The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced prostitution in the Second World War

The book is written in a style where information is presented in a chapter, and that is added to by material on specific women who were used as comfort women. The book covers were the women were obtained, how they were obtained, and how they were treated. The first woman recalls beatings she received; the second how she was brought from Korea to become a comfort woman.

There were general health measures followed, including inspections for desire, requirement of the use of a condom (which was not always followed), and temporary isolation of sick women. The exact number of comfort women is unknown; the author estimates there were some 139,000 at most.

The three main methods for getting the women was by trickery, by kidnapping them, or in some other means coercing them to become comfort women. Some died during the war; some returned to their homes after the war, and some ended up being used in comfort stations in Japan for the use of the occupation troops.

Prostitution was legal before the war, although prostitutes had to be licensed and subject to medical inspection. The author notes that the Roman army had a comfort women system, and names a particular Spanish army that also used them. in 1598. The British has a military prostitution system in India, so none of this type of thing was exactly new.

There was also some superstition involved in the Japanese use of comfort women. For a man to have sex with a woman just before going into battle was good luck. Any guy who was a virgin should have sex at least once before going into battle.

The first comfort station under direct Japanese military control was in Shanghai in 1932. This was set up to reduce the number of rapes that the Japanese soldiers were carrying out. The women in the station were Koreans. 'The number and sizes of comfort stations were linked to the strength of Japanese units in the area.'

Women who were not generally subject to use as comfort women were those who were daughters of the landlord class and local officials, this being used to help placate local populations.

Despite all the stations, the number of women used and what they went through, 'The only cases of forcible seizure for rape and prostitution which led to war crime trials involved Dutch women internees in central Java, in Indonesia.'

Japanese professional prostitutes that worked as comfort women were kept in more secure base areas and made available to the higher ranking soldiers. Koreans and others were sent to the front lines.

Some Chinese women became comfort women because they were destitute and had no other means to survive, and some did in order to spy for the Chinese.

Sometimes comfort women were sent out with a small group of troops that had a special mission, like getting supplies.

The kempeitai, or Japanese secret police, kept records of comfort women in Manchuria and China.

The book has a whole chapter on different regulations that had to be followed in different areas in the use of comfort women. He also has some interesting information on how Okinawa, although technically a part of Japan, had its own distinct way of doing things, including finding ways to avoid the draft and the professional prostitutes refusing to become comfort women. Comfort women use in various areas of the empire are covered.

The relationship of kamikaze to comfort women is covered, along with what happened to the comfort women when the war ended. A good part of the book is taken up with an examination of how people gradually became aware some time after the war of the use of the comfort women, and the drive for greater historical awareness of their use, and the drive official Japanese acknowledgment of their use, apology for their use, and some form of compensation. None of this is really settled even yet.

A good, although depressing, book.

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