The ‘Comfort’ women in the military camps

The book of World War II narrates another terrible practice especially in the Japanese death camps. That is the captured and abducted women were used sexually to quench the thirst of the soldiers. At that time, the Japanese military occupied the Dutch colony in 1942 during the Pacific War, and placed Dutch nationals in internment facilities and prisoner-of-war camps.
Comfort women is a euphemism for women working in military brothels, especially those women who were forced into prostitution as a form of sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II. Around 200,000 are typically estimated to have been involved, with estimates as low as 20,000 from some Japanese scholars and estimates of up to 410,000 from some Chinese scholars, but the disagreement about exact numbers is still being researched and debated. Historians and researchers have stated that the majority were from Korea, China and Japan, but women from the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, the Dutch East Indies, Indonesia, and other Japanese-occupied territories were also used in "comfort stations". Stations were located in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, then Malaya, Thailand, then Burma, then New Guinea, Hong Kong, Macau, and what was then French Indochina during World War II.

At this War time, young women from countries under Japanese Imperial control were reportedly abducted from their homes. In some cases, women were also recruited with offers to work in military. It has been documented that the Japanese military itself recruited women by force. However Japanese historian Ikuhiko Hata stated that there was no organized forced recruitment of comfort women by Japanese government or military.

The nature of sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II is still being actively debated, as the matter is still highly political in both Japan and Far East Asia. Many military brothels were run by private agents and supervised by the Japanese Army. Some Japanese historians, using the testimony of ex-comfort women, have argued that the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy were either directly or indirectly involved in coercing, deceiving, luring, and sometimes kidnapping young women throughout Japan's Asian colonies and occupied territories.

Now, women as the Japanese death camps who were forced into prostitution for the United States military by South Korean or American officials, accuse successive Korean governments of hypocrisy in calling for reparations from Japan while refusing to take a hard look at South Korea’s own history.

It is written in the WW II story that some officials of the Japanese military forcefully transferred Dutch women and women of mixed race from the concentration camps to comfort stations and forced them to provide sexual services to Japanese officers and men. The most famous of such cases is the Semarang Comfort Women Incident. According to an article in the report of the AWF documentation committee, in early 1944, approximately 35 Dutch women and women of mixed race were forcibly taken as comfort women from (1) the Fourth or Sixth Ambarawa Camp, (2) the Ninth Ambarawa Camp, (3) the Halmahera Camp, and(4) the Gendungan Camp located in Ambarawa and Semarang in central Java. Officers of the Southern Army facilitated these moves. It is explained well by Mr. Ralph and Cathy Brink

The sleepless nights in Ambarawa camp seven

When we turn the pages of a kid’s view on WWII we cannot reject the importance of Ambarawa Camp Seven in the book of World War II. Ambarawa is a market town located between Semarang and Salatiga in Central Java, Indonesia.

Ambarawa lies some way above sea level and was an administrative centre for the Dutch colonialists. It is now a popular area for local tourists, particularly with the nearby hill station of Bandungan and the Hindu-Buddhist temples at Gedong Songo. Foreign tourists pass through the area particularly in conjunction with visiting the Buddhist temple at Borobudur.

Ambarawa was once an important connecting rail link providing a cog railiway locomotive into the central mountain range. The Semarang-Ambarawa-Magelang line was fully operational until 1977. It is the site of the Museum Kereta Api Ambarawa ('Ambarawa Railway Museum').

The museum was established in the 1970s primarily to preserve a wide selection of the steam locomotives which were then coming to the end of their useful lives on the 3ft 6in (1067mm) gauge railways of the Indonesian State Railway (the then Perusahaan Negara Kereta-Api, PNKA). These are parked in the open air next to the original station, originally a transhipment point between the 4ft 8½in gauge branch from Kedungjati to the north-east and the 3ft 6in gauge line onward towards Yogyakarta via Magelang to the south. It is still possible to see that the two sides of the station were built to accommodate different size trains. It was there in the World War II time also.

Hence the museum is well situated and its development into a world class site is not only desirable but feasible with the right kind of backing. Currently it is still part of the State Railway who has supported it to the best of its ability since formation although funding has never been generous. Now the provincial Government of Central Java is increasingly taking an interest from the point of view of its heritage significance and its potential as a tourist attraction. Non-Governmental bodies like the Semarang Heritage Society are also acting to assist and there is also an unofficial overseas group The Friends of Ambarawa Railway Museum'.

Ambarawa was the site of Japanese interment camps where up to 15,000 Europeans had been held during the Japanese occupation during World War II. Few death camps were there and comfort women camp too. And thus this place had sleepless nights. And next blog explains about this ‘sleepless’ nights in the comfort slave camps. Following Japanese surrender and the subsequent proclamation of Indonesian independence, fighting broke out in the Ambarawa area on 20 November 1945 between British troops evacuating European internees and Indonesian Republicans. A kid’s view on WWII by Mr. Ralph and Cathy Brink explain them well.

The Horrible life in Indonesian death camps

The book of World War II mentions about the atrocities towards the death camp slaves. Life in Indonesian death camps was a deathly combination of hard work, malnutrition and harsh punishments all taking place in the intense tropical heat of the region. In Japan itself, there were approximately 130 camps but it was not just western prisoners who suffered. An estimated 100,000 Asian labourers died in the construction of the Death Railway. The camps created by the Japanese were mostly ad-hoc work camps designed to cope with the overwhelming numbers of prisoners. James Taylor, of the Imperial War Museum in London, said: "As well as the military significance, the railway and other projects also helped to solve what to do with all these people that had been captured."

The Japanese death camps were normally surrounded by barbed wire and high wooden fences and anyone trying to escape would be executed in front of other prisoners, meaning very few attempts were ever made. The Japanese did not sign up to the Geneva Convention, which governs the rights of PoWs, and prisoners were forced to learn Japanese to understand commands. It is said that failure to comply with instructions, often made up on the whim of the camp commander, would lead to serious beatings during this WWII story.

At the beginning of the day a daily roll-call, known as the Tenko, was held each day and prisoners had to call out their number in Japanese. Most prisoners were put to work in mines, fields and factories and would be given a meager diet of 600 calories a day on which they had to carry out 12 hours of hard labour. A typical meal consisted of Soya beans and seaweed, with meat or fish only served once a month. Many of the deaths among POWs were caused by starvation and disease as well as overwork and punishments and those who survived left malnourished and several stones lighter than when they arrived. All about these bitter camp experiences were explained clearly through a kid’s view on WWII.

The cruelties in Japanese death camps

The WW II story which is explained in the book of World War II is mostly filled with lot of suffering aspects, but we should take it as inspiring ones. The Japanese death camps in Ambarawa were horrible. The death camp slaves suffered a lot in the Japanese death camps.

The prisoners of World War II in the Japanese death camps were held in appalling conditions, the brutality of their captors caused many deaths along with a lack of food and medicine for diseases such as cholera, dysentery and malaria. Punishments were randomly dispensed and without justification. One of the smaller punishments among death camp slaves was to stand holding a 20lb boulder above head until it was dropped, and then they were beaten. One man was seen to be tied to the ground by a barbed wire collar until he died. The Japanese, faced with so many fit young men at their mercy, saw prisoners as expendable labour for their war effort – the infamous Burma-Siam railway, the 'Death Railway' costing the lives of thousands of POWs.

A historian named Terry Charman at the Imperial War Museum in London, explained: "There was also this feeling among the Japanese that it was a disgrace to become a prisoner under their military code, the Japanese felt a lot of our men had sacrificed their honour in the Indonesian death camps. There was a lot of ill-treatment, beatings, mutilations. The Japanese officers even beat their own men." Indeed the brutality came down the Japanese ranks and the frustrations of junior officers were taken out on the helpless captives. Equally, Korean conscripts press ganged into Japanese service were as cruel as their masters. The pathetic situation in World War II is explained beautifully by Ralph and Kathy Brink in their Brink’s publication.

Book of World War II

Book of World War II was an historic event that touched nearly every person alive during that time. What was it like to be one of the millions of soldiers who fought the battles? Or a civilian worker making the tanks and bombs? Or a child your age, either in Japanese death camps, Ambarawa Camp Seven? You can find out. There are still thousands of people alive today who were soldiers, civilians, or children during the Second World War, and who remember what they did and how they felt. Locate someone to interview about this extraordinary time. Then use the Writing Workshop to write and publish that person's oral history of WWI story in the Book of World War II.

WWII was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. The war involved the mobilisation of over 100 million military personnel, making it the most widespread war in history. In a state of "total war", the major participants placed their complete economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Over 70 million people, the majority of them civilians, were killed, making it the deadliest conflict in human history.

The beginning of the war is generally held to be in September 1939 with the German invasion of Poland and subsequent declarations of war on Nazi Germany by the United Kingdom, France and the British Dominions. Amongst these main events are the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the start of Operation Barbarossa, and the attack on Pearl Harbor and British and Dutch colonies in South East Asia. Many belligerents entered the war before or after this date, during a period which spanned from 1937 to 1941, as a result of other events.

The United States and the Soviet Union emerged from the war as the world's leading powers. This set the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 45 years. The United Nations was formed in the hope of preventing another such conflict. The self-determination spawned by the war accelerated decolonization movements in Asia and Africa, while Western Europe itself began moving toward integration. The detailed original account of a war victim is explained in the Book of World War II is explained through a Kids view WW II.

A reunion with my mother

It was a miracle and unexpected meeting with my mom after a long time gap in the WW II story tribulation. Against all odds my Mom found me among the thousand or so confused kids and old men shuffling and stumbling excitedly around. I was laying on my ‘cot’ the 4”x10” boards on the saw horses. I was sick as a dog, and simply too weak and miserable to move. All I had been able to do, when I first heard the loud commotion and some talk of surrender, was to drag myself in the direction of the front gate. I remember vaguely hearing some mention of a “really big bomb.” Honestly, I was too exhausted to care. All I wanted to just lie down and be left alone! Looking back, I frankly believe I had reached the end ; I had ‘run out of gas,‘ and it was time for me to give up.’

Yes, I believe I can say that I have some idea of how Anne Frank must have felt as a death camp slave. I believe I know how that dear young girl must have suffered in her final hours… Utterly, hopelessly alone… no one to care for her… no one to stroke her hair… without a touch of comfort… completely forsaken in a brutal World War II!

And this a heart melting tragic experience in the WWI story. Do words exist that can adequately describe how a ten-year-old kid feels, after having been separated for almost a year, to have his loving Mother gently hug him... of your dear, sweet mother’s tears drenching your face after such a long, bitter, hopeless, seemingly endless experience? I believe not… at least, I have not been able to find the words. When Mr. Ralph and Cathy Brink explain this uncomfortable tragic book of World War II of course it should an inspiration for the youngsters to thirst and do something for universal peace and harmony even in the midst of diversity of caste, creed, culture and language.