Chinese Comfort Women (13 page)

Figure 5
The buildings of Dayi Saloon on Dong-Baoxing Road in Shanghai today.

The fourth type of comfort station, also found mostly in cities and towns, was set up by local Chinese administrations or collaborators following orders issued by the Japanese military. As shown previously, after the outbreak of full-scale warfare the Japanese military forces increasingly relied on local Chinese collaborators to set up comfort stations. In Anhui Province, for example, the Japanese army commanded the Association for Maintaining
Order to set up comfort stations as soon as the troops occupied Bangbu in February 1938; 120 local women were abducted and taken to the facilities, which were set up in buildings that had previously been hotels and restaurants.
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During the same year the occupation army in Fengyang County also charged the local Association for Maintaining Order to set up comfort stations. The Japanese soldiers, assisted by their collaborators, abducted thirty local women to serve as comfort women; even a nun from the local monastery was forcibly taken to the comfort station. Three women committed suicide in their attempt to resist the violence.
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Some local Chinese collaborators apparently voluntarily helped the Japanese army set up comfort stations, but in many cases their collaboration was actually a result of coercion as the Japanese military threatened to, and often did, kill any local people who refused to provide them with women to be used as sex slaves.

Often, especially in big cities where regimental headquarters were located, comfort stations were divided according to the military rank of the users. The interior facilities and nationalities of comfort women used in stations for officers were quite different from those used for soldiers. The former were often well-furnished and were usually staffed with specially selected Japanese and Korean women. Some comfort stations for the exclusive use of commissioned officers were lavishly decorated,
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those for soldiers were typically very basic, usually a bed and a table in a small room.

Japanese military forces maintained tight control of each comfort station, whether it was directly run by them or operated by a private proprietor. In different locations comfort stations were supervised and managed by different military officers or sections, but usually they were the responsibility of the rear service staff, management sections of the armies’ headquarters in the fields, commissariat officers, the paymaster or adjutants of each regiment or division, or the military police.
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The 13th Independent Infantry Brigade Chūzan Garrison stationed in Zhongshan, Guangdong Province, for example, established the regulations for the use of comfort stations called “The Soldiers’ Clubs.” Assignments were delegated as follows:

Clause 3. The unit’s adjutant is in charge of supervising, controlling, and advising the management of the soldiers’ clubs to ensure their smooth and proper operation.

Clause 4. The medical officer affiliated with the unit is responsible for hygiene facilities in the soldiers’ clubs and the implementation of hygiene services. In addition, he is in charge of all hygiene-related matters, including healthcare, food preparation, and schedules of the families, working women, and users of the soldiers’ clubs.

Clause 5. The unit’s paymaster is responsible for all matters relating to accounting for the soldiers’ clubs.
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Clearly, besides arranging building facilities and rounding up comfort women, military personnel were also directly involved in comfort station management, overseeing security, regulation, and hygiene. One of the security measures taken by military authorities was the registration of comfort women. According to Yamada Seikichi, the department head of the China Detachment Army Comfort Facilities, when each Japanese comfort woman arrived in Hankou, one of the military officers examined her photograph, a copy of her family registry, her written pledge, her parental consent form, her permit from the police, her identification papers provided by local officials in her home town, and so on. He then filled out a personal examination form describing her personal history and family information and sent a copy of it to the military police.
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This kind of registration procedure seems to have been conducted for women transported to China from Japan and its colonies but not for Chinese women drafted from occupied areas. As indicated by the accounts of the twelve survivors presented in this book, most Chinese comfort women were deprived of their identity when sent to comfort stations. They were called by a number, an assigned name, or by nothing at all, and they were kept under strict military surveillance – like prisoners. Sentries were stationed at all comfort stations, but Chinese comfort women were under particularly strict guard because they were regarded as enemies of Japan and because their connections with local people increased the possibility of their escape. The Shilu Comfort Station in Hainan, for example, had Japanese soldiers on watch twenty-four hours a day, and comfort women who attempted to escape were either shot to death or severely beaten when captured.
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According to the eyewitness account of Song Fuhai, who worked as a janitor at the comfort station in the Town of Xinying, Hainan Island, in 1940, a platoon chief named Kawaoka established the following rules for the Chinese comfort women:

• Comfort women are forbidden to go out or escape; any violator and all her family members will be decapitated.

• Comfort women must unconditionally respect and obey the Japanese military personnel.

• Comfort women are under the absolute control of the two supervisors. Those who disobey will be severely punished.

• Comfort women must unconditionally satisfy the needs of the military men of the detachment at any time.
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Under such strict control, escape was very difficult if not impossible.

Military authorities provided detailed regulations for the use and operation of comfort stations. Huayue-lou Comfort Station, a three-story wooden building located at 13 Hui’an-xiang, Shangfu Street, Nanjing, was one of the military comfort stations established during the Japanese occupation. According to the recollections of local residents, the station always held about twenty-five comfort women, most of whom were from Yangzhou. These comfort women were assigned numbers and their pictures were hung on the walls in the entrance hall so that the soldiers could indicate their choice.
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Gu Xiang, who lived at 14 Hui’an-xiang, Shangfu Street, kept a photograph of the comfort station regulations, which were carved on a piece of wood taken from the former comfort station site. The regulations were dated 6 March 1939 and contained the following twelve clauses:

1 The special women in the commissariat comfort station must receive a medical examination conducted by the medical officer from the Military Police Division Commissariat every five days.

2 Those women who are unable to pass the medical examination must receive special medical treatment and are not allowed to resume service without permission.

3 The result of the medical examination of each comfort woman must be recorded and the results must be filed and made available for inspection.

4 The comfort station’s schedule is the following:
Soldiers: 10:00
AM
to 6:00
PM
Officers: 10:00
AM
to 9:00
PM

5 The fees for use of the comfort station are the following:
Soldiers: 1 yen per 30 minutes (50 sen for an additional 30 minutes)
Commissioned Officers: 3 yen per hour (2 yen for an additional hour)
High-ranking Officials: 3 yen per hour
Clerical staff officials: 1.5 yen per 30 minutes (additional charge for an additional 30 minutes)

6 Each client of this designated military comfort station is required to pay the fees, and obtain and use a condom before service, and clean his body in the washroom afterwards.

7 Entry to this designated military comfort station is restricted to the military personnel and the supporting staff of the army. Entry of other people is forbidden.

8 Alcoholic substances may not be brought into this designated military comfort station.

9 Drunken people are not allowed to enter this designated military comfort station.

10 Clients are not allowed to enter any room other than the room that is assigned at the purchase of the ticket.

11 Clients are not allowed to use the comfort woman without using a condom.

12 Those who do not comply with the regulations and those who violate the regulations of the army will be ordered to leave.
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The contents of this document are very similar to the “Yangjiazhai Military Comfort Station Regulations” (1938) recorded by Asō Tatsuo,
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as they are to the “Regulations for the Use of the Soldiers’ Clubs” for the 13th Independent Infantry Brigade Chūzan Garrison (1944).
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Both also prescribed rules regarding hygienic precautions, the schedules and fees for using the comfort station, and the exclusive military use of the facility.

Although comfort station regulations specified the use of condoms,
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in most cases these regulations were not enforced, particularly at the temporary comfort stations on the frontline, where there was no strict supervision and an insufficient supply of condoms. In some cases, when there were not enough condoms, comfort women and local Chinese labourers were assigned the job of washing and recycling used ones. Some units in the field rebelled against using condoms because they said it was uncomfortable.
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Even in the best-case scenario, in which servicemen had and used condoms, the rough devices added to the comfort women’s pain and caused permanent injury. As a result, venereal disease was widespread among the troops and among comfort women, and pregnancy was common. A child born to a Japanese comfort woman could be taken back to Japan. At the Yangjiazhai comfort station, for example, a Japanese comfort woman reportedly gave birth to a boy; she hired a local village woman to nurse the baby and later sent him to Japan.
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For a Chinese comfort woman, pregnancy often led to death. Lin Pagong, who, in 1944, worked as a cleaner at a military comfort station called “Happy House” (Kuaile-fang) on Hainan Island, reported that Li Yaqian, a Li ethnic woman of Baoting County, was captured by Japanese soldiers of the Nanlin stronghold. Young and attractive, Li Yaqian was raped by many soldiers each day and soon became pregnant. When the soldiers found that she was pregnant, they dragged her to a hill near Qingxun Village and cut open her abdomen, killing her along with her unborn foetus.
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While comfort station regulations called for medical examinations for comfort women and prohibited women with venereal disease from working, medical staff was not always available at frontline comfort stations, and many women were forced to keep working after they had been infected with sexually transmitted diseases as, otherwise, there would not have been enough women to meet the soldiers’ demands. In some comfort stations, such as the one in Zhaojiayuan, Hainan Island, comfort women who were too sick to work were killed rather than given medical treatment.
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Comfort stations located in big cities usually had a washroom or washing area where disinfectant such as a potassium permanganate solution was provided for washing after intercourse, but the hygienic conditions of the stations in small towns and villages were appalling. Those comfort stations often had neither running water nor a sewage system. Since the women were not allowed to go out, they could only wash themselves with water in a small bowl and were forced to use a little container kept in each room when voiding their bowels. The rooms in those comfort stations smelled like a sewer. Even in mid-sized cities like Wuhu, sanitary conditions in the stations were unhealthy. The Fengyi-lou Comfort Station, which opened in January 1938, for example, only allowed the women to bathe three times each month, and each time the comfort women were sent to a public bathhouse they were guarded by armed Japanese soldiers.
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Under these conditions many healthy women contracted sexually transmitted diseases. In many cities, including Shanghai, the Japanese military forced comfort women to receive an injection of Salvarsan, also known as 606, or Arsphenamine, in the hope of preventing syphilis. Salvarsan is an extremely toxic arsenic-containing substance that is very painful when injected and that often produces serious and sometimes deadly side effects. Many women who received it testified that they suffered from serious side effects, including infertility.
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Similarly, while the regulations forbade the drinking of alcohol, drunken violence was frequent in comfort stations. At Huayue-lou Comfort Station, whose regulations are cited above, drunken soldiers often forced their way into the building. Fan Guiying, a local resident who had worked as a tailor for the comfort women at Huayue-lou, recalled how a drunken soldier attempted to get into a room on the second floor. The frightened woman shut the doors to keep him out, but during the struggle the soldier plunged his sword between the doors and cut her arm.
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Drunken incidents of violence were also recorded in the documents prepared by the headquarters of the military police stationed in central China. For instance, in November 1941 a sergeant went into a military comfort station without buying a ticket and beat
a woman who refused to service him. Another recorded incident occurred in February 1942, when a corporal entered a station staffed by Chinese comfort women and went on a rampage with his sword.
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These incidents came to light because they were flagrant violations of the regulations; however, the violence that occurred on a daily basis behind the doors of comfort stations was never reported. And even in the former cases, punishment was mild; the perpetrators were subject only to strong admonitions or, at most, short detentions.
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