Japan's Comfort Women (9 page)

The origins of the comfort women system
31

The comfort women were treated as “military supplies,” but relevant documents were either hidden or destroyed at the end of the war. It is impossible to know, therefore, how many women were exploited. The best estimates range from 80,000 to 100,000. According to the Japanese military plan devised in July 1941, 20,000 comfort women were required for every 800,000 Japanese soldiers, or one woman for every 40 soldiers.62 There were 3.5 million Japanese soldiers sent to China and Southeast Asia during the war, and therefore, by this calculation, an estimated 90,000 women were mobilized. Of these women, 80 percent are believed to have been Koreans, but many also came from Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

Why were comfort women almost invariably from Taiwan, China, or various places in Southeast Asia, and above all Korea? This might seem odd at first, given that the Japanese were notorious for their racism towards the people of other Asian countries. However, racial prejudice provides part of the answer to the question – that very racism helped make these women suitable for the role of comfort women.

Japanese prostitutes did serve the military abroad during the war, but most were in a different position from the comfort women. The Japanese prostitutes mainly worked in comfort stations that served high-ranking officers, and they
Plate 1.5
While comfort women were sexually exploited, Japanese women were expected to be chaste and encouraged to have as many healthy children as possible. This scene shows one of the healthy baby contests often held in Japan during the Asia-Pacific War. The photo was taken in April 1941.

Source
:
Mainichi Shimbun
32

The origins of the comfort women system
experienced better conditions than the Asian comfort women. Apart from the difficulty in recruiting Japanese women into comfort stations, Japanese military leaders did not believe Japanese women should be in that role. Their mission was to bear and bring up good Japanese children, who would grow up to be loyal subjects of the Emperor rather than being the means for men to satisfy their sexual urges. The Japanese wartime government took its lead from Nazi eugenic ideology and policy in these matters. In 1940 the National Eugenic Law was proclaimed. The purposes of the law were to prevent miscegenation and the reproduction of the “unfit,” such as those with mental illness that was believed to be inherited.63

According to widely held Japanese views at the time, a supreme virtue for a woman was to serve her husband from the time of her marriage until the end of her life. During the war, the Ministry of Health actually recommended that war widows remain loyal to their deceased husbands by not remarrying, unless they were less than 36 years old. In 1943, when Professor Kaneko Takanosuke from the Tokyo College of Commerce argued in a popular woman’s magazine,
Fujin KDron
, that all war widows should be encouraged to remarry, the military authorities demanded that the publisher issue a public apology. In addition, the government-regulated distribution of paper to this publisher was considerably reduced for the rest of the war period.64 So hypocritical was the Japanese military leaders’ attitude that on the one hand they strongly demanded that Japanese women be chaste, while on the other they did not hesitate to preside over the extreme sexual exploitation of other Asian women.

Korean and Taiwanese women were particularly targeted as sources of comfort women, not only because of the political and economic environment of these countries as Japan’s colonies in which young women were easily procured, but also in light of their cultural proximity to Japan. Japanese language was compulsory in Korea and Taiwan, and people in these countries were heavily indoctrinated in loyalty to the Emperor and respect for Japan as their suzerain state. Physical similarity between Japanese and Koreans or Taiwanese also may have been a factor favoring procurement of women there.

In this way, Japanese forces exploited large numbers of Asian women under the excuse of preventing rape and VD. It must be concluded, however, that provision of comfort women did not function as an effective measure for either problem, and in particular for the problem of random sexual violence against civilians in occupied territories. Despite such official justifications for the program, it should not be forgotten that the estimated 80,000–100,000 women involved in the comfort women system were themselves victims of systematic, institutional rape and sexual slavery.

The following chapter examines in greater detail how these Asian women were “recruited” and what sort of life they led at comfort stations.

Procurement of women and their lives
33

2

Procurement of comfort

women and their lives as

sexual slaves

The colonization of Korea and the growth of
the prostitution industry

One cannot sufficiently explain the establishment and operation of the comfort women system, in particular the sexual exploitation of Korean women in that system, by viewing it from the perspective of military history alone. It becomes comprehensible only when we examine how the trafficking of young women came to be widely practiced in Korea well before the military brothel system was established. This trafficking was a by-product of Japan’s various policies of colonizing the Korean peninsula.

Shortly after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan began entertaining an ambition to extend its economic and political interests to Korea. Having succeeded in concluding the treaty of amity with Korea in February 1876, Japan started interfering in Korea’s domestic affairs. China’s Qing dynasty, which had long acted as Korea’s suzerain state, was angered by Japan’s intrusion. The antagonism between the Meiji government and the Qing over Korea eventually erupted into the Sino-Japanese War in August 1894. After eliminating Chinese influence over Korea by defeating China in this war, Japan then faced a threat from Russia, which had increased its activities in Korea and Manchuria. These moves threatened Japan’s military and economic interests in northeast Asia, leading to the Russo-Japanese War between September 1904 and February 1905.1

On the eve of this war, Japan had taken steps towards colonizing Korea. In August 1904, the Japanese government imposed the “First Japan–Korea Convention” upon Korea. This convention allowed Japan to exert considerable influence in two fundamental state functions – administration of finance and foreign affairs. The convention forced Korea to accept Japanese “consultation” in these two areas. In early 1905, with Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War, the British and Americans accepted Japan’s control of Korea. Japan was then able openly to colonize Korea. In November 1905, Japan’s special envoy, It
d
Hirobumi, forced the Korean Foreign Minister to affix the seal to the Protectorate Treaty (the so-called “Second Japan–Korea Convention”), surrounding the palace of the Korean King, Kojong, with Japanese troops. By this treaty Korea was completely deprived of its diplomatic power and autonomy in internal affairs.

34

Procurement of women and their lives
It
d
became the first Resident-General of Korea, now a protectorate of Japan. In July 1907, yet another convention was imposed on Korea. This “Third Convention” placed the administrative functions of the Korean government under the direct control of the Resident-General. Even the small remaining Korean Army – with about 9,000 troops – was dissolved by this convention. Finally, in August 1910, after the conclusion of the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, Korea officially became Japan’s colony.2

After the annexation, the Government-General of Korea was established as a colonial administrative organ, and the Governor-General was posted to control the entire affairs of Korea. It was stipulated by Imperial Ordinance that the Governor-General was to be selected from among the generals of the Japanese Imperial Army or Navy, and that he was to be directly responsible to the Emperor for administering Korean affairs as well as defending Korea.3 In other words, with the establishment of the Government-General, Korean society was virtually placed under martial law.

Aided by the military rule of the Government-General, Japan proceeded to transform the Korean economy. The most catastrophic change affecting social conditions in Korea was a new land ownership system, the result of a cadastral survey conducted between March 1910 and November 1918. Due to the loose nature of the traditional landholding system – which required no official registra-tion – the newly introduced and complicated application system resulted in many illiterate peasants and petit-farmers losing their customary tenancy or land ownership rights. In contrast, the Korean upper-class landlords, called
yangban
, who knew how to get their land registered properly, benefited from the new system, thereby strengthening their contractual property rights. As a result, the commercial value of arable land increased. Large Japanese corporations, such as the Oriental Development Company, were given priority in purchasing the “public land.” It is said that the Oriental Development Company alone came to own more than 20 percent of the arable land in Korea. This drastic change to the landholding system, together with a high tenancy rate (55 percent of arable land), rapidly decreased the number of small, independent farmers and turned them into poverty-stricken peasants. It is estimated that about 80 percent of the Korean population was engaged in agriculture in this period. Therefore, the impact of this change to the landholding system on Korean society was considerable.4

From the late 1910s a large proportion of rice produced in Korea was exported to Japan, cutting sharply into the supply of rice available for local consumption.

In addition, in the coming years, Korean agriculture was severely hit by bad weather. Almost every year between the late 1920s and the late 1930s Korea experienced weather problems which further impoverished the peasants. Many peasants lost their jobs. For example, in the mid-1930s, the unemployment rate in rural areas during the slack season was as high as 85 percent. In 1932, it was reported that there were more than 20,000 beggars in South Kyonsang Province alone.5 Excess labor in rural areas created a large influx of young men and women to cities. This trend of people seeking employment in the city brought chronic unemployment to urban areas as well.

Procurement of women and their lives
35

Many Koreans went to Japan to work as indentured laborers. They worked under extremely harsh conditions. These Korean workers also suffered racial discrimination by the Japanese. One of the most extreme and tragic cases was the massacre of Koreans by Japanese civilians immediately after the Great Kant
d
Earthquake, which hit the Tokyo and Yokohama regions on September 1, 1923.

Many parts of Tokyo and Yokohama were consumed by fire caused by the earthquake (450,000 houses were destroyed) and more than 100,000 people died. In the midst of the chaos caused by this natural calamity, an utterly ground-less rumor about Koreans was spread among Japanese civilians. Koreans were said to have poisoned the drinking water and to be preparing a large-scale political uprising. Many Japanese men, who believed this rumor, armed themselves with swords, bamboo spears and the like, and randomly attacked and killed Koreans. In Kanagawa prefecture, where Yokohama is located, 4,106

Koreans were killed. In Tokyo, the death toll of Koreans was 1,347.6

Despite such deep-rooted, intense, and widespread Japanese prejudice against Koreans, the number of Koreans crossing the Korea Strait to Japan in search of work continued to increase. They were driven by the severe depression in their homeland. By 1931, 300,000 Koreans had come to Japan. Seven years later 700,000 Koreans were working throughout Japan. The Government-General of Korea also encouraged Koreans to migrate to Manchuria. By 1930, 1.3 million Koreans had moved to Manchuria. Most of them were engaged in rice production for export to Japan.7

In this way, a vast number of peasant-class men worked away from home, commonly for long periods. Young women, too, picked up odd jobs to support their peasant families. Thus, large-scale urban migration took place throughout Korea in the 1920s and 1930s. For example, according to a survey conducted by the tax department of Seoul Municipal Office, the city population increased by 9,488 in one year from the end of 1932. Of this number, 6,690 were Korean women.8

However, there were very few jobs in urban areas for uneducated, unskilled rural women. Most worked as low-paid factory workers, waitresses, barmaids, housemaids, nursemaids, and the like. Housemaids and nursemaids were mostly employed by Japanese families living in Korea.9 (By the early 1930s about half a million Japanese were living in Korea, and most of them were government bureaucrats, policemen, school teachers, factory managers and their families.) It is apparent that many young Korean women turned to prostitution to provide the essential income for their poverty-stricken families to survive. A series of articles entitled “Poverty makes prostitutes,” that appeared in September 1927 in the Korean newspaper
Dongah Ilbo
, clearly indicates this situation.10

It seems that many young women were sold to brothels in return for an advance payment to their families. Many married women also became prostitutes due to financial difficulties that arose while their husbands were working away from home.11 However, the amount of an advance paid for a Korean woman was far less than that paid for a Japanese woman. For example, in 1933, brothel owners in Inchon made an advance payment of between 200 and 700 yen for a Korean woman for a five-year contract, while between 700 and 2,500 yen was a usual