Japan's Comfort Women (11 page)

Procurement of women and their lives
41

Korean women for military comfort stations became difficult. As a result, it seems that the power of the police force was abused by the military authorities for the purpose of securing comfort women. According to testimonies of former comfort women, it appears that some representatives of the local Neighbour-hood Association, an organization that the Government-General required local civilians to establish, were also forced to act on behalf of owners/managers of comfort stations or their sub-contractors.

Some girls accepted offers of “employment” by labor brokers, or through the mediation of leaders of the local Neighborhood Association, in order to avoid being drafted into the Women’s Voluntary Labor Service Corps. Ch’oe Myong-sun was one of them. In January 1945, when she was 19 years old, she accepted an introduction by a representative of the Neighborhood Association to a “good job” in Japan. She was sent to Hiroshima to become a mistress of a Japanese military officer for a couple of months. Then she was taken into a comfort station in Osaka, where she was forced to serve the Japanese soldiers until shortly before the end of the war.29

It was shortly after August 1944, when the Women’s Voluntary Labor Service Law was enacted, that a rumor spread in Korea that all unmarried girls over
Plate 2.2
A group of Korean comfort women captured in Burma, who were interrogated by some bilingual Japanese-American soldiers in August 1944.

Source
: US National Archives 42

Procurement of women and their lives
14 years old would be forced to become comfort women. Many middle-and upper-class Korean families withdrew their daughters from women’s colleges and hurriedly arranged marriages for them to avoid their being drafted.30 However, some families in lower social strata felt trapped. For example, in September 1944, a girl called Kim T’aeson, who was then 19 years old and living with her uncle, was hiding in an attic of his house. One day when she came out of the attic and was having a meal downstairs, a Japanese man with a Korean partner visited the house, and offered her a “job” in Japan. Thinking that work in Japan would be a far better option than becoming a comfort woman, she accepted their offer. She ended up in a comfort station in Burma.31 In this way, in the late stage of war, the method of deceit was closely intertwined with the political coercion imposed upon the colonial subjects.

It seems that in some cases an advance payment was made to a girl’s family in a similar manner in which women had been sold to civilian brothels in the 1920s and early 1930s. Yet in these cases, too, labor brokers rarely told the girls and their parents the truth. They would give a false impression that the girls would be working as nurses, housemaids or factory workers. A survey of 20 Korean women captured in Burma, conducted by the Psychological Warfare Team attached to the US Army forces in the India-Burma theater, reveals that they were deceived and made to believe that their service would pay off family debts.

The following is an extract from this official US survey: RECRUITING

Early in May of 1942 Japanese agents arrived in Korea for the purpose of enlisting Korean girls for “comfort service” in newly conquered Japanese territories in Southeast Asia. The nature of this “service” was not specified but it was assumed to be work connected with visiting the wounded in hospitals, rolling bandages, and generally making the soldiers happy. The induce-ment used by these agents was plenty of money, an opportunity to pay off the family debts, easy work, and the prospect of a new life in a new land – Singapore. On the basis of these false representations many girls enlisted for overseas duty and were rewarded with an advance of a few hundred yen.

. . . The contract they signed bound them to Army regulations and to work for the “house master” for a period of from six months to a year depending on the family debts for which they were advanced.

Approximately 800 of these girls were recruited in this manner and they landed with their Japanese “house master” at Rangoon around August 20th, 1942.32

The “house master,”
i.e.
the manager of this comfort station, was a Japanese man called Kitamura Eibun. Kitamura, his wife and sister-in-law had been running a “restaurant” in Kyonsong (now Seoul) before obtaining a commission to run a comfort station in Burma. Kitamura purchased 22 Korean women, who were aged 19 to 31, paying each family from 300 to 1,000 yen. In July 1942, Kitamura and his wife took these 22 women to Burma on a passenger ship which had more than 700 Korean women on board. The total amount of money

Procurement of women and their lives
43

Kitamura used for advance payments must have been more than 10,000 yen, a large sum of money – surely beyond the means of a small “restaurant” owner at that time.33 It is therefore speculated that the money may have been made available by the Japanese military authorities.

It seems also that in Taiwan (another colony of Japan) the most common tactic used for the recruitment of young Taiwanese women was false promises of employment in Japan or other Japanese occupied territories. Unfortunately, detailed information regarding the experiences of Taiwanese comfort women is not available. So far 50 former comfort women have been identified, of whom 30

are still alive. However we do know that, according to a report in June 1993

prepared by an organization called the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation, 18

of the women had been working as either waitresses at restaurants or cafes, as bar hostesses or as maids at inns. It seems that most of these women had been sold to these places due to their families’ desperate financial straits. About half of these women had been, in reality, working as prostitutes. They were approached by a labor broker and offered a job as a kitchen helper or a waitress at a military canteen, or a hostess at an officers’ club. Another group of 12 women had been working as laundry workers, cleaning ladies, factory workers and the like. These 12,
Plate 2.3
A group of Taiwanese nurses leaving Taipei for Southeast Asia. Some of them were exploited as comfort women. Date unknown.

Source
:
i
tsuki Shoten 44

Procurement of women and their lives
also approached by a labor broker, had been promised jobs as a nurse helper, kitchen helper, or laundry worker for the Japanese troops. The “high salary”

promised by the labor broker was also an attraction for these poorly paid women.

Labor brokers came from both Japan and Taiwan, and, as was the case in Korea, it was common for a Japanese and a local to work as a pair.34

Unlike in Korea, there are cases of fully qualified nurses being recruited under the false pretence that they would be sent overseas as military nurses. Among the 50 identified Taiwanese comfort women, three were former nurses. One was ordered to go overseas by a matron of the hospital at which she was working and ended up in a comfort station. Another 17-year-old nurse was sent to Timor, together with more than 10 other nurses, believing that she would be working as a nurse. Yet as soon as she arrived, a VD check was conducted, she was raped by an officer and sent to a comfort station.35

Only three of the former Taiwanese comfort women so far identified genu-inely volunteered to be comfort women, clearly knowing the real nature of the work. In fact, 31 claimed that they had been deceived and eventually forced to become comfort women, and seven testified that they were simply forced to serve as comfort women. Nine received an advanced payment, and it is believed that in most cases the payment was made to the girls’ parents.36

The 1993 report compiled by Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation does not cover the cases of 14 Taiwanese aboriginal women who came forward between January and September 1996. (Two of the latter withdrew their cases due to fear that their own families would oppose the revelation of their past as comfort women.) All these women belong to three of 10 Taiwanese aboriginal tribes – the Tarokos, the Taiyas, and the Bunus. Most Korean and Taiwanese comfort women were sent overseas, but in these aboriginal women’s cases, all (except one, who was sent to Hong Kong) were forced to serve Japanese troops stationed in their own home regions in Taiwan. Most were initially asked to work at a Japanese Army camp nearby to do domestic jobs, such as cleaning, sewing and cooking, where they were properly paid. However, after a few months they were gang-raped by soldiers and then forced to serve as comfort women in the evening, while continuing to do their domestic work during the day. In many of the cases this happened in 1944, a year before the war ended.37

It is believed that, towards the end of the war, small army units stationed deep in the mountains in Taiwan could no longer reach the service of comfort women, and thus used force to secure local young women as comfort women. Such actions by Japanese troops in remote Taiwan regions reflect the collapse of military morale due to their isolation in a prolonged war. According to the testimonies of some of these aboriginal women, local Japanese police also took part in the procurement of the women.38

Procurement of women in China and the Philippines
From the available testimonies of former comfort women, it is strongly believed that kidnapping and abduction were not widely used methods of procurement of
Procurement of women and their lives
45

comfort women in Korea and Taiwan.39 In Japan’s colonial territories, it was rare that military personnel were directly involved in actually “recruiting” women.

As we have already examined, it was usually carried out by Japanese or local labor brokers. In the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), where the local population generally welcomed the entrance of the Japanese Imperial forces into the territories as “liberators” from Dutch colonialism, deceit was also a common tactic employed by the Japanese to procure local women. Forcible recruitment by intimidation or violence, such as the case of Dutch women and girls who were forcibly taken out of the detention camps in Java and pressed into comfort stations, was not a common method in this region, as we will see in more detail in the following chapter.

It is clear from the available evidence that Japanese troops used different methods in China and the Philippines.

As we have seen in the previous chapter, shortly after the Nanjing Massacre, Japanese army units set up their own comfort stations in areas in which they were stationed, like Nanjing and its nearby towns of Huzhou, Yangzhou, Changzhou, Chuxian and Bengbu. These comfort stations used Chinese comfort women, who it is strongly believed were local residents, not prostitutes. For example, in Nanjing, according to research conducted by Professor Su Zhiliang of Shanghai Normal University, the Japanese military authorities organized a group of Chinese collaborators who were ordered to “recruit” Chinese women.

In one case, one of these collaborators visited the Nanjing University at the order of a senior Japanese officer. About 12,000 women had taken shelter at the university to escape Japanese atrocities. The collaborator tried to persuade the women to become comfort women, claiming that their safety would be guaran-teed and that they would be rewarded for their service. This attempt failed.

Then the Japanese troops and their collaborators raided civilian homes and abducted about 300 women, of whom about 100 were selected to work as comfort women.40

It was not long before comfort stations in China were staffed with Koreans rather than local Chinese women. This shift in the army’s policy was probably made for three main reasons. Firstly, it seems that pressing local civilians into military prostitution was seen by the military authorities as an unwise strategy, as it would further arouse anti-Japanese sentiment among the local Chinese civilians. Secondly, Koreans were regarded by the Japanese as the people who were culturally and ideologically much closer to the Japanese than the Chinese were.

The fact that many Koreans could understand the Japanese language – a result of Japan’s colonization – was seen as another advantage of using Korean girls. It also seems that the Japanese were very concerned about the danger of local Chinese women, who they feared could be used as spies by the Chinese forces.

Thus, at almost all of the officially approved comfort stations established in China from Manchuria in the north to Guangzhou in the south, Koreans were the most commonly exploited comfort women.41

This change of policy did not mean that Chinese women and girls escaped sexual violence committed by the Japanese soldiers. On the contrary, even after 46

Procurement of women and their lives
the full-scale mobilization of Korean women as comfort women, numerous sexual crimes were committed by Japanese men throughout the occupied territories in China. In particular, in the so-called “liberated districts” (or “hostile districts” in the Japanese military terminology,
i.e.
places where the Chinese Liberation Army’s activities were strong) the treatment of local civilians by the Japanese was vicious and brutal, and many young girls and women were victimized. Many of these “hostile districts” were located in Shanxi and Hebei Provinces, where the Japanese Army adopted the tactics called “Sh
d
do Sakusen” – “scorched-earth strategy.” This meant that, if a particular Chinese village or town community was identified as “hostile,” Japanese troops had license to destroy the entire community, including the inhabitants. The Chinese called this atrocious practice “Sanguang zuozhan,” which literally means “three lightening strategy,” because the Japanese robbed the community of its possessions, killed all the inhabitants, and burnt down all the buildings. During such operations it was quite common for the Japanese men to take the attitude that they could do anything to the local civilians, including rape, because they were going to eliminate them all in the end, anyway.42