Thread: Japanese War Sex Slaves

The Japanese Army used comfort stations extensively until the war ended in the Pacific in 1945. A majority of the women who provided sex for Japanese soldiers were forcibly taken from their families. Family members were beaten or killed if they tried to rescue the women. The ages of the girls that were taken to the comfort houses ranged from 9 to 20. Some were married women with children. Once the women arrived at the comfort station they were forced to have sex with 20 to 30 men a day. If they resisted they were beaten or killed. A majority of the 80,000 to 200,000 comfort women were from Korea though others were recruited or kidnapped from China, Philippines, Burma, and Indonesia. Many women became sterile from the repeated rapes. When the comfort women became useless because of their sickness, their milk was mixed with cyanide, their bodies taken to a cave and finally, the cave was blown up with a grenade. The events that led to international awareness of the issue began in 1988. In that year, Professor Yun Chung Ok of Ehwa Women's University in Korea began to lead an activist group that conducted and presented research about the comfort women. The Japanese government denied that women had been forced to work at comfort stations. After the war the Japanese got rid of any related documents and references. In 1991, three Korean former comfort women filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government. In 1992 Professor Yoshimi Yoshiaki of Chuo University found wartime documents in the Library of the National Institute for Defence Studies that confirmed that the Japanese Forces had operated comfort stations. On the same day that excerpts from the documents were published in Japanese newspapers. The Japanese government finally admitted its involvement.

Sex slave denial angers S Korea

At the risk of sounding racist (which isnt my intention please fellas) but why did these mass scale rapes and brutality occur so frequently and so violently within the East? I haven't heard of stories of soldiers in Europe committing the same level of rape and pillaging :/

Wow, that is horrible. 20 - 30 men a day???

Whatever become of the lawsuit the three Korean women filed?

Originally Posted by Airborne

At the risk of sounding racist (which isnt my intention please fellas) but why did these mass scale rapes and brutality occur so frequently and so violently within the East? I haven't heard of stories of soldiers in Europe committing the same level of rape and pillaging :/

What about the Final Solution by the Nazis? Stalin wiping out a Generation of men in The Ukraine? It isn't the Rape you mentioned but you've heard of these atrocities, I am sure.

Originally Posted by deb4953

Whatever become of the lawsuit the three Korean women filed?

Still on going Deb...


3/19/2007
MANILA: The tears trickle down Virginia Villarma’s weathered face as she recalls the day back in 1943 when she lost her youth and her innocence.

Sent out by her aunt to get some food she was attacked by a group of Japanese soldiers on a suburban Manila street and tossed like an animal into the back of a jeep.

Then just 14 years old, she was taken to a barracks in the port area and thrown into a bare room where she was stripped and raped repeatedly by soldiers, three or four at a time.

At first she screamed and tried to fight off her attackers but they punched and kicked her tiny body until she passed out. When Villarma awoke the room was silent but the pain has stayed with her for ever.

That is when my hell began, the soft-spoken 78-year-old grandmother told AFP as she wrapped and unwrapped a pink handkerchief around her fingers. Occasionally she would stop and take off her gold rimmed glasses and dab her eyes.

I want people to know what happened to us back then and why we who are left will never give up until Japan formally apologises to all of us living and dead for what they did.

For three months I was abused from morning to night. They were the longest three months of my life. An allied bombing raid saved Villarma from more abuse and in the confusion she managed to escape but her life had been changed forever.

In later years, when her husband found out she had been a sex slave for the Japanese, he walked out on her and their five children.

When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told parliament earlier this month there was no evidence Japanese troops forced sex slaves into brothels during the Second World War he again turned the spotlight on a large group of women who have become known as the forgotten ones. They came from many parts of Asia, some are now dead, many could never marry because of the shame, some were so brutalised they could never have children while others just shut themselves away from society all together.

Japan would prefer to ignore this part of its war time history but grey haired women like Villarma and her friend Simeona Ramil, 79, also brutalised as a sex slave, will never allow Japan to forget.

From Indonesia to China as many as 200,000 women, some as young as 12, were used as sex slaves according to a report by Amnesty International in 2005.

Despite the widespread prevalence of what was essentially institutionalised rape the issue of comfort women was ignored by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East that was established after the war to prosecute Japanese war criminals.

He played with me as a cat would with a mouse. For decades these women remained silent hoping the nightmares would go away. Only in the 1990s did survivors start to speak out about their ordeal.

Women like Jan Ruff, born in Java in 1923 in what was then known as the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), has become an international advocate for the protection of women in war. She was 19 when the Japanese invaded Indonesia.

Together with thousands of women and children she was interned in a prison camp for three and a half years.

Many stories have been told about the horrors, brutalities, suffering and starvation of Dutch women in Japanese prison camps, she told the US House of Representatives hearing on Protecting the Human Rights of Comfort Women in February.

But one story was never told, the most shameful story of the worst human rights abuse committed by the Japanese during World War II the story of the comfort women and how these women were forcibly seized against their will, to provide sexual services for the Japanese Imperial Army.

Now living in Australia where she has a grown family, Ruff told how in 1944 high ranking Japanese officers arrived at the camp and selected 10 pretty girls.

I was one of the 10, she said. Despite protests from their families the girls were packed into the back of a truck and driven to a Dutch colonial house used by the Japanese as a brothel.

We were a very innocent generation, she told the congressmen. I knew nothing about sex. The horrific memories of opening night of the brothel have tortured my mind all my life.

We were told to go to the dining room, and we huddled together in fear, as we saw the house filling up with military. I got out my prayer book and led the girls in prayer in the hope that this would help us.

Then they started to drag us away, one by one. I could hear the screaming coming from the bedrooms. I hid under the table, but was soon found. I fought him. I kicked him with all my might.

The Japanese officer became angry because I would not give myself to him. He took his sword out of its scabbard and pointed it at me, threatening me. I curled myself into a corner, like a hunted animal that could not escape.

He then threw me on the bed and ripped off all my clothes. He ran his sword all over my naked body, and played with me as a cat would with a mouse.

I still tried to fight him, but he thrust himself on top of me, pinning me down under his heavy body. The tears were streaming down my face as he raped me in a most brutal way. I thought he would never stop.

When he eventually left the room, my whole body was shaking. I gathered up what was left of my clothing, and fled into the bathroom.

There I found some of the other girls. We were all crying, and in total shock. In the bathroom I tried to wash away all the dirt and the shame off my body. Just wash it away.

But the night was not over, there were more Japanese waiting, and this went on all night. It was only the beginning, week after week, month after month.

Gil Won-Ock, an 80-year-old South Korean woman, still suffers from flashbacks and nightmares.

Whenever those vivid, terrifying memories are brought back my heart beats suddenly and I cannot breathe, she told AFP, gasping for breath.

She said Abe only added insult to injury when he questioned whether comfort women were forced to serve as wartime sex slaves. Japanese denials add to decades of silent agony. How could a human being say things like that? she asked.

Gil is among a handful of former comfort women who have been meeting outside the Japanese embassy in central Seoul every Wednesday for the past 15 years in a vigil to press Tokyo to officially apologise and pay compensation.

Gil was 13 years old when she was lured by bogus promises of work at a factory and confined to a shack near a Japanese military barracks in the north eastern part of China that housed many other Chinese and Korean girls.

Because of the infections in the wounds I received in the productive organ, I had to undergo operations four times and had my womb removed, Gil said.

Lee Yong-Soo was 16 when she was kidnapped in the south eastern Korean city of Daegu by a Japanese soldier in 1944 and shipped to a brothel in Taiwan. She was raped, beaten and tortured with electricity when she attempted to escape.

thenews.com

Though thankfully none of my relatives were kidnapped from their families to 'comfort' the Japanese, it was a rather huge outrage in the Philippines.

I'm half Filipino, and though I'm born here in the USA, I still hear from my Mom about how her parents had to hide from the Japanese during their raids. It's because of these atrocities that no one on my Mom's side of the family like the Japanese. Even though the War is long gone, the memories of that time continue to live.

It's also shameful the way the present Japanese government seems to sidetracked the issue. The survivors still deals with horrific memories. They've been called Comfort Women, an intended irony? I better like the term "The Forgotten Ones." We can always forgive, but we will never forget.

Wow! I've heard about it, but since the Japanese govt. didnt seem to admit it's fault until recently, there hasnt been much press coverage on the issue here. Sounds awful. Those poor women will be scarred mentally their whole lives. Shouldnt the Japanese govt. be forced to pay compensation to all those women?

That is horrible, but it does not surprise me thinkgs like that happened back then. To answer the question about the far east...Women wereand in some places are, second class citizens, therefore they could be used in any matter they saw fit. Wasit outrageous, yes, even by their standards, but it is not surprising.