Japan's Comfort Women (13 page)

and the others were 18, 19 and 20. The proprietor told me to go into a certain room, but I refused. He dragged me by my hair to another room.

There I was tortured with electric shocks. He was very cruel. He pulled out the telephone cord and tied my wrists and ankles with it. Then, shouting “konoyaro!” [i.e. “You rascal”] he twirled the telephone receiver. Light flashed before my eyes, and my body shook all over. I couldn’t stand it and begged him to stop. I said I would do anything he asked. But he turned the receiver once more. I blacked out. When I came round my body was wet; I think that he had probably poured water on me.56

Comfort stations were allowed to be set up only at the premises designated by the military authorities – usually the regimental headquarters. Hotels, large restaurants, and large civilian houses were expropriated and used as military brothels. If such facilities were not available near the military camp, as in some regions, school buildings and temples were converted for such purposes. Usually comfort stations were set up a certain distance from the military compound.

However, in some cases, such as a remote front line of a battle zone, military tents or a part of the army barracks were used.

Interior facilities and decorations differed from station to station. Those in large cities were lavishly decorated, with
tatami
mats on the floor, a chest of drawers, colourful bedding and so on in each room. However, most of them only had basic facilities; each room had a bed or
futon
on a mat or wooden floor and a small dressing table. As the building housing a comfort station was usually divided into a number of small rooms by thin plywood walls, each room was quite small and could not accommodate large furniture anyway. At some stations there were no doors on the rooms and no walls between the rooms.

They used curtains to screen off the rooms. In bathrooms and toilets, disinfectant (potassium permanganate solution or cresol soap solution) was provided.

Comfort women were instructed to wash their private parts each time after sexual intercourse. At some stations, vaseline was also provided in each room.

Each comfort station was tightly controlled by the regional military headquarters, even if it was owned and run by a private proprietor. Strict regulations were set out regarding the rates, business hours, available time for each soldier, sanitary conditions, regular VD examinations, and so on. The details of the regulations differed slightly from region to region, but by and large they had a similar format. Different hours were allocated for the service of different ranks of soldiers. Rank-and-file soldiers were allowed to visit the station between 9:00 am (or 10:00 am) and late afternoon. Visiting time for non-commissioned officers was between 4:00 pm and 8:00 pm, and the time between 8:00 pm and midnight or early morning was exclusively for the officers. Officers could visit the station as often as they wished, but non-commissioned officers and enlisted men were usually allowed to visit the station only once weekly – on an off-duty day. Different days of each week were designated as off-duty days for different units of the force. Therefore, there was hardly a respite for comfort women. Most comfort stations were closed only one day a month, giving one break a month for comfort 52

Procurement of women and their lives
women. Comfort stations for the exclusive use of officer-class men were often established in large cities. Most of the comfort women in these stations were Japanese. It seems that these Japanese women experienced much better conditions than other Asian comfort women.57

Each comfort woman served several men – up to 10 – on a normal day, but the number would sharply increase shortly before and after each combat operation. On such days, each woman was forced to serve 30 or 40 men a day. The available time for each man was regulated to 30 minutes. However, in the busy periods each soldier was allowed only a few minutes. The following extract from the testimony of Nishihira Junichi vividly describes the dreadful conditions that comfort women faced on just such a day during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.

Nishihira was a 13-year-old boy, who was drafted as a factotum at one of the comfort stations on the main island of Okinawa.

Shouting “Come on, hurry up!” their eyes were bloodshot and their legs shook as they waited impatiently. Some even began to undo their belts and their bodies shook, even though there were many ahead of them in the queue.

Most soldiers finished within twenty or thirty seconds and came out one after another in an infatuated state which greatly contrasted their behaviour while waiting. Some, however, took five minutes or more, although if they took too long a veteran soldier who acted as a supervisor would grab the offending soldier by the scruff of the neck and drag him out of the room.58

In such circumstances, there was no time for comfort women to follow the regulation that they should “wash their private parts each time.” There is no doubt that such extreme sexual abuse caused considerable physical pain and health problems to many of the comfort women. One former comfort woman relates:

Having to serve so many men made my sexual organs swell up, and I had to go to see a doctor. When I went the first time, my stomach hurt to the extent that I thought it was going to burst.59

According to a testimony of another former comfort woman: Yet, even though I had no venereal disease, I had to have treatment, because I kept bleeding and couldn’t pass water. Perhaps it was a bladder infection. There were some women whose vaginas were so swollen and were bleeding so profusely that there was no space for a needle to be inserted inside.60

Managers of comfort stations were usually instructed to make sure that comfort women would not have intercourse during their menstrual periods. However, it seems that many women were forced to serve men during their periods. In her testimony, Kim Haksun describes how she managed to tackle this problem:
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When our menstruation was due we used cotton wool obtained from the surgeon. We had to serve soldiers during our periods. We tried to avoid them at this time, but they just forced their way in and there was nothing we could do to stop them. We had to make small cotton wool balls and insert them deep inside our wombs so that no blood leaked out. When we didn’t have enough cotton we had to cut cloth into small strips and roll this up to use instead.61

Soldiers were strictly instructed to use condoms provided by the supply department to each soldier through his unit or to the comfort station directly. The brand of condom supplied by the Japanese military was called “Assault No. 1.”

Despite the official regulation that anyone who refused to use condoms would be banned from associating with comfort women, many men forced comfort women to serve them without condoms. In some remote areas the supply of condoms was not sufficient. There the same condom would be used a number of times.

After each time, it would be washed and disinfected by a comfort woman.62

It is not surprising therefore that many women suffered from VD. Most comfort women received periodic VD check-ups conducted by a medical officer or a medic. These checks were made once a week or once every 10 days. Penicillin was not available in those days. The most common treatment for VD was an injection of salvarsan, or “No. 606” in Japanese medical corps’ terminology.

Salvarsan is an extremely strong substance and some former comfort women who received the injections testified that they suffered from various severe side-effects. If a woman was found to be pregnant, a medical officer carried out an abortion. One former Korean comfort woman, Huwang Kumju, testifies: The new girls were to serve the officers, as they were virgins. The officer didn’t use condoms, so quite a few of us became pregnant quite early on, but we were naive and weren’t aware of it. I was all right. But those who were injected with “No. 606” without knowing that they were pregnant, they began to feel chilly, their bodies swelled, and they started to discharge blood. Then they were taken to the hospital to undergo curettage. After curettage was operated three or four times, they became barren.63

A Korean woman, So Shindo, who spent seven years in various places in China, became pregnant several times. The first time, after a seven-month pregnancy, she had a stillbirth in her own room at the comfort station. She had been forced to serve men while pregnant. Later she gave birth to two babies – a few years apart. Both times she was forced to give the baby away, as comfort women were not allowed to keep children at the station. On other occasions she performed abortions on herself by using combined methods of fasting and drinking a herbal extract.64 It is not clear from her testimony why the medical officer did not perform an abortion.

Although the fee charged for service at comfort stations varied according to regulations set by each military headquarters, prices generally differed little between the establishments. Charges were set according to the rank of the military 54

Procurement of women and their lives
Table 2.1
Established rates of South Sector Billet Brothel [Manila, c. 1943 or 1944]

Classification

Summary

Time

Rate ( yen)

Japanese

Korean

Chinese

Officers and warrant

1. Overnight stay will

1 hour

3.00

3.00

2.50

officers

be from 2200 until

Overnight

0600 the following

stays:

morning.

from 2400

10.00

10.00

7.00

from 2200

15.00

15.00

10.00

Non-commissioned

2. Persons staying

1 hour

2.50

2.50

2.00

officers

longer than one hour

30 minutes

1.50

1.50

1.00

will pay double for

each hour.

Privates

1 hour

2.00

2.00

1.50

30 minutes

1.50

1.50

1.00

“clients.” Table 2.1, which was included in Japanese documents captured by the Allied forces during the war, is one example.65 It is the chart of rates (probably in 1943 or 1944) at the comfort station set up within the South Sector Billet in Manila, the Philippines.

During the Pacific War, the monthly salary of an enlisted man was between 6

and 10 yen, depending on the rank. Therefore, 1.50 or 2 yen was a considerable amount of money for rank-and-file soldiers. Yet, it was almost certain that for these soldiers, seeking a temporary escape in sex from the horrors and threat of death they encountered daily, the high price weighed little on their minds. The fact that the system was similar to that of private brothels (where a client paid a prostitute for the service provided) also contributed to the soldiers’ attitude that their deeds were legitimate; that they were indeed entitled to be served by a comfort woman in return for payment.

The managers of comfort stations were instructed by the military authorities about the “salary” arrangements for their “employees.” For example, according to the regulations set out by the Army Headquarters of the Manila District in February 1943, half of the fee had to be paid to the comfort woman and the other half to the manager. Expenses for meals and bedding for the comfort women were supposed to be the manager’s responsibility, while those for clothing, hairdressing and cosmetics had to be met by each comfort woman. In case of illness, it was stipulated that 70 percent of medical expenses be paid by the manager.66 According to similar regulations set out in 1943 by the Japanese military government in Malaysia, the comfort woman was entitled to receive a set percentage of the fee. In the case of a woman for whom more than 1,500 yen had been paid in advance at the time of her recruitment, she would receive at least 40 percent of her takings. In the case of those who had received less than 1,500 yen in advance, the rate was at least 50 percent to her. If no advance payment had been made, the woman was entitled to at least 60 percent.67

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A soldier who paid the fee at the front desk received a ticket in return. He would hand it to the comfort woman when entering her room. In some military districts, tickets were distributed to each unit and sold to the soldiers and officers who wanted to use the brothels. Every morning or evening, each comfort woman would give all the collected tickets to the manager. This method supposedly allowed the recording of the respective earnings of the comfort women. In reality, however, comfort women received hardly any payment. Managers did not give the women the details of their accounts. If they queried the matter, they were simply told that they still owed money to the manager. Most comfort women probably did not know that their managers had been instructed by the military authorities about the required sharing of the earnings. Obviously the managers took advantage of the lack of education and the naivety of their “employees,” and gave them as little information as possible regarding their due payments and the expenses that the managers were expected to meet.

Available testimonies from Korean comfort women verify this point. For example, in her testimony, Yi Tungnam, a former comfort woman from Korea, described the “financial arrangement” she had with her manager, Kaneyama, whose real Korean name was Kim, while working at a comfort station in Hankou: Kaneyama said that he would keep 70 percent of our income and we would get 30 percent. He claimed to be keeping a record so that he could give us our money in one lump sum when we left the station. Sometimes, if we asked for money to buy clothes that we needed, he would give us about 20

yen each and say he had deducted it from our respective record. However, he barely gave enough money for new clothes, offering us a little perhaps once every few months. The money I had was given to me by soldiers once in a while. And even if I wanted to buy something, it was never easy to go out. Kaneyama disapproved of us leaving the station to buy anything from the merchants up the road. He argued that we might miss customers.68