The Horrific Story of the Comfort Women Abused by Japanese Soldiers

Heroes come in many forms; some would never recognise themselves as one. Those that survive horrific incidents are heroes but would never categorise themselves as one. This group of women are in that category.

They were known as comfort women, a ludicrous term. During World War II, they worked for the Japanese, providing soldiers with 'comfort.' The Japanese would like you to believe that they were prostitutes. The truth is that they were sex slaves, stolen from their homes and families.

Lee Ok-Seon

When it happened, Lee was running an errand for her parents in Busan, a town in South Korea. A group of uniformed men jumped from a car, attacked her and dragged her into the vehicle.

She was taken to what was known as a comfort station; in reality, it was a brothel that serviced Japanese soldiers in China.

She was fourteen.

Narcisa Claveria

Narcisa was home in Abra, in northwest Luzon, in 1943 when Japanese men arrived on her doorstep. The troops stated they were conducting a house-to-house search for Philippine guerrillas.

It wasn't long until they accused her father, the village leader, of working with them. They tied him to a pillar of the house even though he denied involvement and begged for mercy. The soldier's response was to take his bayonet and attack her father.

That was when Narcisa heard her mother screaming from upstairs; entering the room, she saw another soldier raping her. Her younger siblings tried to hit the soldiers with sticks; they were both killed.

Narcisa and her two older sisters were dragged off to the garrison. She never saw her eldest sister again. She was twelve years old and a comfort woman.

Comfort Women

These are two stories among thousands. Hundreds of thousands of women were subjected to this abuse. It is estimated that of this vast number, 90% did not survive the war to tell their story.

It is the largest case of government-sponsored human trafficking and sex slavery in modern history. The majority of the women who were forced into slavery came from Korea and China.

Although, the Japanese did take women from Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Việt Nam, Thailand, East Timor, and the Dutch East Indies, as well as European women in Japanese-occupied territories.

The name comfort women hide the untold abuse of thousands of women at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army. The system was established after the massacre at Nanking. Emperor Hirohito thought this would discourage his soldiers from other mass rapes.

Comfort stations, as they were called, were established in Shanghai in 1932. From here, they were established in every Japanese-occupied country.

Many of the soldiers refused to use condoms, and there was no medical staff available. Many infected with sexually transmitted diseases were forced to continue working.

To combat this, they were injected with Salvarsan or Arsphenamine to prevent syphilis. Both are highly toxic and cause infertility. If a woman refused, she was beaten and tortured.

When the war ended, the women who survived were left with physical and psychological scars. Many had post-traumatic stress disorder, sexually transmitted diseases and damage to their reproduction system.

Japanese Excuses

Justice for these women has been hard fought; many are still trying to get acknowledgement of what they went through. Many have died without ever getting that justice.

The Japanese have tried to rationalise the rape of these women by stating it curbed the rape of those in the villages. They seem to forget how many children were abducted from just those villages.

However, official military records and personal memoirs show that the Japanese military set up and controlled the comfort houses.

They used a mixture of deceit, false promises, and kidnap to staff these houses. Towards the war's end, the military used the police force to procure women and children for them.

Carol Gluck, a history professor at Columbia University focusing on modern-day Japan, says, "Without the testimonies of the comfort women, we would not know what happened."

This horrific history would have been hidden from the world without these heroes. Some have hidden their experiences, reluctant to talk and relive the trauma in old age, but enough have spoken up for the world to listen.

Justice

After much legal wrangling, including Japan claiming they would not recognise Korea's jurisdiction and compensate these women, in 2015, a small amount of justice was served.

With the encouragement of the Obama Administration, Prime Minister Abe expressed "his most sincere apologies and remorse" Japan then contributed $8.3 million to a Korean fund to compensate the women

Due to the destruction of many records by Japanese officials after the war, the exact number of comfort women can not be recorded. The estimation is between 20,000 and 410,000 enslaved in 125 comfort stations.

I try to avoid reporting such savage cases, but these women deserve their stories to be told. Researching this article was one of the worse I have studied, but there was light. When asked, Narcisa attributes her survival to her husband, Anaceto Claveria.

"I was so scared of men," Narcisa says; she then explains that her husband's kindness and patience helped her overcome the terror. He helped her mentally heal and persuaded her to tell her story.

After enduring such torture at the beginning of her life, she found love, and this love healed her.