Comfort Women

Comfort women, or military comfort women, is a euphemistic term (translated from jugun ianfu in Japanese) used to describe females who were forced into sexual slavery to provide “comfort” in the form of sexual services to Japanese Imperial Army troops during World War II. Estimates of the number of women [Page 151]involved range from 80,000 to 200,000, with the majority being from Korea. Women from Japan, Taiwan, and other Asian countries were also used as comfort women. The Japanese government has not offered an official apology or compensation, though surviving comfort women and their supporters have mobilized in a quest for justice.

From 1932 until the end of the war, comfort women were held in “comfort stations” established by the Japanese military. Women were lured by false promises of employment or were kidnapped by the Japanese. They were subjected to continual rapes and were beaten or murdered if they resisted. At the end of World War II, many were executed.

In anticipation of soldiers committing random sexual assaults, government officials set up the comfort stations to enhance the morale of Japanese soldiers. The government also had an interest in keeping soldiers healthy and wanted sexual services under controlled conditions. The women serving as sexual slaves were regularly tested for sexually transmitted diseases and infections.

The women who survived suffered physical maladies, psychological illnesses, and rejection from their families and communities. The Korean government set up the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan after initial Japanese denial of responsibility. The council asked for an admittance, an apology, a memorial, and financial compensation and that Japanese textbooks be appropriately altered to reflect the realities of the sexual slavery. The Japanese government denied evidence of coercing comfort women and rejected calls for compensation, saying that the 1965 treaty between Japan and South Korea settled all outstanding matters.

The issue of comfort women gained international awareness in 1991, when the surviving women filed a class action lawsuit against the Japanese government. The women and their supporters sued for compensation on the grounds of human rights violations. The lawsuit is not yet resolved.

In 1993, the Japanese government unofficially admitted to deception in the recruitment of comfort women. While to date, the Japanese government denies any legal responsibility for the sexual assaults and other crimes it perpetrated against these women and refuses to compensate the survivors, it set up the Asian Women's Fund as an attempt at resolution. This fund, however, is sustained from donations from private citizens, not government monies. Today, comfort women continue to gain support and fight for compensation and an official apology from the Japanese government.