Japan's Comfort Women (8 page)

Indeed, the Ministry of War’s plan to set up comfort stations in future war zones was already under way several months before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

For example in mid-1941, a Medical Officer, Major Fukada Masuo, was assigned to secretly conduct a field study in the Dutch East Indies (i.e. Indonesia).

The origins of the comfort women system
27

After returning to Japan, he submitted his report to the Ministry of War on July 26, 1941, recommending the establishment of comfort stations in Indonesia immediately after the Japanese occupation commenced. He also recommended a “request” be sent to each village chief in occupied territory to provide local women to work at these stations. There is little doubt that “request” in this case meant “order.” Major Fukada believed such arrangements would be necessary in order to avoid rape of local civilians by Japanese troops, as well as to prevent the spread of VD among the forces.46

In January 1942, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, T
d
g
d
Shigenori, instructed his staff that comfort women should be issued with military travel documents and that they would no longer require a passport for overseas travel.47 In other words, the movement of comfort women was now controlled by the Ministry of War, and thus the Ministry of Foreign Affairs lost its administrative power as far as controlling the travel of comfort women was concerned.

The following case reveals that permission from the Ministry of War was necessary for the travel of comfort women after January 1942. In March 1942

the Headquarters of the Southern Army made plans to set up comfort stations throughout Southeast Asia and the Pacific region, areas recently seized by Japanese forces following the attack on Pearl Harbor. One request was issued to Taiwanese Army Headquarters to procure 70 comfort women and send them to Borneo. The commander in Taiwan, Lieutenant General And
d
Rikichi, and the Chief of Staff, Major General Higuchi Keishichir
d
, instructed the kempeitai to select three brothel owners to assist in gathering the women. The 70 women were in fact sent from Taiwan to Borneo, after military travel documents for them were obtained from the Ministry of War. These travel documents had the seal of the head of the Military Administration Bureau of the Ministry of War, Tanaka Ry
e
kichi, and his subordinate, Kawara Naoichi.48 This indicates that involvement in decision-making about comfort women went all the way to the top levels of the Ministry of War.

Another document that shows a deep involvement of the Ministry of War in controlling comfort stations from 1942 is an instruction by the Vice-Minister of War, Kimura Heitar
d
, issued on June 18, 1942. The order went to all army units stationed overseas, calling for strict VD preventive measures in order to tighten hygiene control over comfort stations.49

The numbers of comfort stations are documented in a report prepared by the head of the Medical Affairs Section of the Medical Bureau in the Ministry of War, Kimbara Setsuz
d
, at a meeting of Ministry section heads on September 3, 1942. The report details the houses established overseas: 100 in north China, 140 in central China, 40 in south China, 100 in Southeast Asia, 10 in the Southwest Pacific, 10 in southern Sakhalin (i.e. 400 in total).50 This report indicates that, by 1942, the Ministry of War had considerable detailed information on all comfort stations and exerted its controlling power over these military facilities to some extent.

Limited evidence has so far been found about the role of the navy in the exploitation of comfort women. One piece of evidence is a set of documents 28

The origins of the comfort women system
written by Rear Admiral Nagaoka Takasumi, head of the Military Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Navy, on May 30, 1942. According to these documents, the navy was to dispatch “
tokuyDin
” (which literally means “special staff,” the term used by the navy for comfort women) to various naval bases throughout Southeast Asia. For instance, 45 women were to be dispatched to the Celebes, 40 to Balikpapan in Borneo, 50 to Penan, and 30 to Surabaya. This was a second dispatch of comfort women to these bases. These documents were sent to Rear Admiral Nakamura Toshihisa, Chief of Staff of the Southwest Area Fleet.51

According to a different document, at the end of the war there were 281

Indonesian comfort women in the southern part of the Celebes, of whom 250

were working at Japanese Navy comfort stations. These navy facilities were set up by the Civil Administration Bureau of the Ministry of the Navy, and some of them were directly run by the navy, while others were managed by civilian employees.52

Available evidence on the navy comfort stations is quite limited. However, it seems that the Ministry of the Navy played a more direct role in setting up and running the stations than the Ministry of War. Further search of relevant documents is required to confirm this point.

Why comfort women?

There were several reasons why the Japanese military decided that comfort stations were necessary.

As mentioned previously, Japanese military leaders were very concerned about the rape of civilians by members of the Japanese armed forces – but not out of concern for those civilians. For good strategic reasons, they believed that the antagonism of civilians in occupied territories towards their conquerors was exacerbated by such behaviour. They also believed that a ready supply of women for the armed forces would help to reduce the incidence of rape of civilians.

Was the exploitation of women in military-controlled comfort stations effective in preventing widespread random sexual violence by Japanese soldiers? The initiator of the Japanese army comfort women system, General Okamura, reflect-ing on the Japanese invasion of Wuhan in 1938, stated that random sexual violence occurred in spite of the fact that the Japanese forces had groups of comfort women attached to them. He admitted, therefore, that his scheme was a failure.53

Until it was revised in February 1942, the Japanese Imperial Army Criminal Law (Article 86, Clause 2) stated that army personnel who committed rape at the same time as looting would be punished by between seven years and life imprisonment. Here rape was regarded as a secondary crime, incidental to looting. It was also a general trend in the Japanese Imperial forces that looting and rape, in particular during combat operations, were not only tolerated but even encouraged by many troop commanders as a means of arousing the fighting spirit in their men. Therefore, it is not surprising that only a small number of soldiers were convicted of rape under this code of conduct each year. In 1939,
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29

15 men were found guilty of looting, rape and manslaugter. Only four soldiers in 1940 and a mere two men in 1941 were convicted of the same crimes.54 This Japanese official military data looks absurd when it is compared with actual evidence, such as various testimonies presented at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal regarding the Rape of Nanjing.

On February 20, 1942, the law was revised to acknowledge rape as a single major criminal offense. The amended article reads that “those who commit rape in the battlefield or in the territory of the Empire will be imprisoned for between one year and life,” for the reason that “rape in the occupied territory is fundamentally different from rape in the national territory and will defame the Empire.”55 In other words, rape of women in occupied territories was regarded as a crime under the revised Army Criminal Law mainly because it brought disgrace on the name of the Japanese Empire, not because rape itself constituted a serious crime against humanity. Thus, in actual cases, it remained extremely rare that a soldier or officer rapist was court-martialed. The fundamental problem was that, regardless of what the law stipulated, rape of civilians in occupied territories was not considered a serious criminal act by Japanese military men.

In fact, in his report about particular battlefield problems in China in 1939, Dr. Hayao Takeo, a medical officer and professor in psychiatry, stated that many officers deemed it necessary for their soldiers to rape women in order to stimulate aggression.56

The following testimony by General Okamura shows how reluctant even senior officers were to prosecute offenders. In August 1938, the Chief of Staff of the 11th Army reported to Okamura (then commander of this army) that some of their own soldiers had gang-raped the wife and daughter of the chief of one Chinese village in their occupied area. When Okamura was told that local civilians were refusing to co-operate in construction work of a Japanese military airfield because of this sexual violence, he ordered the kempeitai to arrest the offenders. However, the kempeitai chief told Okamura that the criminal act could not be established because the victims had not reported it. Hence, it would be inappropriate to prosecute the men. Okamura was shocked by the fact that the Army Judicial Chief also supported this kempeitai officer’s opinion.57

What the military leaders, including General Okamura, apparently did not consider was the possibility that the highly oppressive and racist culture of their armed forces might be contributing to the problem. Thus, at least part of the solution would be to reform the military structure as well as to re-educate the men, to change their attitudes towards other Asian people in general, and towards women in particular.

As I also have mentioned, military leaders believed that the provision of comfort women was the most appropriate means of providing their men with some kind of leisure. Unlike US and other Allied soldiers, the rank and file of the Japanese military forces did not have designated leave periods or limited tours of duty. Military leaders had been advised by some senior medical staff that they should make greater provision for both the health and well-being of their men, including such measures as extended home leave. However, most of these 30

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suggested measures were never implemented. The notable exception was the provision of comfort women.

Another concern of military leaders was the incidence of VD among the armed forces. They believed that VD threatened to undermine the strength of their men (and hence their fighting ability). They also feared the spread of the disease could potentially create massive public health problems back in Japan, once the war was over. The leaders believed that a regulated system, such as the comfort stations, would enable them to take effective preventive health measures.

The measures they employed were thorough if not completely effective. Those “recruited” were mostly young, unmarried women because it was believed they were the least likely to be infected with VD. Army doctors regularly checked the health of the comfort women to ensure that they had not contracted VD. Most of the women were examined for VD once a week or every ten days. The men were provided with condoms free of charge and were instructed to apply prophylactic chemicals immediately before and after associating with comfort women.58

However, such measures could not prevent VD, even if they went some way towards reducing its incidence. For instance, according to a report by medical officers of the 15th Division in north China in 1942 and 1943, 15 to 20 percent of comfort women were found to be suffering from VD each month.59 Evidence from former comfort women suggests the figure could have been much higher.

This was probably due to the fact that many soldiers refused to use condoms and did not bother applying prophylactic disinfectants. Numerous former comfort women testify that they had great difficulty in making the men use condoms.

Official statistical data of new VD patients among the Japanese Army Forces in war zones between 1942 and 1944 also show a small increase in the number of cases (11,983 in 1942; 12,557 in 1943; and 12,587 in 1944).60 It is presumed that the real figures were much higher.

Another reason for the difficulty of reducing high VD rates among Japanese troops was the disciplinary provision by which if a soldier was found to be infected with VD, he would be demoted two ranks. This punitive measure discouraged soldiers who were suffering from VD from reporting to their medical officers.

Instead many secretly purchased medicines at a civilian pharmacy or on the black market. Needing money to obtain such expensive medicines, the soldiers were driven to looting.61 Thus, the stringent VD control methods imposed upon soldiers as well as comfort women did not really alleviate the problem. Furthermore, they led to an increase in crimes committed by the Japanese men.

A further concern was security. Military leaders believed that private brothels could easily be infiltrated by spies and that prostitutes working in them could easily be recruited as spies. Kempeitai members were frequent visitors to comfort stations and kept close tabs on the women to ensure there were no spies among them. In order to limit the women’s contact with people outside comfort stations as much as possible, they were not allowed to go outside the premises by themselves. So severely were they restricted that permission was required for them even to go for a walk to get fresh air.