Abstract
The clash between Japan and South Korea over redress for former 'comfort women' is a key element preventing stronger ties between the two neighbours. The issue has also diverted attention from the larger problem of human-trafficking that plagues both countries. In recent years understanding of the issue has been broadened by Asian scholars who have moved beyond the version that was dominant in the early 1990s. In the West however, perceptions remain as they were twenty years ago, repeating as fact elements that have been brought into question or utterly disproven. This inaccurate portrayal by Western media and governments has compromised resolution of the issue in Asia and failed to acknowledge widespread use of equivalent systems of prostitution by both South Korea and the USA. The reason Japan was so specifically targeted lies in a timely convergence of feminism, Korean nationalism and latent anti-Japanese racism. Acting to exaggerate the cruelty of Japan's system while ignoring those of other nations, these factors prevented Japan and South Korea from developing a new perspective on the issue that would allow stronger ties between the two and refocus the campaign to end exploitation of Asian women.
Keywords: Comfort Women, Human-Trafficking, Prostitution, Japan, Korea.
Introduction
Orwell wrote in 1984 that "who controls the past, controls the future… who controls the present, controls the past." That history is written by the victors is widely accepted as a truism, but the idea that our own history has itself been distorted is far less commonly admitted. Japan's use of militarised prostitution in WWII is one such issue. In Asia it is a contested issue, among both 'revisionists' and redress activists themselves. However, in Western coverage (referring in particular to the dominant US, UK and Australian political and media commentary) the dominant paradigm remains as it was twenty years earlier. Not only is the case against Japan presented in a highly exaggerated and sensationalist fashion, free from any context, but the greater sins of her accusers have been thoroughly whitewashed. This failure to take note of developing views on the issue acts to prevent resolution of the problem, forestall reconciliation between Japan and Korea, and prevent a refocusing of activism upon the far greater and ongoing problem of militarised prostitution and human trafficking that exists in both countries.
Current Situation
The comfort system has been described as "sexual slavery and "a case of genocidal rape."1 Nonetheless, by the mid-1990s responsible activists were responding to criticism and shifting the focus from forced recruitment, to recruitment by deception and then to exploitation of women in poverty. The major redress activist group was the 'Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Sexual Slavery by Japan' (commonly referred to as the Korean Council), though many journalists, authors and academics have also given strong support to the movement. Opposing them are various right-wing, conservative and nationalist writers and academics who contend that the redress movement's claims are either gross distortions or entirely baseless. One of the key groups among the latter is the Japanese Society for the Dissemination of Historical Truth. While these two factions are diametrically opposed, more recently a new wave of more critical assessment has been carried out by scholars from both Japan and Korea, and which offer a more academically neutral appraisal of the issue. Among this group, Tanaka highlighted Western nations' hypocrisy in their own exploitation of women and use of comfort systems.2 Wakabayashi criticised the poor scholarship involved and failure to present a balanced view the issue.3 Most recently, Soh showed how the comfort system was far more complex than the monolithic war crime the redress movement claims it to be.4
The evolving nuances of the argument that have been largely accepted in Japan and South Korea have, however, been ignored by Western media statements regarding "the sexual enslavement of 200,000 Asian women, mostly Korean, by the Japanese military."5 The issue is presented in the West as it was in Asia twenty years earlier and in such a black and white manner that people feel secure referring to "near incontrovertible evidence" of "ugly, ugly, stuff, on a par… with other atrocities committed by Japanese troops,"6 with scholars stating that "the underlying facts have long been beyond serious dispute" and "force, explicit and implicit, was used in recruiting these women... (it) was serial rape, not prostitution."7 Those arguing against these perspectives are labeled "revisionist academics," and their motivations presented as attempts to white-wash history.8 While there are almost certainly some for whom such criticism might be justifiable, the claims are frequently used merely to stymie critical debate and reinforce otherwise weak positions.
Among the proven fallacies that are often defended in this manner are claims that Japan never apologised for the comfort system, that the Asian Women's Fund "relied on private donations rather than government money," and that the women themselves rejected it.9 Such inaccurate statements form part of a relatively unchallenged narrative that is widely promoted in numerous novels, memoirs and documentaries that have built up public 'awareness' of the issue, particularly in the West, that offers little balance or neutrality in regard the historical complexities of the issue.10
Sources of Contention
Among the earliest 'evidence' used by the redress movement was the autobiography of Yoshida Seiji, which detailed violent and racist 'women hunting' expeditions in the wartime Korean Penninsula.11 His images of gratuitous violence helped promote allegations of 'sexual slavery' but as early as 1989 his story was denounced as a fabrication.12 In response, the redress movement shifted to a greater focus on the use of deception rather than 'extreme' cases in which violence may have been used. Nonetheless, Western works continue to cite Yoshida's garish claims as fact,13 even though redress activists now openly admit that there is "no evidence of forced recruitment."14
The other 'smoking gun' of early activism were documents revealed by Yoshimi Yoshiaki in 1992, which showed government participation in the comfort system. The documents referred to the regulation of recruiters, establishment of facilities and sanitary procedures to reduce disease.15 Dower claimed they "clarified the historical record in ways that people like Prime Minister Abe… refuse to acknowledge."16 Yet, the documents were not a revelation of secret knowledge but had instead been publicly available for decades and reflected information openly discussed in numerous post-war books and memoirs.17 Their relevance was in the fact that they had disproved the existing government stance that the women were independently recruited and the Army was not directly involved. What Yoshimi failed to do was point out that the documents showed that regulation of recruiters was aimed at preventing deception of women, that sanitary examination of prostitutes was standard practice for every military of the period, that the documents revealed nothing that was not completely legal during the period in question and that identical systems existed before and after that were used by the Japanese, US and South Korean armies. The real impact was that it occurred only a few days before a visit to Seoul by the Japanese Prime Minister, an element of strategic timing that brought about the first of many Japanese apologies for the comfort system.
Between them Yoshida and Yoshimi thus established a theme of 'sexual slavery by the Japanese military'. Two of the other key claims put forth during the same period are still frequently repeated by the West today; that 200,000 women were victimised, and that they were mostly Korean.
Estimates of the number of women involved vary from 20,000 to 400,000, but there is no reliable evidence to the exact amount, rendering all attempts so far as educated guesswork.18 Yoshimi estimated between 45,000 and 200,000, the lower by taking 3 million troops, assigning one comfort woman per 100 and setting a replacement rate of 2:1 for each woman. The upper used a ratio of one woman per 30 soldiers and a replacment rate of 1:1, but this ratio was rarely, if ever, achieved. For example, the Bonnin islands were home to 17,700 troops but only 20 Comfort Women (a ratio of 1:885).19 In her assessment of the varied numbers given, Soh considers 50,000 a more reasonable amount.20 This seems reasonable when considering the fact that the Japanese military had wanted to establish a total of 400 comfort stations.21 If each station had 100 women and each of these served 100 soldier per month this would equal 4 million soldiers served by a total of 40,000 women. We could double this using Yoshimi's upper 1:1 replacement rate but then we would also have to accept that few stations had 100 women (in 1943, the Philippines had 21 stations with 1184 women for an average 56 per station,22 while the 7 stations in Malaysia in 1942 had only an average of 21).23 Accepting a more reasonable average of 50 leaves the total at roughly 40,000. Needless to say, the figure of 200,000, which is by far the most frequently used, seems unjustified.
Claims for Korean women being the majority are similarly lacking in factual support. Documentary evidence shows that even late in the war, at certain times and places Japanese comfort women outnumbered Koreans by a factor of five to one.24 Even so, members of the redress movement have claimed that "80 to 90%" of all comfort women were Korean.25 Such claims frequently refer to a 1939 medical report which favourably compared the hygiene of young Korean women to older Japanese women. However, the report's recommendation was for 'young', not 'Korean', women to be recruited for service.26 While Korea was slightly more impoverished than Japan, the latter had three times the population and both were home to tens of thousands of poor, desperate, young women. A more reasonable estimate might be to say the two groups each represented 40-55% of the women, and to accept that, as with overall numbers, more accurate estimates are currently impossible.
Oral Testimony
The other key source of evidence for the redress movement was the testimony of the women themselves. Yet, despite its impact this testimony never received the kind of critical scrutiny that would be standard practice in any court of law, something made more alarming by the fact that many testimonies have been shown to have been fabricated or self-contradictory, while others are filled with extremely implausible imagery that seems designed solely to arouse anti-Japanese sentiment.
While the primary motivation ascribed to the women in coming forward was that they wanted acknowledgement and apology from Japan before they died, their own words often cite resentment toward Japan, Korean nationalism or material reward as additional or alternate reasons. Pak Sun-Ae wanted to protect Korea from being controlled by another country,27 Kim Hak-sun said she held "a considerable grudge against the Japanese,"28 and Wan Ai-hua declared that she felt she would die from the hatred she felt for Japan.29 Many openly desired financial remuneration and their initial court case sought $156,000 apiece in damages,30 with Kim Tok-chin saying that she hoped to at least gain new accommodation from the process.31 That such motivations might be warranted is not the question, but rather, whether any bias might have led to distortion, exaggeration or fabrication of testimony.32
The Japanese government decided to take these testimonies at face value, despite the fact that the redress movement itself rejected the reliability of many women who came forward. Several gave contradictory evidence, in some cases providing up to nine different versions of their story.33 Some of the women themselves claimed that others among them were either imposters or telling deliberate lies about their testimony, with one saying that from private conversations she estimated 80% had been voluntary prostitutes.34
Hicks admits, "One problem… is sifting the real comfort women from those lured by the thought of compensation… [M]any stories lacked even a basic familiarity with the comfort system."35 One activist declared that "Comfort women testimony is often contradictory from one instance of recollection to the next in terms of when they were abducted, by who or for what reasons,"36 while another stated that women often avoided answering questions by saying they have no memory of the period in which they were drafted.37
That the recollections of the Women might have been be unreliable after more than 45 years is understandable as numerous studies (those of Loftus and Vasterling in particular) attest to the malleability of human memory.38 Another example of fallibility is Roediger's study of 'memory reconsolidation' whereby every time we recall a memory we change it slightly, altering minor details so that the more times we recall an event the less reliable our recollection becomes.39 Even more relevant to the Comfort Women is Schacter's analysis of 'misattribution', inaccuracies which assign memories to the wrong source, mistaking fantasy for reality or confusing something heard with something experienced.40 This problem becomes significantly more common and intense with old age, and is frequently expressed as remembering things as personal events that you only heard described by others.41 Memories also become vulnerable to the influence of people around you, such that their opinions, or propaganda, can subconsciously affect how we edit our recalled memories.42
These problems come together in the Comfort Women, who all provided their first testimony in old age, forty-five years after the events, and who have also been vulnerable to pressure, intentional or otherwise, from the politically motivated membership of the redress movement. Several studies (for example: Heaps & Nash in 2001, Wade et al. in 2002, Brown & Marsh in 2008) have shown how even a slight amount of guidance allows subjects to 'remember' a wide variety of dramatic memories that never in fact occurred.43
That such 'guidance' occurred is attested to by Professor Ahn Byong-jick who worked with the Korean Council (the primary Korean redress group) in an effort ensure their research was academically sound. However, he resigned from the group after it published its first report on the grounds that they had rejected his guidelines in favour of using the issue to promote their personal political views.44 Recurring differences in the stories of the women, when told publicly versus when presented in the writing of activist groups, have also been noted, with additional details appearing in their written accounts that it is hard to be sure have come for the women rather that the activists themselves. Even supporters of the redress movement have stated that researchers compiling testimonies "unintentionally modify or sometimes change the testimonies in order to suit their own perspectives and needs."45
Bearing this in mind it is worth considering that while many women described the soldiers they met in balanced terms, and spoke of a system that was strictly regulated to protect the rights of the women, it was the most extreme tales of abuse and victimisation that received international attention. Though Japanese troops were as humane or inhumane as their US and British counterparts, allegations of brutality that would have been met with extreme suspicion or dismissed out of hand if attributed to Allied soldiers, were accepted unquestioningly when applied to Japanese men.
Claims regarding the treatment of comfort women include: soldiers cutting babies from pregnant women's bellies; tying women upside down to trees to be mutilated and killed; women being quartered by horses; being forced to drink water used to boil people's heads,46 and biting women's nipples off simply for being slow in getting dressed.47 Testimony used in UN reports, yet lacking any evidentiary backing, include: women being rolled on nail-studded boards; forced to eat human flesh; dismembered; buried alive, or thrown into snake-filled pits.48 Like Yoshida, the most extreme claims are no longer used by Asian activists, yet they still contribute to the common international view of the issue as a barbaric war crime, and the documented fact that they were taken at face value by UN rapporteurs says as much about international prejudice against Japan as it does the inherent reliability of oral testimony. Violence against the women should not be discounted and it is likely that in many cases abuse occurred; however, as Hume stated, wise men should proportion their belief to the evidence at hand and in this case many of the claims are extreme and the evidence virtually nonexistent.49
Other key elements
One case in which more substantive evidence existed was Semarang in Indonesia, which resulted in several Japanese soldiers being convicted for war crimes by a Dutch tribunal.50 Yet, even there the situation was more complex than generally portrayed. Up until 1943 the military made use of pre-existing Dutch brothel systems,51 after which volunteers were sought for a more regulated 'comfort system'.52 Apart from prostitutes, recruiters targeted the 20,000 women in the region's internment camps and, seeking improvement in their living conditions, many acquiesced.53 In 1944, however, several dozen women were forcibly recruited from internment camps at Magelang and Semarang. Their ordeal persisted for almost two months and ended immediately when a visiting colonel found out about their situation. While some of the women involved testified to enduring terrible suffering, others stated that "the Japanese officers were ordinary people… nice persons. When the officers saw the frightened girls they informed Tokyo."54 The exact details are hard to know as the investigation into the events was extremely one-sided. According to Hicks, "they pronounced the death sentence without allowing a defense, the proceedings were conducted in Dutch, prisoners were only allowed to answer yes or no, and if they tried to add explanations were threatened with immediate execution, medicines were withheld from sick prisoners and the judge verbally abused the defendants and their lawyers."55
From the evidence, Semarang thus appears to be an anomaly in which officers breached military regulations and their superiors stepped in as soon as they became aware, and took steps to prevent any further forced recruitment.56 Attempts by the Dutch to bring similar charges against the manager of a more typical comfort station were dropped when his workers testified that it was only due to him that they could enjoy a safe and prosperous life during the war years.57 As such, it seems unreasonable to portray Semarang as typical of the comfort system, yet the redress movement does just this, frequently using it in efforts to promote the issue as a war crime.
Another area of distortion is the Joushi Roudo Teishintai (Women's Labour Volunteer Corps), established in 1944 to provide workers for Japan's factories, much like Britain's 1941 National Service Act, which saw 80-90% of British women conscripted for essential war-related work by 1943.58 Under Japanese law, unmarried women from 12 to 39 years of age were required to work as Teishintai for one year.59 That the Korean Council takes the Korean version of its name from the translation of Teishintai (Chongsindae),60 is evidence of repeated efforts to conflate Tesihintai with comfort women.61 While many women were recruited into the comfort system by deception there has never been any evidence connecting it to the Teishintai. Confusion of the two began with Yoshida's fabrications and was exacerbated by the lies of Kim Yong-soo, a Korean reporter who in 1992 described how elementary school-girls of the 1940s had been rounded up for volunteer work. Despite knowing this was for Teishintai activities he framed it to suggest it was to become comfort women; other writers picking up the story wrote it as such.62 While activists frequently conflate the two, even the testimony of the women themselves fails to offer any support.63 Soh considers this an attempt to distinguish the comfort system from modern Korean military-prostitution by framing it as a nationalistic war crime.64 That such efforts rely on obfuscation rather than use of the available historical record suggests that what can be shown is not supportive of the redress cause.
The pre-War sex industry in Japan and Korea
The first licensed pleasure districts in Japan were established in 1598, and by the 19th century they were copying French protocols of government regulation, including the use of regular venereal disease (VD) examinations.65 The number of licensed prostitutes climbed to 54,000 by 1916, the opposite of a shift to unlicensed prostitution in Europe; this expansion went hand in hand with growth in the number of new Japanese military barracks.66
The women received sizable monetary advances for their contracts and were bound to their place of work for the duration. From 1902 they had the right to break contracts, though they were still required to pay off any debt that existed, something that trapped many in 'debt bondage'. The number of licensed women remained steady, at around 50,000 until the early 1930s, though they were supplemented by another 48,000 'bar-girls' and the majority of the roughly 80,000 geisha, both groups which engaged in occasional prostitution. The women's working conditions were restrictive and grim, although a series of strikes during the 1930s won a number of reforms in this area.67 Abolition movements existed, but, driven by Christian morality, had little impact.68
In Korea, licensed prostitution was introduced through the 1876 Treaty of Gangwha.69 Prior to this Korea was a caste-based society dominated by bureaucrats at the top and slaves at the bottom.70 Sex-work was restricted to kisaeng, geisha-like entertainers who combined traditional arts with sexual services.71 Women in general lived in repressed drudgery, segregated from men and raised to accept themselves as inferior in every way.72 One of the uncontested effects of Japan's influence on Korea was that, while political freedoms were curtailed, it removed the preexisting caste system, ended slavery and made major improvements to both general human and women's rights.73
Until the late 1920s the majority of prostitutes in Korea were Japanese women,74 though the the inclusion of kisaeng in 1910 venereal examinations "eliminated any meaningful or social distinction between kisaeng and ordinary prostitutes,"75 and had the effect of producing the "hyper-sexualisation of a profession that had once enjoyed a modicum of respectability."76 Nonetheless, at a time when Korean women were still almost entirely uneducated, the kisaeng were the most literate and liberated of Korean women.77 They organised campaigns to improve their conditions and status and utilised strikes, walk-outs and even hunger-strikes. During the 1930s, by which point the number of Korean workers had begun to suprass the number of Japanese,78 they also attempted to unionise, but although the law occasionally sided with them, they wielded far less power than the organised management and conditions, as in Japan, remained less than ideal.79
Many comfort women openly admit to having such kisaeng backgrounds.80 Most of them also speak of difficult family lives and the effects on them of the strict patriarchy which resisted any efforts by women to control or decide their own life.81 Activists, meanwhile, claim that due to a focus on chastity and wifely duty Korean women would not have participated in prostitution,82 but while the 'wise mother, good wife' ideal was promoted by the government during the 1930s,83 it was a Japanese value as much as it was Korean.84 Although most Korean women remained traditionally conservative, were married by 18 and generally "bought and sold like commodities,"85 a growing number of 'new women' challenged this status quo, advocating free love and the repudiation of failed marriages.86 Korea was moving beyond repression to embrace a healthy sexual curiosity, while prostitution itself was growing in popularity.87
As was the case in Japan, extreme poverty, especially in rural areas, drove Korean families to sell daughters into prostitution at rising rates.88 By the late 1930s, however, the economic downturn, combined with crackdowns on clandestine brothels, saw an increasing number of Korean brothel operators begin to move north into China, along with their female workers, in efforts to tap the lucrative markets of an economically expanding Manchurian region.89
The impact of 'Coercive Poverty'
After moving away from 'deceptive coercion', Yoshimi and others began to focus on how "poverty… forced these women… to become comfort women."90 This has been true in every country where prostitution has been a social problem, and severe poverty was as serious on the Japanese mainland as the Korean peninsula. Some activists, nonetheless, claimed that "the Japanese military were driving Koreans to national extinction,"91 though others were willing to accept that the poverty was in large part attributable to the worldwide depression of the '20s and '30s.92 Shifting from light to heavy industry had left hundreds of thousands without work, and 48% of the rural population were suffering from starvation.93 Women moving to cities to look for work were frequently absorbed into the red-light districts and the number of prostitutes rose steadily during the 1930s.94 Families could find find immediate succour through the sale of a daughter,95 though the majority of Korean women sold into prostitution were young wives.96
This system of exploitation, women driven by poverty to enter indentured prostitution, existed in both Japan and Korea before and after the implementation of the comfort system.97 Such indentured servitude was also common in industrial and agricultural work, where children were often sold by impoverished families. Advocates saw it as a safety net for the poor and even in the 1950s the system had widespread public acceptance.98 The sex-trade itself offered the clearest means available to women of helping their families escape the poverty trap, with the average sex-worker's salary more than double that of the average female industrial worker's.99 On the eve of Japan's prohibition of licensed prostitution in 1955, a representative of the Prostitutes Union highlighted the underlying motivation of many of the women by asking, "Before submitting (the prohibition law)… .Why don't you feed our parents?"100
Recruitment into the Comfort System
Driven by poverty, the alternative to prostitution for young women of the 1930s was factory work, usually in unisex dorms where rape was widespread.101 One factory-worker wrote, "There was never a day when workers ceased waylaying us in their heavy hunger for sex."102 Later, women became even less willing to accept factory work due to the fear of being killed during bombing raids.103
In contrast, comfort women positions, which were openly advertised in national papers, offered a \3000 advance and a further \300 per month.104 Yet, despite the widespread poverty and lack of alternate opportunities for employment, redress activists argue that only Japanese women freely chose this path of escape.105 There were clearly cases where girls were deceived about the conditions of work; however, contemporary newspapers also frequently reported the Japanese police arresting brokers for such deception and trickery.106
Some comfort women have actually testified to feeling pride in their work, saying, "We were also soldiers. We were not prostitutes. We helped the soldiers fight. Do you understand?… I was totally converted to a loyal Japanese."107 This was common among young Koreans of the time who accepted Imperial propaganda in much the same way the Japanese did themselves and felt a "thrill of pride in being part, by their citizenship, in a conquering nation."108 It is therefore not unreasonable to imagine that, aside from poverty, Korean women may have also been motivated by patriotism. Even in the USA (with far less acceptance of prostitution) government propaganda encouraging women to be sexually open to servicemen had given rise to the 'patriotute', part prostitute, part patriot.109
Regulation of the System
Japan's Imperial Army Penal Code was extremely strict, with serious punishments being issued for things as trivial as stealing mushrooms from civilian fields.110 Regulations for the comfort stations forbade alcohol, required prophylactics, and restricted soldiers to times ranging from 40 minutes to one hour apiece.111 They also dictated the working hours, conditions and sanitation of the stations themselves; women would threaten to report those who did not comply to their superiors.112 Other regulations forbade violence against the women, required operators to keep detailed records and restricted them from profiteering, while the women themselves were threatened with revocation of their 'right to practice' if they failed to abide by rules.113 Even activist scholars concede that it was likely that the majority of men closely adhered to such regulations and that breeches were exceptions rather than the norm.114
The actual conditions depended largely on the specific station and while some women claim to have serviced a non-stop procession of men, others say they were punished for serving too few and rewarded for serving higher numbers, suggesting considerable discretion in how much they worked.115 Women were also able to refuse soldiers who were considered regulars of other women, and stations had regulations preventing women from working during menstruation.116 Testimonies also state that "when the soldiers were away on an expedition it was nice and quiet," periods of deployment that could last weeks at a time.117
The Treatment of Women
The experiences of the women also varied depending on the men encountered. One Japanese officer was recalled by the women he encountered as "a good, kind man and a fine soldier, with the utmost consideration for those who worked under him," while another was remembered as "brutal and selfish, (he) abused his men and visited the comfort station often."118 The left-wing historian Kurahashi Masanao argues that such brutality toward the women was atypical and soldiers mainly sought comfort and affection to relieve the stress of garrison life.119 The women themselves have stated that the men's attitude to them was often of "fellow human beings, lovers or mother figures."120 Several confirmed receiving marriage proposals and recalled that soldiers about to leave for combat were more gentle, with some men bringing gifts and requesting talk instead of sex.121 Some women spoke of living in near-luxury, having plentiful money to buy whatever they desired in nearby towns, and of attending sporting events picnics and social dinners.122 POWs in Indonesia recollect seeing women dressed in colourful kimono and "fancy hair dos." They were "gay, chattering little bodies, laughing and running around like children." The women had the freedom of the camp and, in the words of one POW, before troops left for battle it became a giant party at which the women "let their hair down."123
Estimates of the women's monthly salary range from \250-800 (the equivalent of $25,000 today), with fees calculated to allow repayment of initial debts within one year.124 The women received 40-60% of fees, and while most went toward repayment of the initial lump sum they had received, one woman, Mun Ok-chu, accumulated \26,145 savings (the equivalent of more than $250,000 today) during her service and managed to send another \5,000 home to relatives.125 Mun also claims a co-worker made a similar sum but declined to come forward as she had led a comfortable life after the war. This is a common trait in testimonies, in that those who testified in general led lives of difficulty and poverty in the post war years. In her study of Japanese comfort women, Hirota discovered that many of them looked on their war years with nostalgia, while complaints were related primarily to post-war indignities and misfortunes.126
Given the nature of military prostitution and war itself, cases of abuse must surely have occurred; however, the women were recruited via public advertisement into a legal, high-paying job at a time of severe poverty and destitution. While some may have been deceived and suffered exploitation, labeling the system itself a case of "sexual slavery" is clearly unjustifiable. Even so, Japan has repeatedly apologised to, and made attempts to compensate, those it feels were exploited. These effects are, however, either ignored completely or seriously downplayed by the Western media, who continue to portray Japan as failing to express any sincere contrition for wartime events.
Japan's Efforts at Redress
Japan's 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations with Korea included reparations for colonial rule, with a total of $800 million in low-interest, long-term loans, private credits and grants ($7 billion inflation adjusted). The Korean government stated at the time that, for their part, they would forgo any future claims for compensation, but, crucially, they withheld this and the actual terms of the treaty from the Korean public.127 Japan had additionally offered direct compensation to individual labourers but Korea rejected this, while also secretly diverting much of the funds ear-marked for labourer compensation into unrelated economic and infrastructure projects that laid the groundwork for South Korea's economic growth but which did little to help those who had suffered during the war.128
Considering their compensation to have been fulfilled by this treaty, Japan chose to deny any direct involvement in the comfort system—a falsehood revealed with Yoshimi's 1992 documents. This led to an immediate apology regarding wartime exploitation of women by Prime Minister Miyazawa, who, in the words of one redress activist, "expressed his regret and apologies in terms so strong that an attempt at an English equivalent sounds too exaggerated to be convincing."129 Further investigation by Japan led to the 1993 Kono statement, which admitted government involvement and that some women had been deceived or coerced. This was, however, taken by the West as confirmation of the much broader allegations the redress movement had made against Japan, including slavery and extreme violence.
Following the Kono Statement, South Korea once more reaffirmed their disinterest in further compensation; in 1994, Japan's PM Murayama offered his "most sincere apologies and remorse" to the comfort women.130 In 1995, in an attempt to bypass without overturning the 1965 treaty, Japan announced the establishment of the Asian Women's Fund for the purpose of directly compensating surviving women. After several years it had compensated 364 women in Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and the Netherlands. It also gave direct payments of $20,000 apiece from public donations, $30,000 in welfare and medical support from government funds, and offered each of the women a new letter of apology from the Prime Minister describing the comfort system as a "national mistake" and "entirely inexcusable."131 Despite claims that it was not a government initiative, when the entire cost of running the program is considered, government to public funding was roughly 60:1.132
Western media often claim that the women rejected the Fund's offer outright, yet many of the hundreds of women who accepted have spoken gratefully of how it helped them, both materially and emotionally.133 Those who did refuse were pressured to do so by both the Korean Council, and the South Korean government who offered their own, smaller, payment provided the women refused the Fund's offer.134 Those who accepted Fund help were also badgered and abused by the redress movement for their perceived treachery,135 while they denounced the Fund itself as a display of Japan's "contempt for the East… an ambivalence and hypocrisy toward its role in the war that rendered apology impossible."136
The 1998 signing of the Japan-Korea Joint Declaration saw the issuance of another Japanese apology expressing "deep remorse and heartfelt apology" for the "tremendous damage and suffering" caused,137 and South Korea, again, declared it was willing to forget the past. Yet, in 2004 President Roh used disclosure of the 1965 treaty to call for a renegotiation of its terms and a more 'sincere' apology for the comfort women.138 As recently as 2010, Japan was still presenting formal apologies,139 while a state trip in December 2011 was used, yet again, by the South Korean President to call for further compensation for comfort women.140
All told, Japan has offered 20 high-level apologies to Korea (specifically), yet in the US they have been dismissed by redress supporters as insincere, "kabuki theater."141 Given the clear efforts made by Japan to address and atone for past actions, it is important to consider whether similar contrition has been shown by Japan's critics for their own exploitation of women.
Non-Japanese Militarised Prostitution
Institutionalised prostitution has existed since Babylonian times and was declared by the Republic of Venice to be "absolutely indispensable to the world."142 It has always involved women selling themselves into bondage to escape poverty and, where the military was involved, included strict control of women to prevent venereal disease. Laws for such purposes were used in licensed form by the French, British and American governments of the 19th century.143 By the early 20th century though, Christian morality was driving increased support for prohibition and 'loose' women were labeled as threats to the state. In the USA prostitutes even suspected of having VD were locked up without trial for 10 weeks on average.144 Younger girls, again based solely upon suspicions, were placed in reform homes and over 15,000 women were jailed without trial during and after WWI, largely in an effort to prevent contamination of US troops.145 The measures were largely ineffective though, as militarised prostitution was already fully entrenched in the European warzone.
In Europe the Eastern and Western fronts during WWI were lined by brothels of all nations, run by managers generally appointed by the military, who also fixed the rates that were charged and organised medical examinations. The women were thoroughly exploited, with armed guards preventing them from leaving at night. As was the case in Japan, while some made good money the majority lived in appalling conditions, many of them becoming trapped in cycles of debt repayment.146 Predictably, most had been driven to the work by poverty. Other women practicing more casual unlicensed prostitution were arrested and forced to enter the licensed system, with mere denunciation by recruiters at times being enough to press them into service, i.e. the use of deception and trickery for forced recruitment, well before Japan had established its own comfort system. Additionally, any soldier found to have VD was required to identify the source, and women named, falsely or otherwise, were also in danger of forced recruitment. Child prostitution, often with the complicity of family members, was also widespread.147
Similar practices were common among many nations other than Japan during the WWII period. In 1938 Italy shipped 10,000 women to Ethiopia to service Italian troops, who also bought and traded local girls as young as 12 years old.148 In the 1940s sanctioned brothels were set up by Australian troops in Palestine, with British and US equivalents in Liberia and Eritrea. The US government itself reported on the wide level of US military-controlled prostitution at bases in Africa, the Caribbean, India and the Middle East.149 Honoloulu's brothels, where women serviced up to 100 men per day, were regarded as a breakwall against the dangers of lustful troops.150 Activists have played down the Western military role in such systems though, claiming that apart from "ad hoc health precautions… no greater degree of military intervention occurred," or, "they may not have thought of what they were doing in terms of rape."151 There is a similar lack of focus extended to the suffering of Japan's women at the close of the war, when an estimated 10,000 were raped by US troops in Okinawa, and another 30-40,000 by Russian troops in Manchuria.152 These cases, however, only marked the beginning of post-war exploitation of Japanese women.
On the Japanese mainland, the first rapes by US soldiers happened within hours of landing and, with 1,336 occurring during the first ten days in Kanagawa Prefecture alone, US commanders quickly demanded that a comfort system be set up for their own men.153 The new system was named the Recreation and Amusement Association (RAA) though in Japanese it was called the Tokushu ian shisetsu kyokai (Special Comfort Facilities Association).154 Like its predecessor it used impoverished and desperate women and many of these, including high school girls desperate to support starving relatives, soon became trapped in debt bondage.155 In 1947 Christian puritanism, and rising venereal disease, led GHQ to abolish Japan's licensed brothels and repudiate the RAA.156 This left 70,000 RAA 'workers', and 80,000 unlicensed brothel-workers, unemployed and gave rise to Japan's unlicensed streetwalkers and a massive surge in rape. During the operation of the RAA, rape by Allied soldiers averaged 40 attacks per day. This jumped to 330 per day following its closure.157 These included incidents of large scale, gang rape in which mobs of soldiers attacked brothels, hospitals and residential areas.158
The other change was the rise of the pan-pan streetwalker. In an effort to prevent the spread of disease, US military police engaged in prostitute 'hunts', arresting 49,000 in 1949 alone. The women were forced to undergo examinations with failure resulting in prolonged incarceration.159 The only real change in policy was that prostitution had moved from dedicated buildings to the street-corner. It remained as tolerated by the military as ever and increased with the start of the Korean War.160 During this period Japan remained the primary R&R center for Western troops, with 70-80,000 prostitutes serving the military specifically.161 Prostitutes around bases in Korea itself also came under military influence, and were subjected to examination and incarcerated if infected.162 As with Japan, recruits were generally war refugees and others desperate to support their families.163 One witness wrote, "South Korea in the 1950s was a terribly depressing place, where extreme privation and degradation touched everyone. Cadres of orphans ran through the streets… traveling in bunches of maimed or starved adults."164
The war only intensified the problem but at its end the US began building R&R facilities at its permanent bases, with demands for the Korean government to regulate the spread of VD. This was the beginning of the kijichon (camptown) system of military red-light districts. Although licensed prostitution was prohibited, the government reintroduced regular examinations and required prostitutes to carry 'health' cards. By 1955 there were more than 110,000 women catering to Western troops.165 As with Japan, part of the motivation was to create a barrier between foreign troops and the main body of Korean women, and workers were once again lured by false advertisements, trapped by debt or even kidnapped by brokers.166 An additional motivation was to gain an economic boost for the Korean economy and, as early as 1959, Korean politicians were attempting to promote this by legalising camptown prostitution, combating VD and improving the etiquette of prostitutes via 'enlightenment' lectures. A 1961 Tourism Promotion Law paved the way for the establishment of 104 euphemistic 'special districts' (including 32 military camptowns which Korean citizens were prohibited from entering) and the creation of the Special Tourism Association, which helped manage the sex-trade.167 These policies saw the sex-trade generate $70 million in foreign currency in 1969 alone and in 1973 the Minister for Education publicly praised sex-workers for sacrificing their bodies for the sake of Korea's developing economy.168
Such praise did not reflect the public treatment of the women, who were restricted from joining wider Korean society, disdained as impure and frequently maltreated, often being forced to work 11 hours a day, seven days a week.169 Tens of thousands of prostitutes were also forcibly confined at 'vocational training centres', work camps where they endured forced labour, coerced religious services, and physical violence.170 One sex worker claimed they had been treated as "commodities" and denounced the Korean state as "one big pimp for the US military."171 Altogether, one million Korean women were estimated to have been exploited by the US military in the 50 years following WWII.172
By the 1990s economic growth and the increasing empowerment of Korean women saw militarised prostitution begin to rely more heavily on human trafficking to provide workers for the South Korean sex trade. This often occurred with the complicity of US and Korean troops.173 The majority of victims were women from Eastern Europe and South East Asia, lured with offers of jobs as singers and dancers only to become trapped as virtual slaves in the camptowns.174 In 2001 South Korea was criticised for failing to meet the minimum standards for combatting human trafficking and international media began to examine the camptowns.175 As a result, the government prohibited prostitution in 2004 and set tougher penalties for human trafficking.176 The system remains intact, however, with girls still lured from poorer countries with false promises of employment only to be forced to work in exploitative situations.177 While the plight of sex-workers in South Korea has received some attention, similar systems of prostitution and exploitation that receive far less scrutiny can be found in many of the 120 countries which house US military bases.
During the Vietnam War the US was quick to establish official brothels within its bases, where dozens of Vietnamese women lived and worked under the strict control of their 'managers'. Many had been sold by impoverished families and high level US officers regulated the sanitation and security of facilities.178 By the war's end military demand had left the country with 300,000 to 500,000 prostitutes.179 It was during this period that Thailand was 'settled' by the US military, with seven new bases driving the number of prostitutes from 20,000 to 400,000 between 1957 and 1964.180 Similar problems plagued the Philippines, where US troops have exploited women since the 19th century under a system of "strict surveillance… restriction, inspection, control and punishment, and medical examinations."181 As recently as the 1990s, base-towns such as Olongappo could house up to 30,000 prostitutes apiece, some as young as 14.182 Wherever they have existed, the presence of military bases has invariably brought a rise in sexual diseases and higher alcohol and drug addiction rates among local communities.
Even in the Middle East, US military policy has created surges in prostitution. The 'War on Terror' created hundreds of thousands of refugees, many of whom are exploited in prostitution rings that service Western troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, where their cost has been charged to the US State Department as "Moral Welfare Recreation."183
In 2004 revelations showed the complicity of NATO and UN personnel in the trafficking of young women in Kosovo.184 Their arrival in 1999 transformed a "small-scale local market for prostitution… into a large-scale industry based on trafficking" with peacekeepers estimated to have constituted 20% of the customers,185 and US contractors buying and selling girls as young as 12 as sex slaves.186 The UN itself has been accused of many similar crimes during the past 15 years, most recently with peacekeepers in Haiti accused of child abuse and rape.187
Restrictive control of women, exploitation and abuse are deeply linked to militarised prostitution and both the US and Korea have established and used systems practically identical to Japan's comfort system (the latter was even arguably both more legal and better regulated). Why then has Japan has been singled out as a singular case?