Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Japanese military prostitution

The World War II story has an unforgettable chapter on the exploitation and abuse of many innocent women through military prostitution. Military correspondence of Japanese Imperial Army shows that the aim of facilitating comfort stations was the prevention of rape crimes committed in Japanese death camps and thus preventing rise of hostility among people in occupied areas.

Given the well-organized and open nature of prostitution in Japan, it was seen as logical that there should be organized prostitution to serve the Japanese Armed Forces. The Japanese Army camps established the comfort stations to prevent venereal diseases and rape by Japanese soldiers, to provide comfort to soldiers and head off espionage. The comfort stations were not actual solutions to the first two problems, however. According to Japanese historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi, they aggravated the problems. Yoshimi has asserted, "The Japanese Imperial Army feared most that the simmering discontentment of the soldiers could explode into a riot and revolt. That is why it provided women." It was the same with the Indonesia death camps.

Recruitment

The first "comfort station" was established in the Japanese concession in Shanghai in 1932. Earlier comfort women were Japanese prostitutes who volunteered for such service. However, as Japan continued military expansion, the military found itself short of Japanese volunteers, and turned to the local population to coerce women into serving into these stations. Many women responded to calls for work as factory workers or nurses, and did not know that they were being pressed into sexual slavery. In the early stages of the war, Japanese authorities recruited prostitutes through conventional means. Middlemen advertised in newspapers circulating in Japan and the Japanese colonies of Korea, Taiwan, Manchukuo, and mainland China. However, these sources soon dried up, especially from Japan. The Japanese death camps are the witnesses for all these atrocities. And this sotry is an ever memorized and agonizing fact in the history of World War II.

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