THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 22, 1995 TAG: 9511220062
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY ANN EGERTON
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines
FROM MANCHURIA to Mandalay, from Micronesia to Manila, Japanese military authorities forced as many as 139,000 women - 200,000, according to some sources - into sexual slavery during World War II, actually from 1932 to 1945.
The women, many in their early teens, were called ``comfort women.'' A large majority of them were Korean. Taking the ``boys will be boys'' bromide to a grotesque, vicious and official extreme, the idea behind the policy was to boost the morale of Japanese servicemen and help them maintain their fighting spirit.
The spirit of the captured women of the new Japanese Empire was expendable and broken. They were kidnapped, raped and mutilated and forced to service up to 30 men a day. If they protested or resisted, they were beaten or killed. They were given two days off a month for menstruation, but some were sterilized to avoid that nuisance altogether. They were certainly aborted if they got pregnant, and, although the men were supposed to wear condoms, many of the women got venereal diseases. Many committed suicide.
In his book, ``The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution'' (W.W. Norton. 275 pp. $25), George Hicks, an Australian writer, includes translated testimony of many of the now elderly women, and their stories are heart-breaking. Yes, soldiers have had prostitutes at their disposal since war's beginnings, but never before had their procurement and operation been military policy.
Because the victims were afraid to come forward, only recently has the Japanese government been pressured to admit its policy of forced prostitution. The comfort women were embarrassed and ashamed by their prostitution of so long ago, even though it was coerced. They were afraid to discuss it, much less demand compensation from the Japanese government.
As Hicks explains, ``in a society dominated by patriarchal views of chastity and morality, and a lack of openness about sex, the shame of the whole repugnant experience silenced the women.'' Many of them were rejected by their husbands and children after the war upon learning of their involvement; one Dutch woman who had been forced into prostitution in Indonesia was forbidden by the Church to finish taking her vows as a nun.
The feminist movement gradually reached Asia in the 1980s and 1990s, and with it came efforts, largely through South Korean women's groups, to demand admissions of guilt, apology and compensation from the Japanese government. This was incredibly difficult because talking about any aspect of the war is almost taboo in Japan; while everyone knew about the comfort women, no one spoke of them.
After many lawsuits, after irrefutable documentation was produced, and after corroboration by former Japanese comfort women, the Japanese government, as reported in The New York Times, ``announced the establishment of a fund to help tens of thousands of women whom the Japanese army forced to be sex slaves during the war . . . on the basis of our remorse for the past on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the war.'' The government did not admit its involvement until 1992.
Nearly half of Hick's book concerns the arduous campaign to bring the Japanese government to justice, and it is suffocatingly dry and detailed, needing a lighter and clearer touch. Also, ``Comfort Women'' cries out for a map to show the extent of the Japanese Empire and concomitant military-run brothels. Nevertheless, it tells a story that must be told, for the sake of women everywhere. by CNB