Comfort Women: A Filipina's Story of Prostitution and Slavery Under the Japanese Military

This is a true story. There's some introductory material on comfort women and then some past history about Maria Henson who turned 14 in 1941. She was first raped by a Japanese soldier on March 31, 1942. She went to work for some Filipinio guerrilla fighter group and during a mission was caught by the Japanese.

She and her family had depended a lot on a rich guy to help provide them with money. Unfortunately, Maria had to have sex with the slime ball and this was before the Japanese soldiers got to her. She did end up getting married and had a great deal of trouble having sex because she kept having flashbacks of being raped by the Japanese soldiers. After the end of the war she had to work hard to put enough food on her table for her and her children and eventually reached a decision to go public with what happened to her as a comfort woman.

One thing that is quite interesting is that the Japanese soldiers who raped the very large number of comfort women in various places never were punished. No one knows just how many individual soldiers were rapists and how many of those ended up being killed in the fighting, but there were probably still a good number that never answered for their crimes.

I use the work multiple since it seems that comfort women would have to 'entertain' maybe ten to a dozen soldiers a day if not more than that. This scarred the women psychologically and sometimes even physically.

It's an interesting book though somewhat difficult to read the descriptions without getting really upset.

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