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Just in case your week has been a lit­tle too care­free so far, here’s a brief report I did for school on the “com­fort women” enslaved by Japan dur­ing WWII. I have noth­ing to say other than, if there is a hell, the peo­ple respon­si­ble for this belong there.

Japan’s Asian Women’s Fund: Repa­ra­tions to the “Com­fort Women”

Con­text & Injury:
Begin­ning around 1940, Japan found its WWII sol­diers alarm­ingly prone to com­mit rape and con­tract STDs, so it pur­pose­fully under­took a cam­paign to estab­lish many addi­tional “com­fort sta­tions” (military-affiliated broth­els) through­out the Asia/Pacific region. These broth­els were typ­i­cally houses of rape, tor­ture, and enslave­ment. “Com­fort women” (the enslaved pros­ti­tutes) were often mis­led into think­ing they were to be employed as nurses or other ser­vice per­son­nel. Some­times they were out­right kid­napped. At the com­fort sta­tions, they endured many (10–30) daily rapes, vio­lence at the hands of sol­diers and oth­ers, and a lack of med­ical treat­ment and even food.

Vic­tims:
There were as many as 200,000 com­fort women, taken from Korea, China, the Dutch East Indies, Tai­wan, Malaysia, Burma and the Philip­pines, and sta­tioned wher­ever the Japan­ese came to occupy Asia dur­ing WWII. Only about 25% sur­vived their servi­tude, with the pri­mary causes of death being both ill­ness and mur­der.  Unfor­tu­nately, it has been dif­fi­cult for inter­ested par­ties to gen­er­ate accu­rate sta­tis­tics about the com­fort women.

Per­pe­tra­tors:
The com­fort women were raped by enlisted and civil­ian men affil­i­ated with the Japan­ese  mil­i­tary. Some broth­els were run by civil­ians who were com­plicit in the wrongdoing.

Respon­si­ble Par­ties:
While Japan­ese mil­i­tary and gov­ern­ment offi­cials may not have them­selves have patron­ized the com­fort sta­tions, they are respon­si­ble inso­far they devel­oped and approved the plan to estab­lish them in a grossly self-defeating attempt to curb the inci­dences of rape and STDs.

Nature of Repa­ra­tions Sought & Given:
Begin­ning in 1991, a small group of for­mer com­fort women began to come for­ward to tell their sto­ries and file their griev­ances in court. Evi­dence sup­port­ing the women’s sto­ries began to emerge. The rel­a­tively few remain­ing liv­ing for­mer com­fort women sought for the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment offi­cially to accept respon­si­bil­ity, apol­o­gize and offer com­pen­sa­tion, but it was loath to do any of these things.

Agent/Entity Mak­ing Repa­ra­tion:
Ulti­mately, the issue was han­dled by an agency called the Asian Women’s Fund, which processed the claims of for­mer com­fort women between 1995 and 2007.

Success/Failure:
The Asian Women’s Fund was very con­tro­ver­sial and enjoyed only lim­ited suc­cess. Some com­fort house deniers and apol­o­gists took issue with the AWF’s attempt to pro­vide any sem­blance of an apol­ogy or proper com­pen­sa­tion to the for­mer com­fort women. On the other hand, many were unhappy that the apol­ogy was not made in an offi­cial enough capac­ity, and that much of the AWF’s fund­ing came from pri­vate char­i­ta­ble dona­tions instead of directly from the state. Approx­i­mately half of the liv­ing for­mer com­fort women refused to par­tic­i­pate in the AWF pro­gram. Some of those who were cit­i­zens of coun­tries other than Japan were eli­gi­ble to receive com­pen­sa­tion from their local gov­ern­ments instead of from the AWF.

Legal Issues:
Japan’s responses to the legal issues sur­round­ing the com­fort women really added insult to injury. Three coun­ter­ar­gu­ments to demands for repa­ra­tions were offered. First, Japan claimed that the treaties it signed around the end­ing of the war exhausted its oblig­a­tions to the com­fort women. This is not an accept­able argu­ment because the crimes against human­ity of enslave­ment, rape and tor­ture are taken so seri­ously by inter­na­tional cus­tom­ary law that treaty pro­vi­sions dis­miss­ing them would be void. Addi­tion­ally, many of the women were not Japan­ese and were there­fore not even loosely a party to the treaties (which were really amongst states and not pri­vate indi­vid­u­als any­way). Sec­ond, Japan argued that the pas­sage of time imposed a de facto statute of lim­i­ta­tions on the repa­ra­tions. This too is an unac­cept­able argu­ment, because Japan was actu­ally in a much bet­ter to posi­tion to offer suf­fi­cient repa­ra­tions after the war had been long over. Fur­ther­more, a major rea­son it took so long to uncover the crimes was because Japan was keep­ing evi­dence from the pub­lic, so it would be a mis­car­riage of jus­tice to absolve it from duties of repa­ra­tion as a reward. Third, Japan argued that the sheer num­ber of vic­tims and claims was so pro­hib­i­tive that a full-scale repa­ra­tions process would not be pos­si­ble. This is false on its face, for Ger­many was able to do so on even a larger scale, and any­way a wrong­do­ing party should not be able to jus­tify its way into immu­nity by harm­ing addi­tional victims.

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