chaos toward the end of the war.
When the Japanese military first began to systematically implement the brothel system in China, most brothels were under direct military control. One record from January 1938 describes “two comfort facilities: one was nanaged by the supply base and the other by the military unit.” A record from April 1938 states that “military brothels are to be managed and controlled directly by the Army or Navy.” The mobilization of women at this time seems to have occurred mainly in Korea, with some mobilization in Japan. Many sources say that the majority of women were Koreans, while Chinese women’s mobilization occurred only when unavoidable. As one military record from April 1939 notes,” There were cases when the local women were used because of difficulties in the establishment of a brothel.
After a short period of direct army control, civilians began to participate in the brothel system on a large scale. References to “the persons who went to China to open army brothels” appear often in documents written after late 1939. Based in later experiences in China, civilians appear to have participated from the early stages in the brothel system in South Asia and the South Sea Islands. Civilians often applied to the Army to run military brothels, and, in such cases, the Army would provide buildings and other extensive assistance. At this time, the mobilization of women occurred primarily in Korea.
As time progressed, military brothels became scattered across a greater geographical area, and women were sent further from home, as happened to the Korean women who were mobilized for Manchurian brothels in July 1941. Some women, either part or all of the population of one brothel, were sent to remote locations that had previously been without a brothel for the troops stationed there.
Control of many brothels had passed to civilians in the early 1940s; however, as civilians began to have difficulties acquiring materials and human resources, the military reestablished direct control over military brothels in Indonesia in late 1943 and in Okinawa in 1944. This meant more coercion in the mobilization process, and more women taken from the immediate areas of occupation as well as from Korea. At this time, Dutch women were also mobilized in Indonesia.
4. Military Sex Slaves and Their Mobilization
As previously mentioned, the majority of women in brothels were Korean, Japanese or from the local population of occupied areas. Pioneering works on the subject by Aso and Senda show that Koreans made up 80 to 90 percent of all women in brothels, and both soldiers and victims have testified that the majority of women in South Asian and South Sea Islands brothels were Korean. Army records of the results of women’s health tests show that 30 percent of women in brothels in China were Chinese. One may suspect that the remaining 70 percent were Korean. Much evidence exists that local women in occupied areas were mobilized; however, their numbers are not known.
Whether the nationality of women in brothels was important to brothel owners or not remains an issue. According to some testimonies, Japanese women were used for officers, Korean women for ordinary soldiers and Chinese women for military employees. Many other Army records show, however, that officers and soldiers shared the same women, and that theonly difference was that officers were assigned women at different times. We can, however, assume that the women’s treatment varied according to their nationality at some brothels.
By Japanese regulation, prostitutes were to be at least eighteen years old in Japan and seventeen years old in Korea. Some documents specify age limits; however, the majority of Army Brothel Regulations give no age limits, and victims’ ages were reported to the Korean government as ranging from eleven to twenty-four years old at the time of transfer. The majority of women taken were between fourteen and nineteen years old, thus demonstrating a Japanese preference for women under twenty, even though young women of all ages were taken. The majority of Korean women taken for military sexual slavery were from the rural lower classes, possibly to minimize any social unrest occurring as a result of the mobilization.
The method by which women were mobilized is one of the most controversial points of dispute between Japan and the Asian counties victimized. The Japanese government has acknowledged the fact that the majority of women wer taken against their will by means of deception or force but it has yet to confront the fact that the government was the main culprit in their mobilization. No written records describing the mobilization process remain, but testimonies of both women and those involved in the women’s transfer describe mobilization as occurring through false offers of good jobs and through force exerted by police, Army and government officials. The army provided transportation even when civilians transferred women and as all civilians needed an official pass to leave the country and travel abroad, the government’s involvement in women’s mobilization and transportation is clear.
5. Regulations and practices of Military brothels
The majority of military brothels had their own regulations specifying time schedules, fees, regular medical checkups, and sanitary conditions; however, the contents of the regulations varied little from brothel to brothel. All regulations were to be strictly observed but according to many testimonies, that was not always the case.
One of the most important regulations determined the amount of time allotted each rank of soldiers and the days allotted to each troop in instances where several troops shred one brothel. Regulations also limited the amount of time allowed to each soldier. Many victims testified that time regulations according to rank were roughly kept, as so many soldiers would come at the same time and could stay for only a few minutes. Fees too were determined by regulations and were primarily paid with tickets sold to the troops prior to their visit. Women in the brothels received little or none of the brothel’s profits. In some cases, when the women were given the tickets, they submitted the tickets directly to the brother managers without cash reimbursement.
Regular medical checkups for venereal disease were another important part of the brothel system. Women were required to have weekly or bi-monthly check ups and some of these records have been discovered in the years since the war. The Japanese government provided the brothels with condoms and emphasized the importance of sanitary conditions, yet despite these efforts venereal diseases were common among brothel women. Diseased women were injected with the highly potent “Number 606” medication, and women with serious diseases were prohibited from returning to the brothels after their conditions were discovered, although where they were sent is another question.
Alcohol and violence were prohibited by brothel regulations, but these regulations were not strictly followed. There are many testimonies telling of cruelty or violence toward women perpetrated by soldiers or brothel managers.
6. The Army’s Post-war Treatment of Women and Women’s Lives Back Home
At the conclusion of the war, the Japanese Army did not repatriate the women it had mobilized for brothels in war areas. Both soldiers and victims testify that the Japanese Army forced women to commit suicide, killed them by putting them in caves or submarines and deserted them at the brothels. Many victims describe how one day, soldiers simply stopped coming. They then returned home with great difficulty by themselves, stayed at U.S. military camps or were repatriated with the help of the United States.
The Socio-historical Background of the Establishment of the Military Brothel and the Mobilization of Colonial Women
Prostitution, militarization, and the military are linked throughout the world; however, the Japanese Army’s systematic, well-planned and inhumane implementation of the military sex slavery policy brought the military exploitation of women to new levels. In this section, I will illuminate the socio-historical factors that enabled military sex slavery to take place.
After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Meiji government revitalized and strengthened the existing emperor system, by which the emperor had absolute power. Expanded public education indoctrinated the Japanese public with the ideology of national submission to the emperor, and the government’s policy of economic development employed this national ideological framework to impose economic and social strictures on the people. The Japanese emperor system can be characterized as a family-state system, in which the ordinary citizens were constitutionally incorporated into the state as a member of a family headed by the emperor. Discrimination against women and an imperialist colonial mentality were two products of this system. Based on earlier legal and social conception of the family – the ie of the Edo period, in which wives were legally the private property of their husbands and were allowed no action on their own – the Meiji civil code and the Meiji constitution defined wives as the legal property of their husbands and therefore limited their legal rights. The Meiji licensed prostitution system too borrowed heavily from its Tokugawa predecessor, which featured regulated public prostitution including heaviest recruitment from the lower classes, to maintain middle- and upper- class women’s desexualized roles under the ie system by providing an outlet for male sexual desire. Such class-based mobilization of women into licensed prostitution in protection of the family/state expanded with Japanese imperialism into its colonies, Including Korea and Taiwan.
AS Japan’s militaristic regime continued its imperial incursions into Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937, the Japanese government enforced a series of domestic policies including economic controls and labor and military mobilization to support national imperialist actions. By the end of the war, over seven million Japanese men had been mobilized as soldiers, and over thirteen million citizens were mobilized for labor. An et these numbers seemed never enough – thus, the perceived necessity to mobilize Koreans and Chinese. Women’s spirit, labor, and bodies were mobilized for the war effort. The government inspired all women to show their loyalty by bearing sons to dedicate to the Emperor. It also mobilized lower-class and colonized women to labor for the war machine in fields, factories and particularly in brothels.
When Japan opened to the West in 1854, the country was in the early stage of capitalism compared to Europe. Colonial exploitation was Japan’s major means of accumulating capital. Japan’s mercantilist colonial economic policies in Korea, which included imposing Japanese monetary standards on Korea and depriving Koreans of land, making Korean farmers produce only rice; requiring all industrial goods to be imported from Japan; and expropriating prime agricultural land for immigrant Japanese farmers; rapidly devastated the native Korean economy. Immigration policies favoring civilian colonization deprived Koreans of their land on a massive scale. The majority of Korean farmers were forced to migrate to Manchuria in an apparent effort to disperse the nation. As a result 48 percent of the rural populations suffered starvation and in the urban areas, 12.9 percent was living in abject poverty.
In addition, since Korea was recognized as the first stepping-stone in Japan’s advancement onto the Asian continent, Korea was treated from the beginning with a strong policy of cultural and political assimilation with Japan. The 1938 Japan-Korea One body Policy (naisen) suppressed Korean language and customs, tried to bring the ideology of the emperor system to Koreans and in 1939 required the Japanicization of all Korean surnames. The Japanese General Mobilization order of 1938 continued these assimilationist, imperialist policies, mobilizing Koreans for labor, military service and sexual services and the Korean League for Mobilization of National Power (hereafter Korean League) founded in1940, implemented mobilization policies. The Korean League consisted of governmental and civil organizations including schools. Since the primary unit of the Korean League was a ten-household group, the league controlled the entire Korean population. The league mobilized over 360,000 Koreans as soldiers, 240,000 as military personnel and 2,000,000 more as laborers. Many Koreans were sent to dangerous military areas even when Japanese defeat was predicted. They worked in hazardous conditions, and they were often made sterile as battlefield sex slaves. It appeared as if the Japanese military was driving Koreans to national extinction. Koreans lived under the surveillance of the military police and the coercion of the Korean League, for mobilization of manpower was all too prevalent. Economically disempowered, culturally oppressed and subject to intense regulation in daily life, it is not difficult to imagine that desperately poor women and families might easily be mobilized into prostitution by alluring dreams of employment.
Fifty Years of Silence
For nearly fifty years after the war ended, military sex slavery remained entirely outside public knowledge. The Japanese government planned and executed its policies of military sex slavery in secret and destroyed the vast majority of relevant documents after Japan’s defeat. Until recently, those documents the remained were inaccessible to the public.
The most fundamental factors of Japan’s avoidance of its war responsibilities should be examined in a broader historical perspective. In addition to Japan, we need to look at U.S. postwar policy toward Japan. The United States intended to use Japan as a bulwark against the spread of communism in Asia and thus helped with Japan’s recovery and capitalization after the war. The U.S. –led Allied countries were very generous toward Japan when punishing its war criminals and calling for an indemnity for its Asian victims. In return the United States acquired information that Japan had developed using live human experimentations at Army unit 731 in Manchuria and used the military sex slaves after the war in Okinawa.
Other Allied countries did not seriously concern themselves with Japanese war crimes against Asians either, unless they involved those countries’ own direct losses. Such a discriminatory attitude was also seen in the problem of the military sex slavery. There was not a single case of punishment of the mny people responsible for the military sex slavery of Asian women. However, thirteen Japanese soldiers were punished, of whom three were executed, in the Batavia Trial in 1948. They were charged with mobilizing Dutch women for sex slavery in Indonesia.
The Japanese perception of themselves as war victims is another factor hindering their admission of war responsibility. Most Japanese, from high echelon government officials to progressive intellectuals, recognize themselves not as offenders but as victims. The Japanese government and civil movement organizers have been concerned only with Japanese victims, not other Asians. For example, the Japanese government took only the Japanese from Sakhalin and left behind the Koreas who were forcibly transferred to work there before Japan’s defeat. The Japanese A-bomb victims’ organizations, which is considered to be the symbol of the antiwar movement, has demanded that the government admit war responsibility toward the Japanese victims without even considering the Korean victims who returned to Korea after the war. By 1990 the Japanese government had paid up to 30 trillion 90 million yen annually to Japanese war victims and is today spending 1.9 trillion yen annually on Japanese victims. In comparison, Japan has spent only 1 trillion yen on all the non-Japanese Asian victims.
Most Asian countries were former colonies and were disempowered and economically impoverished. This contributed to their failure in pursuing Japan’s war responsibility. China gave up the demand. Korea, the Philippines and Indonesia resolved the compensation issue by receiving a small amount of money combined with loans and technical training. In addition, the Asian governments suppressed the voices of their own people lest they disturb Japan and stop the flow of economic assistance from Japan.
Furthermore, patriarchy in these countries silenced both victims and the soldiers who used the military brothels. We have even seen how the Korean victims of forced labor were reluctant to identify themselves for fear that they would be linked to military sex slavery. Class often plays a role here. Since military sex slavery is considered a form of prostitution, albeit forced, women in the middle class and up do not want to become involved. In sum, the victims of military sex slavery have suffered not only national exploitation but also sexism and class discrimination. Thus was the problem of military sex slavery buried for so long.
The Emergence of Military Sex Slavery and the Ensuing Social Movement
1. Disclosure of the Problem and a Social Movement
Public disclosure of military sex slavery was not initiated by any government or historian. It was done through the encounter between one civilian, Yun Chong-ok, who did not forget her wartime experience of barely escaping mobilization in the Women’s Voluntary Corps and a Korean Church Women’s Federation group, which was protesting Japanese sex tours
To Korea in the 1980s. The linkage between sex slavery and sex tourism was further developed by the vibrant minjung movement that critically examined Korean history. Public disclosure was not an accident but was indebted to the development of a social movement in Korea.
The churchwomen came to realize that the sexual exploitation of Korean women by Japanese was not merely a contemporary problem but had a long history. In February 1988, the group visited the remains of several brothels; in April they held a symposium to report their findings. In May 1990, the Korean Church Women’s Federation in a coalition with other women’s organizations issued a statement demanding that South Korean President Roh Tae Woo raise the issue of military sex slavery during his state visit to Japan.
The issue began to receive public attention in Japan in 1990, when Motooka Shoji, a member of the Socialist Party and of the Upper house of the Diet, called upon the Japanese government to investigate military sex slavery during budget commission deliberations that June. At the time, the Japanese government denied any responsibility, thereby angering Korean women’s movements and giving them further impetus for activism. In July 1990, the Korean Research Group of Women Drafted for military sex slavery by Japan was formed and in November an umbrella group of Korean women’s organizations, the Korean Council for Women Drafted into military sex slavery by Japan was organized. Encouraged by the increasingly high profile of these groups, the first military sex slavery victims came forward in August and archival research turned up related documents in the United States and in Japan in November 1991 and January 1992. Women began calling the Korean Council’s Victim Hotline, which was set up in September 1991 and both victims and soldiers called the Japanese Hotline for Military Comfort Women which was created in January 1992. Related documents continue to be uncovered by historians and civil organizations and the Japanese government has published two reports – on 6 July 1992 and on 4 August 1993.
Since these first steps, the social movement in Korea has centered around the Korean Council, with additional action by the Korean Association of the Families of Pacific War Victims, an organization created in the early 1970s for the families of those killed in forced labor and the draft. Both organizations’ primary function is victim support: The Korean Council organizes financial support for victims, connects them with foreign organizations and provides counseling. The Buddhist Human Rights Association a member organization of the Korean /council, runs houses for victims and arranges some financial support. The Korean Council also holds demonstrations every Wednesday in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul to express its desire to bring Japanese war responsibility to light and to garner public support. The Wednesday Demonstration begun on 8 January 1992 and continues weekly.
In addition to support services, the movement’s more political activity is the investigation and uncovering of hither to concealed and distorted historical information on military sex slavery. In conjunction with the Korean Research Group, the Korean Council publishes victim testimonies including a collection of the testimonies of Korean victims living in China that was collected on a fact finding mission in 1993. The Korean Council calls for the Japanese government to reveal the contents of government documents and has held joint symposia with Japanese research groups. It also maintains its own research groups including a Committee for Research and Investigation and a Committee for Legal Problems, founded in 1994 by lawyers and scholars of international law. Documents and archival materials, including photographs and victims’ personal letters, will be kept in a memorial library, which is currently trying to raise funding for construction.
The Koreans and other victims desire is that, based on recently clarified information, the Japanese government will recognize its war crimes, apologize to its victims, provide compensation and punish those responsible military sex slavery. To accomplish this, Korean organizations are making international alliances with women’s and victims groups in other Asian countries and with women’s human rights organizations world wide. Along with its main office in Seoul, the Korean Council also has a branch office in Pusan and cooperative organizations of Korean Americans in New York, Minnesota, Washington D.C. and Canada.
2. Monetary Compensation for Victims and Seeking Justice
One of the ultimate goals of the military sex slavery movement as a whole is to make the Japanese government provide monetary compensation for victims and punish those responsible. For this to happen, the Japanese government must admit its war crimes, an act that will simultaneously validate the honor of the victims who were forced to keep silent for fifty years. The Korean Council has asked lawyers and scholars of international law to find legal grounds for compensation and to determine appropriate amounts but methods for getting the Japanese government to agree to its demands for compensation and punishment are as yet determined only through trial and error.
In December 1991, the Korean Association pf Families of the Pacific War Victims brought incidents of forced labor and the draft to the attention of the Tokyo District Court; it is currently expanding the number of victims included in that claim. One victim has sued the court in her own right. The Pusan branch of the Korean Council raised the same issue in Yamaguchi Prefecture at the Shimonoseki District Court on 25 December 1992. As not one suit brought to a Japanese court thus far has been successful the Korean Council has also brought the issue of military sex slavery to international forums for justice, beginning with the United Nations in 1992 and the Permanent Court of Arbitrations and the International Labor organization lalter on. Mixed results in the international arena, however, have made it clear to the Korean Council that international bodies cannot provide restitution. Only pressure on the Japanese government will achieve the resolution they seek.
The Korean council has focused its attention directly on the Japanese government. For example, it has demanded investigation and punishment of those responsible for the establishment of military sex slavery by submitting a bill of indictment to the Tokyo District Prosecutor’s Office in February 1994. This bill was denied without clear explanation. Rather than relying on existing Japanese law to compensate victims, the Korean Council has begun to call for the creation of a new law specifically for compensation to victims. Public opinion resulting from legal suits in Japan and internationally has provided the pressure to support such a change.
Positions 5:1 1997, Duke University
Comentary by Dr. Mori
The article continues to discuss the seeking of compensation for victims. The Japanese government has made some compensation but refuses to accept any responsibility for military sex slavery.
This raises two important questions regarding the relationship between government and the governed.
1. Does the government exist to take care of its citizens (people) or do people exist to carry out the policies of government?
2. Does the current government of Japan which has been created by the adoption of the current Constitution mean that it has no responsibility for actions taken by previous governments under the previous constitution?
1.The Japanese have a history of autocratic government by ruling groups that were representative only of the goals, policies and benefits to the ruling class. These groups were frequently less than 1-2% of the population but controlled all access to force and commandeered all wealth. The “common” people had little to almost no influence on the decisions made by local and national rulers and were forced to accept a hierarchical political system which excluded them from participation except to generate wealth. The notion that the government exist for the benefit of the people although part of Confucian ideas about government did not get great currency in Japan. Has Japan moved away from this idea in the present? This can certainly be debated.
2. The current government asserts that since it was not the government of Japan at the time this acts of forced mobilization for prostitution and labor were committed, it is not responsible for these acts and owes no one restitution. It also asserts that at the time these acts were committed they were lawful and so no obligation exists to atone for them. However, as an act of charity for those who were the victims, the current government had made some payments to the Korean government. The funds were most symbolic and little of the money reached the actual victims.
The current situation is still not settled. The victims through their various representative still seek apology and compensation from the Japanese government and punishment for those involved in military sex slavery and the government continues to insist that it has done all the is required.