April 25, 2016 • 50 mins
During World War II, Japanese military life included sexual slavery. Cristen and Caroline trace the traumatic history of "comfort women" survivors and why they'll never stop protesting.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from how stupp
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And today's episode happened all because
a relatively small group of much older women, largely from
(00:24):
Korea and the Philippines, have been making global headlines. Yeah. So,
back in December, the governments of Japan and South Korea
came to an agreement to sort of, I don't know,
apologize for and try to compensate survivors of the comfort
(00:49):
women system of basically sex slavery during World War Two.
But the women who were making headlines, the ones Kristen
is referring to, our women who have already been protesting
the treatment of comfort women during World War Two for
decades and are fed up with the sort of softball
(01:13):
approach that both Japan and South Korea have taken to
compensating them for their suffering during the war. And so
you have a lot of women now saying that the
agreement that was reached between Japan and South Korea in
December is not good enough. Well, yeah, because the core
group of those protesters are survivors from the comfort women's system. Um,
(01:38):
and a lot of them are dying at this point,
you know, and it's starting to feel like the Japanese
and South Korean governments are almost just putting it off
and putting it off and putting it off until all
of them passed away so that they don't have to
deal with the issue like right and front of their
(02:00):
faces in the morm of like these women who understandably
will not let the trauma that happened to them go.
And speaking of trauma, we should issue uh trigger warning
at this point to say that we will be talking
about rape and sexual slavery in this episode. Um, so
(02:21):
let's talk about how all of this happened, Caroline, because
this is such a a gruesome chapter in our like
military global military history, but um something that's really important
for all of us to know about. Yeah, so, just
to give you a little background, between nineteen thirty two
and nineteen forty five, there were tens of thousands of women,
(02:44):
many of them Korean, but also Japanese, Filipino, Taiwanese, Chinese
and Dutch who were sold, coerced, or otherwise forced into
prostitution in officially sanctioned Japanese brothels. And they were EU
famistly called comfort women, and there's been some really interesting
arguments over language over the years. UM. The Japanese did
(03:08):
coin the comfort woman term, but other women have come
out since then, particularly survivors, and said we weren't comfort women,
we were sex slaves. And still other women have taken
issue with the term sex slaves to say that they
were forced prostitutes. But whatever you call them, there were
(03:29):
between twenty thousand and four hundred thousand of them from
that nineteen thirty two to nineteen period, but most ranges
put the number at fifty to two hundred thousand. And
the brothels, where a lot of them were forcibly taken
between the ages of U thirteen in some extreme cases,
(03:51):
but usually around the age of twenty. Those brothels were
called comfort stations. UM. And these survivors are now in
their eighties and nineties, the ones who are still alive,
and for years so after this, protests have been happening
weekly outside the Japanese embassy and sold demanding that apology
(04:12):
that UM. You know, the Japanese and South Korean leaders
are slowly maybe kind of starting to hash out UM
and there is a lot of diplomatic controversy though that
we'll get into more later about those protests in a statue,
a statue that the protesters erected in front of that
(04:32):
Japanese embassy um of a girl with a bird on
her shoulder who represents all of those comfort women. So
what went down for a little more detail, um in
December was Japan and South Korea reaching agreement that Japan
would apologize and pay one billion yen to fund survivors,
(04:56):
and that translates to eight point three million dollars in
South Korea at Japan's request, would look into and quotes
taking down that statue that has been up since. But
the thing is, the women aren't going to receive direct compensation, okay.
The deal says that the money will quote unquote support
(05:18):
the women and fund projects for recovering the honor and
dignity and healing the psychological wounds that took place because
of the comfort woman's system. So kind of again being
almost euphemistic and talking around the problem. And so, like
we hinted out, a lot of survivors are protesting the deal,
saying that South Korea's president negotiated it on their behalf
(05:42):
and without their consent, and these women are saying that
the deal lacked sincerity and any official accountability on either
country's part. And you know what all of us reminds
me of, um, And it's a comparison that's on a
much smaller scale, arguably than than this kind of uh
we were to atrocity is the NFL's response to domestic
(06:04):
violence and how they similarly sort of set up a
pool of money that would go to this vague cause
of helping you know, survivors heal, but you you don't
really know what that actually means. Um. And speaking of
(06:25):
the money, a lot of these survivors are insisting that
it's not even about that. Um. This is something that
an eight eight year old survivor, Lee Wang Sue said,
um quote. I wonder whether the talks took place with
the victims really in mind. We're not after the money.
If the Japanese committed their sins, they should offer direct
(06:46):
government compensation and they want that sincere apology and for
in that apology for what happened to them to be named. Yeah.
And so some of the more recent news though, is
that as of early April, there's been no money. No
money has shown up, and it's not entirely the fault
of Japan. It seems to be sort of fault on
(07:06):
both sides because in early April, the leaders of Japan
and South Korea met again again, agreeing to implement this deal.
But the whole agreement was that South Korea would first
set up a foundation to accept the money, and they
haven't done that yet. So, you know, we're in twenty sixteen.
This happened leading up to and during World War Two
(07:29):
and they're still there. Still hasn't really been a direct resolution,
and this isn't the first time that unsatisfying deals have
been struck in the name of these women. Back in
nineteen sixty five, Japan gave more than eight hundred million
dollars in economic aid and loans to South Korea, but
none of that was specifically addressing comfort women, and Japan
(07:52):
did acknowledge its responsibility and apologized in a nineteen ninety
three statement which the government it since has actively tried
to water down. And a private fund that was established
in n for the survivors was funded largely by private
and citizen donations, although the Japanese government did contribute a
(08:15):
few million, and in the same way, Caroline that that
we've seen, say, in the United States holocaust deniers. Um
you have in incident, when a mention of comfort women
in I think it was Japanese textbooks, apparently quote sparked
a strong wave of masculinist nationalism. According to author C.
(08:39):
Sarah So, that resulted in an anti comfort women campaign,
which essentially dismissed them as just a group of willing
prostitutes who should not be trusted or believed. And they
just followed the military around just like groupies, that's all.
There was no coercion involved. Yeah, And lest you think
(09:01):
this was just a bunch of maybe angry male citizens
saying this. Uh. This was basically the official stance of
the Japanese president in twelve when he and four future
cabinet members placed an ad in a New Jersey newspaper
decrying a new comfort woman memorial that had been erected
(09:21):
in a largely Korean neighborhood in New Jersey. And in
addition to saying like, gee, I wish you hadn't done that,
New Jersey Korean community, they at the time and since
have proceeded to paint Japan as the victim of almost
slander for people even wanting to talk about comfort women.
(09:43):
But one thing that documentary and Tiffany Schung has emphasized
about the stories of the surviving comfort women, whom she
calls the Grandmas, and she's making an entire documentary about
them called The Apology. Um. She's emphasized how this isn't
just about them, it's about all survivors of sexual assault. Um.
(10:07):
She said, this apology that they're fighting for is really
for all of us. We need this apology as a
society that has faced injustice, specifically women who have faced
sexual violence. Yeah. And the director said that she was
able to form this bond with these Filipino Grandma's as
(10:27):
she calls them, because she herself had been a victim
of sexual violence. And so there was this fabulous article
that we read not only about Shun's film The Apology,
but also her experience meeting and bonding with these women. Uh.
And the importance of having women tell women's stories, because yes,
the comfort women's stories have absolutely been told. The history
(10:50):
is out there. But as the author of the article
and as Son points out, there's there's a division there
when you have men telling the story of these intense,
private women who have been essentially abused and neglected their
entire lives. Um. And so I am, I'm really excited
that this documentary is coming out. And uh, like Kristen said,
(11:13):
it is perfect timing because there's there is a sense
of urgency to to get that apology and to honor
these women. So now we have to talk about how
this system even worked too fully, understand why these women
need this apology so badly. Um. But before we get
(11:36):
to World War two, we have to go back to
the late nineteenth century when Korea signed a treaty with
Japan after an incident between a Korean garrison and a
Japanese warship. And this treaty would eventually open the door
for Japan to annex Korea as a colony in nineteen ten.
And with all of this, you have elements of racism, classism,
(11:59):
and essentially violent masculinity, all creating building up this comfort
women's system. Yeah, and so you get licensed prostitution first
emerging in a Korean port city where Japan had established
a settlement, and the bigger the Japanese military presence, the
more pleasure houses spring up to serve them. Um. A
(12:24):
lot of the women who were working in these brothels
basically were Japanese and they had been duped. Right off
the bat, you get coercion and deception. They had been
duped by recruiters who told them that, well, you'll just
likely be a second tier geisha essentially when you travel
to Korea, not a prostitute. So right off the bat
you get the theme of lying to women to convince
(12:46):
them to be sex workers. Um after annexation in nineteen ten,
up until nineteen fifteen, the number of Korean prostitutes skyrockets
compared to a relatively small increase of Japanese prostitutes in Korea.
And in nineteen sixteen we get some regulations. That's great, right,
(13:07):
that's positive, regulations helpful, well kind of, but not really.
The colonial government in Korea called for regulations of prostitution
only out of fears over venereal diseases. But it's not
like it improved working conditions for these women, which were horrendous,
(13:28):
and it didn't change the fact that thirteen year old
girls and many of these brothels were the most popular
with the Japanese soldiers and overall, when you look at
the entire population of prostitutes in Korea, Korean sex workers
skewed way younger and earned way less than their Japanese coworkers,
(13:49):
many of whom had already worked in the adult entertainment
industry in Japan, as opposed to the Korean women, many
of whom had sort of been forced into this line
of work because of difficult financial times they were sustaining
because of absent husbands. So in Japan, signs and international
(14:09):
treaty banning the trafficking of women and girls, okay, seems
like another good thing, kind of like those colonial regulations,
but it includes a provision to allow the practice to
continue in the colonies. So eventually Korean women become known
as the industrial comfort women in Japan and China, and
(14:31):
by their early thirties there were about one hundred Korean
women per month who were sold overseas and it was
pretty much a normal part of life. And by the
mid thirties, forty percent of Koreans had stephilis. And then
in nineteen thirty two we get the first official military
comfort station. Yeah, so as early as nineteen thirty two,
(14:52):
after there were hostilities between Japan and China and Shanghai,
you get Japan establishing comfort stations for their troops in China.
And these first military sanctioned sex slaves, I mean that's
what they were, were Korean women who had been living
in Japan. They were sent to this area around Shanghai,
(15:15):
and they were sent because the commanding officer had ordered
the governor in that region of Japan to send them.
They were sent for as if they were rations for
the troops to live on. And the reasoning was that
a formal system of controlled prostitution would result in a
(15:36):
reduced number of rape reports in the area where the
Japanese Imperial Army was based, and it would serve to
control venereal diseases. So the answer to preventing men from
raping is to enslave other women. And here is the
thing that listeners should keep in mind. Not to give
(15:57):
away too much about our next podcast this episode coming out,
but this idea, this whole concept of you know, the
military's coming in, rape reports go up, so we need
to just bring in prostitutes of some sort so that
men can these soldiers can relieve their their check sexual needs.
(16:18):
That is not exclusive to Japan. This is something that
happened in militaries including the US of A, all all
throughout this time. But I don't want to get to
ahead of myself. Let's go back to UH ninety seven,
when the comfort station system was revived after Japan captures
(16:42):
the Chinese city of Nanking during the Nanking Massacre, which
included six weeks of rape and murder. So again, how
do we maintain discipline and morale? I mean, all of
these atrocities are going on. Oh that comfort station system
thing from nine thirty two, that that kept the soldiers
(17:02):
pretty happy. Yeah, and so over the course of just
a few weeks, the Japanese had used their trade contacts. Again,
it's disgusting to think of just using trade contacts the
way you would try to, like ship in weapons and
military supplies to access women. Uh, but also used deception.
(17:22):
They promised women jobs as cooks and laundresses for the army,
just to get as many women as possible. And this
particular station that was set up in the wake of
the Nanking massacre was a prototype for later stations which
opened and were overseen by the military, but they were
(17:43):
also run by civilians who were more than happy to
earn money and paramilitary rank in doing so. You were
awarded paramilitary rank if you as a citizen ran a
military brothel, and in Korea, those civilians were largely of
Korean men and women who helped lure the girls for
(18:03):
the Japanese. Yeah, that was one thing, Caroline that jumped
out to me when we were reading a first hand
account of one of these women who had been lied to.
She thought she was going to get a factory job
and she ends up on a boat where she sort
of passed along to a couple like a man duding
a lady who were you know, tricking her into doing
(18:25):
all of this. Um, And it's just it's the whole
thing is it's really hard to wrap your mind around sometimes. Um.
But if we go too we see this whole system
being rewarded over and over again. For instance, a Japanese
Navy lieutenant was stationed in Borneo and he was fed
(18:48):
up with air field construction work being stalled because all
the dudes were just like fighting, gambling, uh, sexually assaulting women.
It was just pandemonium. And rather than figuring out a
way to discipline these soldiers, they're like, huh oh yeah,
(19:08):
comfort stations. So you have Lieutenant u Shiro Nakasone organizing
a comfort station with four Indonesian women, and he found
that it quote mitigated the mood of his soldiers so
well that later a naval report commended him for implementing
(19:28):
this comfort station. Um. But there is sort of an
awkward side note to this, uh nakasone. That same lieutenant
was Prime Minister of Japan from two to seven, and
in October his son became chair of a commission established
to quote consider concrete measures to restore Japan's honor with
(19:49):
regard to the comfort women issue um and nakasone. If
I'm remembering correctly, the former prime minister Um not his
son wrote a memo war Confirming, in which he did
confirm all of these comfort women's um testimonies which had
previously been been doubted. Well, I mean he'd he'd been
(20:10):
commended for it and had become prime ministers, so I
mean he he essentially had nothing to lose by confirming
this stuff. But I mean it seemed like, I don't know,
in the not that it makes it okay, but in
the way I was reading about his memoir, it didn't
sound bragging at all, but rather I mean remorseful. I mean,
(20:32):
he knew it was messed up. Yeah, well it is
uh And writing about this whole situation with Nakistani they
The New York Times wrote that his decision to provide
comfort women to his troops was then replicated by thousands
of Imperial Japanese Army and Navy officers across the region,
(20:52):
both before and during World War Two as a matter
of policy. So all across the region, they wrote, women
were treated it as the first reward of conquest. Again,
women were objects. They were nothing but military rations. Yeah,
I mean, and because of that, they were doled out
(21:13):
as officially as say, you know in MRI E. So
you have the Army and Navy trafficking young women, putting
them in specially built facilities, establishing a fee structure for
comfort station clients, and providing medical inspections to lower the
rates of STDs. And if you're thinking WTF, because I
(21:35):
hope you are, you should be. I mean, just look
at the underlying attitude. The military thought that sex was
good for morale, and that at least by having a
system of controlled prostitution, they could limit STD transmission, like
you said, and therefore keep men happier and in the
field longer. And keep in mind that as all of
(21:56):
this is going on. Armies in Europe and the United
States are doing the same kinds of things. Yeah, but
I mean this was as official a part of the
war effort as you can get if we jump back
to nine. One source we read said that Japan's war
machine rested squarely on the contributions of Korean migrant laborers overseas. UH.
(22:19):
The colonial Korean government required Korean men sixteen to forty
and unmarried Korean women sixteen to twenty five to enroll
as a potential labor supply. They did not require the
same thing of Japanese women, though, because those women, as
part of the war effort, were expected to stay home
and pop out more Japanese babies. Now and rolling as
(22:41):
a potential labor supply and in rolling to contribute to
the war effort as a Korean woman did not mean
the same thing as it did in the United States,
where we're cheering on Rosie riveters and the like. UH.
In nineteen forty four, you get the creation of the
Women's Volunteer Labor Corps with both Korean and Japanese women. UH.
(23:02):
It's not entirely clear how many women were part of
this core UH. And while some you know, did become secretaries,
They did paperwork, they sewed uniforms. Others were sent like
cattle to the front lines to be comfort women. And
the core quickly in people's minds became associated with prostitution.
(23:26):
And I mean if women volunteered for the war effort,
and I mean they thought they were volunteering for the
war effort, not to be prostitutes, and they didn't show
up for duty. This official system of volunteering allowed police
officials to go to women's homes and enforce their service,
essentially show up at their house and drag them away
(23:47):
service and quotes as in sex slavery. Yeah, and I mean, granted,
it wasn't only Korean women being victimized, as we mentioned
at the top of the podcast. It was essentially anywhere
occupied by Japan's in imperial military. But they weren't all
from Asian countries. Um, this was sort of unexpected to me.
You also had Dutch boys, girls, men, and women seized
(24:10):
from internment camps in the Dutch East Indies now part
of Indonesia to satisfy really arrange of sexual preferences. And
you have a lot of instances of Dutch mothers in
these internment camps, trading sex for food, trading sex for
protection of their children. And one Dutch now Australian, she
(24:31):
and her husband live in Australia. Activist is Jan Ruff O'Hearn,
who at nineties three is still actively fighting for apologies
and fighting for a visibility for these survivors. And she
was one of those young Dutch women forced into sex slavery.
But she's one of those who definitely says comfort women
is an insult to call us comfort women. That's not
(24:53):
what we were. But there are so many racist and
classist overtones in this whole discussion. And because the Dutch
government wanted to punish the prostitution of their women, but
not necessarily because these were human rights violations. More because
these women were upper class and white, and you just
(25:15):
simply can't have Asian men touching and abusing white women.
I mean, you also have instances of British and Australian women.
There was a hospital ship that wrecked off of Sumatra
and they were essentially given the choice by their captors
of starving in a pow camp or being sent to brothels. Yeah,
I mean, and and the horrifying thing about all of
(25:36):
this is that wherever you are on the map, like,
you can't talk about women in war time and not
talk about rape. Yeah, you know, I mean it's it's
it's a fact, and it always always happens. But in
the case of the comfort women who were exploited by Japan,
(25:58):
the majority worker in and we are going to talk
more about some of these social and cultural systems that
allowed this to perpetuate when we come right back from
a quick break. So, Caroline, Mother's Day is coming up,
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want to give a little bit of a cultural context
to what was happening in Korea along with the rise
(28:09):
of comfort women, and we are citing research from see
Sarah So who we decided earlier. She wrote The Comfort
Women's Sexual Violence and post Colonial Memory in Korea and Japan,
and she writes about how the rise of forced prostitution
among Korean women coincided with many breaking away from Confucian
(28:30):
morays and what we're called the three obediences, which was
obedience to father, to husband, and once widowed, obedience to
your son in favor of being a new woman, you know,
kind of the new woman in quotes like we saw
here in the United States around the nine twenties and thirties, um,
and we have more of these Korean new women striking
(28:54):
out in pursuit of an education, a job, or simply
to escape a bad home situation. They wanted to make
new lives for themselves. Yeah, and I mean class definitely
enters into this situation because a lot of these women
were poor. They were working with their impoverished families on farms,
and they wanted to go to Japan to get those
well paying and high paying factory jobs. Ensure there were
(29:15):
some women who actually did get those jobs, not to
mention women who became doctors, teachers, reporters, waitresses, you name it.
But and this is really no different than the quote
unquote new woman in America striking out and getting those jobs.
You were still expected to be a sexually attractive young
thing to go get a job outside the home. But
(29:37):
many of the male factory recruiters who visited these small
towns looking for women, of course, weren't actually trying to
find factory girls. They were there to take women away
from their homes straight to these military brothels, and in
a lot of cases, they didn't have to work hard.
(30:00):
There are stories about these recruiters presenting young girls who
really didn't know any better with a package of new, fancy,
modern clothes and shoes, promising them a better life, like here,
look at this great outfit, Like this is all the
rage and the big city. Don't you want to come
work in these factories so you can make money to
buy more of these clothes and wear them all around town.
(30:22):
And so you have these girls who've never been away
from home, never been outside their villages, don't have much education,
and certainly don't have much life experience outside of the farm,
and they were easily dooped, especially especially and this is
so it's just the rain clouds keep getting bigger, especially
(30:43):
because local authorities and even teachers, people that these girls
grew up knowing and trusting, were sometimes in on the
recruitment efforts, and these efforts were huge just in order
to keep up with demand as more soldiers for station
and overseas, and they used violence, deception, coercion, including attacking
(31:05):
and killing family members who tried to protect the girls.
I mean, you also have situations where they would come
in rape the girl in front of her parents before
taking her away. So I mean it just horrors on
top of horrors. Um and many of the girls had
already been prostituted and abused multiple times by their own
(31:26):
families as well. Yeah and so so. The author so
writes that yes, Japan's colonialism absolutely perpetuated this system, and undoubtedly,
she wrote, facilitated the large scale victimization of tens of
thousands of Korean women who suffered an unspeakable sexual ordeal
(31:47):
and ethnic discrimination. However, she writes that their lifelong sufferings
are more complex, and what makes them more complex is
the gender based violence it was tolerated in They're already
patriarchal home and family structures, and they themselves in Korea
were quote steeped in masculinist sexual culture and so a
(32:11):
lot of times money for the family and men's sexual
drives and dominance were more important than women's health and
safety and agency. And a lot of families would sell
their daughters for years at a time, and this is
outside of the Japanese soldiers even taking them. They would
(32:33):
prostitute their daughters for four to seven years at a time,
usually getting to take a cut of whatever their daughters
earned in the brothels. So once we get into the
comfort stations, what was going on, Well, we know details
about life in there because it was highly regulated and maintained.
(32:54):
You have the Japanese military meticulously recording details of this
system um that really appeared to be regarded as just
another amenity of military life. So you have the rules
for comfort stations in places like Shanghai, Okinawa and other
parts of Japan and China and the Philippines that still survived,
(33:14):
detailing rules for hygiene, hours of service, contraception, payment of women,
and prohibitions of alcohol and weapons. Um. So even though
brothels already existed in Japan, there was license prostitution, you
still had these comfort stations. It was like again, that's
(33:36):
where the amenity factor comes, and it's like, oh, well
here's here's a bonus um and all of those regulations
don't even make all that much sense. You know, it's
obviously a good idea to keep booze and weapons out
of there, but the attempt to impose fear, treatment and
decorum are in stark contrast to the brutality that these
(33:59):
women reported. And the significance of this documentation is that
it really shows not only how widespread this comfort woman
practice was and how deeply rudeed it was, but also
how legitimized it was. I mean, they're, like Kristen said,
the Japanese are providing comfort stations, even in Japan where
they were already brothels and houses of pleasure, because it
(34:24):
was regulated. It was like, Okay, you've got to go
to the doctor, and then you've got to go visit
the comfort station because you know, it's regulated and more
quote unquote hygienic than I guess going to your average
Japanese brothel. And to get a glimpse into sort of
the range of experiences that women had at these places,
it was common for some, not all, to have quote
(34:46):
unquote day jobs. Uh they might be working in the fields, farming, Uh,
they might be cooking, digging trenches, et cetera, only to
then start their night job where they were raped all
night long. Uh. Their movement was restricted, they lived behind
barbed wire, they were guarded, they had no free time,
(35:07):
and many of the women the first hand accounts after
the war described barely even having time to wash themselves
and the places that they would do. All of this varied.
I mean, it might have been building taken over by
the military. It might be a makeshift structure. They would
create rooms and quotes by just hanging mats up as dividers,
(35:31):
and there was really only room for a mattress on
the floor. There was no protection from the heat or cold,
and healthcare was provided but only for treating STDs. Physical
injuries like bruises, cuts and burns were simply dismissed. And
I mean, of course, it's worth noting that these bruises,
cuts and burns were from the soldiers. They weren't just
(35:51):
like bumping into things, So it didn't matter what the
soldiers did to them as long as they did not
have an STD. And I mean, we we read a
bunch of first hand accounts across several projects. There are
it's not just the documentary filmmaker that we cited earlier
in the podcast. There are photographers who are trying to
(36:14):
keep track of these women's experiences so we don't lose them.
There's one resource called the True Stories of the Korean
comfort Women from nineteen nine two uh they spoke with
Kim chuk Chin, who describes her experience of being seventeen
years old in nineteen thirty seven and hearing that girls
were being recruited to work at factories in Japan. She
(36:37):
she heard about this man who was in town and
that he would give you a good job. You just
had to travel to Japan to get your factory job.
And this is the woman that Kristen hinted at earlier
in the podcast. So Talkin gets on a boat to
Nagasaki and she's full of optimism. She's excited to make money,
and she starts to realize that something's fishy when she
(36:58):
and other girls start to notice that they're being guarded
by soldiers, and she starts asking, you know, what's going on,
what's happening. That first night that they land in Japan,
she was raped by a high ranking Japanese soldier and
she and the other women were then taken to an
official military brothel near Shanghai, and she told her interviewer
(37:19):
that each of us had to serve an average of
thirty to forty men each day, and we often had
no time to sleep. And she also writes about how
condoms were common in the house. They were in every
room available, and about half of the men agreed to
use them. The other half, however, UH didn't care because
(37:44):
they even when she lied and said I have a
venereal disease, if you catch it, you'll die, she had
so many men who said, I don't care. I'm going
to die on the battlefield anyway, And so she really
feared for her life from every angle. Yeah, I mean
she feared also you know, catching contracting CD, also getting pregnant. UM.
(38:06):
I mean, they had no control over their own bodies.
And and that's also to why I think that these
UM visual documentaries of these women, whether it's on film
or through photography, is also so powerful, because reading these
accounts is almost so horrifying that it is hard to
grasp and believe, and seeing the faces of these women
(38:29):
humanizes UM their experiences so much. UM. A woman named
Neem is another one who Jan Banning has taken photographs
of and interviewed UM. She was taken in when she
was just ten years old, and she told Banning, I
(38:49):
was nothing but a toy. As a human being, I
meant nothing and that's how it felt during the Japanese era.
And another Filipino woman that Banning profiled was a woman
named math Dia who told her that she was picked
up by a Japanese captain to be his personal comfort woman.
And this wasn't uncommon. I mean, you had women living
a full range of admittedly all horrific experiences during before
(39:14):
and during the war as comfort women, whether they were
living in a brothel with a hundred other women, or
whether they were a personal sex slave to a high
ranking officer. But Massias said that she lived with this
captain in his barracks and had to travel with him
from place to place. And after the war, when she
finally made it home, she went through what she described
(39:37):
as a religious cleansing to wash away sin, but she
was always an outcast after that, people literally called her
a quote Japanese hand me down. And talking about the
the continuing trauma that these women experienced after they returned home,
Banning also profiles a woman named r Nashi who was
(39:58):
kidnapped on her way home from school at their teen
and she said that in order to get home after
the war, she was so in pain all over her
body that she couldn't walk, and so she crawled home.
And she said, I only married late because I first
wanted to think my wound sat and healed. Yet I
was afraid and I wanted to get better first, And
(40:19):
she ended up having to have surgeries for internal injuries.
And that's also another theme that you hear in interviews
with these survivors of the physical damage that was done
to their bodies as well, in addition to force sterilization. Yeah, yes, exactly,
some of these women uh ended up sterile after these experiences,
(40:42):
whether it was because of the extent or the of
the physical trauma, or whether it was because doctors removed
their uteruses. So, I mean, the amount of physical, mental,
and emotional trauma that these women faced cannot be overstated.
And thing really didn't get that much better once the
war ended. And this is coming A lot of this
(41:04):
information today has come from a really incredibly detailed and
horrifyingly comprehensive nineteen UN report that the Japanese government tried
to have retracted, but the author avoided that um so
after the war, many of these comfort women were killed
(41:26):
by the retreating Japanese troops or simply abandoned like so
much trash uh in Micronesia. For example, the Japanese army
killed seventy women in a single night quote because quote
they felt the women would be an incumbrance or an
embarrassment were they to be captured by the advancing American troops.
(41:46):
And the ones who weren't abandoned or killed, like women
who were serving at frontline comfort stations, they were expected
to take part in the last ditch effort fighting, including
going on suicide missions with soldiers, and many, like Rnashi,
had to crawl or walk miles and miles and miles
back to their village, where they may or may not
(42:09):
have been accepted by the surviving members of their family.
But for those women who had to find their way
back home, a lot of them would have no idea
where they were because they had been you know, taken
along with the army. So when the war ends and
they're completely abandoned, it's not like they have some kind
(42:31):
of GPS system, do you know, to be able to
get back to their village. So even just getting back
home was a whole other ordeal, and they had no money,
very few ever received any payment. Um. And then afterwards,
of course they're grappling with trauma and fertility, poverty, STDs
and the continuing stigma of having been a sex slave essentially, Yeah, exactly,
(42:56):
because I mean think about the try that they went
through and then being turned away frequently by family members
and other village residents. I mean, it's no wonder that
it took until nine for the first former comfort woman
to speak out, and she was afterward followed over the
(43:17):
course of twenty or so years by more than two
hundred other women. But still, I mean, that's an incredible
number of women who were forced or felt forced to
live in silence after the fact. And as we'll talk
about more in our next episode. Um, you know, the
the comfort woman system and structure really existed across militaries
(43:44):
from the nineteenth century, I mean and earlier on, and
so this system of treating women like like just sex
toys was not uncommon across the globe. And that's why
it's so important to talk about this shameful history well,
(44:05):
and use the word shameful. I mean, it seems like
that's something that has kept the survivors silent for so
long because of a shame attached to it, and it's
also something that has held up diplomatic negotiations and also
apologies to these women, formal reparations to these women, because
(44:27):
it is a shameful chapter in you know, both countries histories,
and no one really wants to take full ownership of it. Um.
There is this place called the House of Sharing, which
is essentially like a living museum and also a nursing
home for Comfort Station survivors, and one of them in
(44:49):
told the BBC, we're all very old and we're dying
each year, one by one. Historically speaking, the war might
have stopped, but for us it's still going on. It
never ended. We want the Japanese emperor to come here,
kneel before us and apologize sincerely. But I think the
Japanese are just waiting for us to die, and I
(45:09):
think that's why we have to make sure that well,
I mean, obviously they are going to die at some point,
but we can't let the history of what happened to
them die. Yeah, we absolutely can't let the history be
buried with them. And we can't, I mean, we can't
let people off the hook just because there are members
(45:33):
of the military of whatever era, of whatever country. Yeah,
I mean, it just kind of turned to turn a
blind eye because it's a hard thing to talk about.
Who wants to think about such an atrocity, but we
have to. And I think that part of what has
let people turn a blind eye, whether it is comfort
women in Asia or whether it's forced prostitution anywhere, is
(45:57):
just really awful and twisted ideas about women as objects
and women's sexuality and men just having a right to
women's bodies, especially in wartime. Rape is an act of terrorism,
and this system is really no different. Yeah, I mean,
and hinged to that as well, But there's the whole
(46:19):
disbelief of women about what they say happened to their bodies.
Um So, listeners, now we want to hear from you.
I mean, we were especially curious to hear from Korean
and Japanese listeners about this because obviously we're talking about
this from an extremely Western American point of view. Um So,
(46:42):
we would really like to get more insight into all
of this and sort of the tone and the feelings
within these communities about what happened during World War two
and even afterwards. So mom S of It house o
works dot com is our email address. You can tweet
us at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook, and
(47:03):
we've got a couple of messages to share with you
right now. Okay, well, I have a letter here from
Victoria in response to our sexual harassment history episode. Victoria says, first,
thank you as usual for not forgetting to mention us
trans women and how these issues can often affect or
not affect us. This episode was very timely. I came
(47:26):
out as transgender and started living full time as a
woman last December at thirty seven years old, and I
think I experienced my first instance of sexual harassment last
week by another woman, the CEO of our company. It
was great to hear you talking about this issue. This
isn't something I ever imagined i'd be dealing with, and
I haven't had the experience of growing up as a girl,
(47:47):
and my mom never talked to me about this kind
of thing. I'm struggling not to blame myself. I'm struggling
to convince myself that this is really happening. I'm struggling
to convince myself that even though this is something many
women go through, that doesn't get okay. Right now, I'm
just struggling to make it through the day without crying.
Thank you for talking about this, and I'd love to
hear from any other transgender women who have gone through
(48:09):
their first experience with sexual harassment. Keep up the great work. Well.
Thank you for sharing your story of Victoria. And I've
got a letter here from Kimberly also about the sexual
harassment episode in which we broke down um where sexual
harassment is most prevalent like industry wise, and arts and
entertainment was one of them. So Kimberly wrote in saying
(48:30):
I wanted to shed a little light on your surprise
at arts entertainment being fields with high rates of reported
sexual harassment. I'm an audio engineer for live theater and
have worked in the film, television, and music industry. While
as you mentioned, I'm sure dealing with clients and customers
can't expose folks with some pretty nasty behavior, it's also
worthwhile to note that women only make up a tiny
(48:51):
fraction of the crew and positions of creative control, and
the plenty of harassment comes from our coworkers. My own
field is almost male and often pretty rough technical crews
are a fairly blue collar lot, and the environment isn't
unlike working with team stories iron workers or longshoreman. Sexism
and sexual harassment are pretty rampant. Men also occupy the
(49:14):
majority of director and producer roles. As you mentioned, the
casting couch is a reality, but once they get a
foot in the door, women, artists and technicians are subject
to threats of professional repercussion if they don't respond favorably
to their supervisor's sexual advances. Kesh's recent story comes to
mind of how producers can abuse their artists. The vulnerability
(49:34):
of folks to sexual harassment in arts and entertainment is
seriously compounded by the lack of structure to report problems
to Lots of production companies are either too small to
have HR or don't make it available to their employees,
who are mostly freelance contractors. Plus, there's hardly any time
to seek recourse when production companies form LLCs that only
(49:55):
exists for the length of the gig. By the time
and investigation gets ar did, the show has wrapped. It
can be pretty tough out here, but I think it's
getting better. I see more and more women in my
own little field of live audio every year and lots
of big names celebrities are coming forward to share their
stories about the discrimination and harassment women face and show biz.
(50:17):
I hope that sheds a little light on things well,
absolutely does, Kimberly, and thank you so much, and thanks
to all of you who have written into us. Mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email
address and for links all of our social media as
well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts with
our resources. So you can learn more about Japan's comfort women,
(50:38):
head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from how stupp
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And today's episode happened all because
a relatively small group of much older women, largely from
(00:24):
Korea and the Philippines, have been making global headlines. Yeah. So,
back in December, the governments of Japan and South Korea
came to an agreement to sort of, I don't know,
apologize for and try to compensate survivors of the comfort
(00:49):
women system of basically sex slavery during World War Two.
But the women who were making headlines, the ones Kristen
is referring to, our women who have already been protesting
the treatment of comfort women during World War Two for
decades and are fed up with the sort of softball
(01:13):
approach that both Japan and South Korea have taken to
compensating them for their suffering during the war. And so
you have a lot of women now saying that the
agreement that was reached between Japan and South Korea in
December is not good enough. Well, yeah, because the core
group of those protesters are survivors from the comfort women's system. Um,
(01:38):
and a lot of them are dying at this point,
you know, and it's starting to feel like the Japanese
and South Korean governments are almost just putting it off
and putting it off and putting it off until all
of them passed away so that they don't have to
deal with the issue like right and front of their
(02:00):
faces in the morm of like these women who understandably
will not let the trauma that happened to them go.
And speaking of trauma, we should issue uh trigger warning
at this point to say that we will be talking
about rape and sexual slavery in this episode. Um, so
(02:21):
let's talk about how all of this happened, Caroline, because
this is such a a gruesome chapter in our like
military global military history, but um something that's really important
for all of us to know about. Yeah, so, just
to give you a little background, between nineteen thirty two
and nineteen forty five, there were tens of thousands of women,
(02:44):
many of them Korean, but also Japanese, Filipino, Taiwanese, Chinese
and Dutch who were sold, coerced, or otherwise forced into
prostitution in officially sanctioned Japanese brothels. And they were EU
famistly called comfort women, and there's been some really interesting
arguments over language over the years. UM. The Japanese did
(03:08):
coin the comfort woman term, but other women have come
out since then, particularly survivors, and said we weren't comfort women,
we were sex slaves. And still other women have taken
issue with the term sex slaves to say that they
were forced prostitutes. But whatever you call them, there were
(03:29):
between twenty thousand and four hundred thousand of them from
that nineteen thirty two to nineteen period, but most ranges
put the number at fifty to two hundred thousand. And
the brothels, where a lot of them were forcibly taken
between the ages of U thirteen in some extreme cases,
(03:51):
but usually around the age of twenty. Those brothels were
called comfort stations. UM. And these survivors are now in
their eighties and nineties, the ones who are still alive,
and for years so after this, protests have been happening
weekly outside the Japanese embassy and sold demanding that apology
(04:12):
that UM. You know, the Japanese and South Korean leaders
are slowly maybe kind of starting to hash out UM
and there is a lot of diplomatic controversy though that
we'll get into more later about those protests in a statue,
a statue that the protesters erected in front of that
(04:32):
Japanese embassy um of a girl with a bird on
her shoulder who represents all of those comfort women. So
what went down for a little more detail, um in
December was Japan and South Korea reaching agreement that Japan
would apologize and pay one billion yen to fund survivors,
(04:56):
and that translates to eight point three million dollars in
South Korea at Japan's request, would look into and quotes
taking down that statue that has been up since. But
the thing is, the women aren't going to receive direct compensation, okay.
The deal says that the money will quote unquote support
(05:18):
the women and fund projects for recovering the honor and
dignity and healing the psychological wounds that took place because
of the comfort woman's system. So kind of again being
almost euphemistic and talking around the problem. And so, like
we hinted out, a lot of survivors are protesting the deal,
saying that South Korea's president negotiated it on their behalf
(05:42):
and without their consent, and these women are saying that
the deal lacked sincerity and any official accountability on either
country's part. And you know what all of us reminds
me of, um, And it's a comparison that's on a
much smaller scale, arguably than than this kind of uh
we were to atrocity is the NFL's response to domestic
(06:04):
violence and how they similarly sort of set up a
pool of money that would go to this vague cause
of helping you know, survivors heal, but you you don't
really know what that actually means. Um. And speaking of
(06:25):
the money, a lot of these survivors are insisting that
it's not even about that. Um. This is something that
an eight eight year old survivor, Lee Wang Sue said,
um quote. I wonder whether the talks took place with
the victims really in mind. We're not after the money.
If the Japanese committed their sins, they should offer direct
(06:46):
government compensation and they want that sincere apology and for
in that apology for what happened to them to be named. Yeah.
And so some of the more recent news though, is
that as of early April, there's been no money. No
money has shown up, and it's not entirely the fault
of Japan. It seems to be sort of fault on
(07:06):
both sides because in early April, the leaders of Japan
and South Korea met again again, agreeing to implement this deal.
But the whole agreement was that South Korea would first
set up a foundation to accept the money, and they
haven't done that yet. So, you know, we're in twenty sixteen.
This happened leading up to and during World War Two
(07:29):
and they're still there. Still hasn't really been a direct resolution,
and this isn't the first time that unsatisfying deals have
been struck in the name of these women. Back in
nineteen sixty five, Japan gave more than eight hundred million
dollars in economic aid and loans to South Korea, but
none of that was specifically addressing comfort women, and Japan
(07:52):
did acknowledge its responsibility and apologized in a nineteen ninety
three statement which the government it since has actively tried
to water down. And a private fund that was established
in n for the survivors was funded largely by private
and citizen donations, although the Japanese government did contribute a
(08:15):
few million, and in the same way, Caroline that that
we've seen, say, in the United States holocaust deniers. Um
you have in incident, when a mention of comfort women
in I think it was Japanese textbooks, apparently quote sparked
a strong wave of masculinist nationalism. According to author C.
(08:39):
Sarah So, that resulted in an anti comfort women campaign,
which essentially dismissed them as just a group of willing
prostitutes who should not be trusted or believed. And they
just followed the military around just like groupies, that's all.
There was no coercion involved. Yeah, And lest you think
(09:01):
this was just a bunch of maybe angry male citizens
saying this. Uh. This was basically the official stance of
the Japanese president in twelve when he and four future
cabinet members placed an ad in a New Jersey newspaper
decrying a new comfort woman memorial that had been erected
(09:21):
in a largely Korean neighborhood in New Jersey. And in
addition to saying like, gee, I wish you hadn't done that,
New Jersey Korean community, they at the time and since
have proceeded to paint Japan as the victim of almost
slander for people even wanting to talk about comfort women.
(09:43):
But one thing that documentary and Tiffany Schung has emphasized
about the stories of the surviving comfort women, whom she
calls the Grandmas, and she's making an entire documentary about
them called The Apology. Um. She's emphasized how this isn't
just about them, it's about all survivors of sexual assault. Um.
(10:07):
She said, this apology that they're fighting for is really
for all of us. We need this apology as a
society that has faced injustice, specifically women who have faced
sexual violence. Yeah. And the director said that she was
able to form this bond with these Filipino Grandma's as
(10:27):
she calls them, because she herself had been a victim
of sexual violence. And so there was this fabulous article
that we read not only about Shun's film The Apology,
but also her experience meeting and bonding with these women. Uh.
And the importance of having women tell women's stories, because yes,
the comfort women's stories have absolutely been told. The history
(10:50):
is out there. But as the author of the article
and as Son points out, there's there's a division there
when you have men telling the story of these intense,
private women who have been essentially abused and neglected their
entire lives. Um. And so I am, I'm really excited
that this documentary is coming out. And uh, like Kristen said,
(11:13):
it is perfect timing because there's there is a sense
of urgency to to get that apology and to honor
these women. So now we have to talk about how
this system even worked too fully, understand why these women
need this apology so badly. Um. But before we get
(11:36):
to World War two, we have to go back to
the late nineteenth century when Korea signed a treaty with
Japan after an incident between a Korean garrison and a
Japanese warship. And this treaty would eventually open the door
for Japan to annex Korea as a colony in nineteen ten.
And with all of this, you have elements of racism, classism,
(11:59):
and essentially violent masculinity, all creating building up this comfort
women's system. Yeah, and so you get licensed prostitution first
emerging in a Korean port city where Japan had established
a settlement, and the bigger the Japanese military presence, the
more pleasure houses spring up to serve them. Um. A
(12:24):
lot of the women who were working in these brothels
basically were Japanese and they had been duped. Right off
the bat, you get coercion and deception. They had been
duped by recruiters who told them that, well, you'll just
likely be a second tier geisha essentially when you travel
to Korea, not a prostitute. So right off the bat
you get the theme of lying to women to convince
(12:46):
them to be sex workers. Um after annexation in nineteen ten,
up until nineteen fifteen, the number of Korean prostitutes skyrockets
compared to a relatively small increase of Japanese prostitutes in Korea.
And in nineteen sixteen we get some regulations. That's great, right,
(13:07):
that's positive, regulations helpful, well kind of, but not really.
The colonial government in Korea called for regulations of prostitution
only out of fears over venereal diseases. But it's not
like it improved working conditions for these women, which were horrendous,
(13:28):
and it didn't change the fact that thirteen year old
girls and many of these brothels were the most popular
with the Japanese soldiers and overall, when you look at
the entire population of prostitutes in Korea, Korean sex workers
skewed way younger and earned way less than their Japanese coworkers,
(13:49):
many of whom had already worked in the adult entertainment
industry in Japan, as opposed to the Korean women, many
of whom had sort of been forced into this line
of work because of difficult financial times they were sustaining
because of absent husbands. So in Japan, signs and international
(14:09):
treaty banning the trafficking of women and girls, okay, seems
like another good thing, kind of like those colonial regulations,
but it includes a provision to allow the practice to
continue in the colonies. So eventually Korean women become known
as the industrial comfort women in Japan and China, and
(14:31):
by their early thirties there were about one hundred Korean
women per month who were sold overseas and it was
pretty much a normal part of life. And by the
mid thirties, forty percent of Koreans had stephilis. And then
in nineteen thirty two we get the first official military
comfort station. Yeah, so as early as nineteen thirty two,
(14:52):
after there were hostilities between Japan and China and Shanghai,
you get Japan establishing comfort stations for their troops in China.
And these first military sanctioned sex slaves, I mean that's
what they were, were Korean women who had been living
in Japan. They were sent to this area around Shanghai,
(15:15):
and they were sent because the commanding officer had ordered
the governor in that region of Japan to send them.
They were sent for as if they were rations for
the troops to live on. And the reasoning was that
a formal system of controlled prostitution would result in a
(15:36):
reduced number of rape reports in the area where the
Japanese Imperial Army was based, and it would serve to
control venereal diseases. So the answer to preventing men from
raping is to enslave other women. And here is the
thing that listeners should keep in mind. Not to give
(15:57):
away too much about our next podcast this episode coming out,
but this idea, this whole concept of you know, the
military's coming in, rape reports go up, so we need
to just bring in prostitutes of some sort so that
men can these soldiers can relieve their their check sexual needs.
(16:18):
That is not exclusive to Japan. This is something that
happened in militaries including the US of A, all all
throughout this time. But I don't want to get to
ahead of myself. Let's go back to UH ninety seven,
when the comfort station system was revived after Japan captures
(16:42):
the Chinese city of Nanking during the Nanking Massacre, which
included six weeks of rape and murder. So again, how
do we maintain discipline and morale? I mean, all of
these atrocities are going on. Oh that comfort station system
thing from nine thirty two, that that kept the soldiers
(17:02):
pretty happy. Yeah, and so over the course of just
a few weeks, the Japanese had used their trade contacts. Again,
it's disgusting to think of just using trade contacts the
way you would try to, like ship in weapons and
military supplies to access women. Uh, but also used deception.
(17:22):
They promised women jobs as cooks and laundresses for the army,
just to get as many women as possible. And this
particular station that was set up in the wake of
the Nanking massacre was a prototype for later stations which
opened and were overseen by the military, but they were
(17:43):
also run by civilians who were more than happy to
earn money and paramilitary rank in doing so. You were
awarded paramilitary rank if you as a citizen ran a
military brothel, and in Korea, those civilians were largely of
Korean men and women who helped lure the girls for
(18:03):
the Japanese. Yeah, that was one thing, Caroline that jumped
out to me when we were reading a first hand
account of one of these women who had been lied to.
She thought she was going to get a factory job
and she ends up on a boat where she sort
of passed along to a couple like a man duding
a lady who were you know, tricking her into doing
(18:25):
all of this. Um, And it's just it's the whole
thing is it's really hard to wrap your mind around sometimes. Um.
But if we go too we see this whole system
being rewarded over and over again. For instance, a Japanese
Navy lieutenant was stationed in Borneo and he was fed
(18:48):
up with air field construction work being stalled because all
the dudes were just like fighting, gambling, uh, sexually assaulting women.
It was just pandemonium. And rather than figuring out a
way to discipline these soldiers, they're like, huh oh yeah,
(19:08):
comfort stations. So you have Lieutenant u Shiro Nakasone organizing
a comfort station with four Indonesian women, and he found
that it quote mitigated the mood of his soldiers so
well that later a naval report commended him for implementing
(19:28):
this comfort station. Um. But there is sort of an
awkward side note to this, uh nakasone. That same lieutenant
was Prime Minister of Japan from two to seven, and
in October his son became chair of a commission established
to quote consider concrete measures to restore Japan's honor with
(19:49):
regard to the comfort women issue um and nakasone. If
I'm remembering correctly, the former prime minister Um not his
son wrote a memo war Confirming, in which he did
confirm all of these comfort women's um testimonies which had
previously been been doubted. Well, I mean he'd he'd been
(20:10):
commended for it and had become prime ministers, so I
mean he he essentially had nothing to lose by confirming
this stuff. But I mean it seemed like, I don't know,
in the not that it makes it okay, but in
the way I was reading about his memoir, it didn't
sound bragging at all, but rather I mean remorseful. I mean,
(20:32):
he knew it was messed up. Yeah, well it is
uh And writing about this whole situation with Nakistani they
The New York Times wrote that his decision to provide
comfort women to his troops was then replicated by thousands
of Imperial Japanese Army and Navy officers across the region,
(20:52):
both before and during World War Two as a matter
of policy. So all across the region, they wrote, women
were treated it as the first reward of conquest. Again,
women were objects. They were nothing but military rations. Yeah,
I mean, and because of that, they were doled out
(21:13):
as officially as say, you know in MRI E. So
you have the Army and Navy trafficking young women, putting
them in specially built facilities, establishing a fee structure for
comfort station clients, and providing medical inspections to lower the
rates of STDs. And if you're thinking WTF, because I
(21:35):
hope you are, you should be. I mean, just look
at the underlying attitude. The military thought that sex was
good for morale, and that at least by having a
system of controlled prostitution, they could limit STD transmission, like
you said, and therefore keep men happier and in the
field longer. And keep in mind that as all of
(21:56):
this is going on. Armies in Europe and the United
States are doing the same kinds of things. Yeah, but
I mean this was as official a part of the
war effort as you can get if we jump back
to nine. One source we read said that Japan's war
machine rested squarely on the contributions of Korean migrant laborers overseas. UH.
(22:19):
The colonial Korean government required Korean men sixteen to forty
and unmarried Korean women sixteen to twenty five to enroll
as a potential labor supply. They did not require the
same thing of Japanese women, though, because those women, as
part of the war effort, were expected to stay home
and pop out more Japanese babies. Now and rolling as
(22:41):
a potential labor supply and in rolling to contribute to
the war effort as a Korean woman did not mean
the same thing as it did in the United States,
where we're cheering on Rosie riveters and the like. UH.
In nineteen forty four, you get the creation of the
Women's Volunteer Labor Corps with both Korean and Japanese women. UH.
(23:02):
It's not entirely clear how many women were part of
this core UH. And while some you know, did become secretaries,
They did paperwork, they sewed uniforms. Others were sent like
cattle to the front lines to be comfort women. And
the core quickly in people's minds became associated with prostitution.
(23:26):
And I mean if women volunteered for the war effort,
and I mean they thought they were volunteering for the
war effort, not to be prostitutes, and they didn't show
up for duty. This official system of volunteering allowed police
officials to go to women's homes and enforce their service,
essentially show up at their house and drag them away
(23:47):
service and quotes as in sex slavery. Yeah, and I mean, granted,
it wasn't only Korean women being victimized, as we mentioned
at the top of the podcast. It was essentially anywhere
occupied by Japan's in imperial military. But they weren't all
from Asian countries. Um, this was sort of unexpected to me.
You also had Dutch boys, girls, men, and women seized
(24:10):
from internment camps in the Dutch East Indies now part
of Indonesia to satisfy really arrange of sexual preferences. And
you have a lot of instances of Dutch mothers in
these internment camps, trading sex for food, trading sex for
protection of their children. And one Dutch now Australian, she
(24:31):
and her husband live in Australia. Activist is Jan Ruff O'Hearn,
who at nineties three is still actively fighting for apologies
and fighting for a visibility for these survivors. And she
was one of those young Dutch women forced into sex slavery.
But she's one of those who definitely says comfort women
is an insult to call us comfort women. That's not
(24:53):
what we were. But there are so many racist and
classist overtones in this whole discussion. And because the Dutch
government wanted to punish the prostitution of their women, but
not necessarily because these were human rights violations. More because
these women were upper class and white, and you just
(25:15):
simply can't have Asian men touching and abusing white women.
I mean, you also have instances of British and Australian women.
There was a hospital ship that wrecked off of Sumatra
and they were essentially given the choice by their captors
of starving in a pow camp or being sent to brothels. Yeah,
I mean, and and the horrifying thing about all of
(25:36):
this is that wherever you are on the map, like,
you can't talk about women in war time and not
talk about rape. Yeah, you know, I mean it's it's
it's a fact, and it always always happens. But in
the case of the comfort women who were exploited by Japan,
(25:58):
the majority worker in and we are going to talk
more about some of these social and cultural systems that
allowed this to perpetuate when we come right back from
a quick break. So, Caroline, Mother's Day is coming up,
and don't you want to give Sally a gift as
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This is a limited time offer and Mother's Day is
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want to give a little bit of a cultural context
to what was happening in Korea along with the rise
(28:09):
of comfort women, and we are citing research from see
Sarah So who we decided earlier. She wrote The Comfort
Women's Sexual Violence and post Colonial Memory in Korea and Japan,
and she writes about how the rise of forced prostitution
among Korean women coincided with many breaking away from Confucian
(28:30):
morays and what we're called the three obediences, which was
obedience to father, to husband, and once widowed, obedience to
your son in favor of being a new woman, you know,
kind of the new woman in quotes like we saw
here in the United States around the nine twenties and thirties, um,
and we have more of these Korean new women striking
(28:54):
out in pursuit of an education, a job, or simply
to escape a bad home situation. They wanted to make
new lives for themselves. Yeah, and I mean class definitely
enters into this situation because a lot of these women
were poor. They were working with their impoverished families on farms,
and they wanted to go to Japan to get those
well paying and high paying factory jobs. Ensure there were
(29:15):
some women who actually did get those jobs, not to
mention women who became doctors, teachers, reporters, waitresses, you name it.
But and this is really no different than the quote
unquote new woman in America striking out and getting those jobs.
You were still expected to be a sexually attractive young
thing to go get a job outside the home. But
(29:37):
many of the male factory recruiters who visited these small
towns looking for women, of course, weren't actually trying to
find factory girls. They were there to take women away
from their homes straight to these military brothels, and in
a lot of cases, they didn't have to work hard.
(30:00):
There are stories about these recruiters presenting young girls who
really didn't know any better with a package of new, fancy,
modern clothes and shoes, promising them a better life, like here,
look at this great outfit, Like this is all the
rage and the big city. Don't you want to come
work in these factories so you can make money to
buy more of these clothes and wear them all around town.
(30:22):
And so you have these girls who've never been away
from home, never been outside their villages, don't have much education,
and certainly don't have much life experience outside of the farm,
and they were easily dooped, especially especially and this is
so it's just the rain clouds keep getting bigger, especially
(30:43):
because local authorities and even teachers, people that these girls
grew up knowing and trusting, were sometimes in on the
recruitment efforts, and these efforts were huge just in order
to keep up with demand as more soldiers for station
and overseas, and they used violence, deception, coercion, including attacking
(31:05):
and killing family members who tried to protect the girls.
I mean, you also have situations where they would come
in rape the girl in front of her parents before
taking her away. So I mean it just horrors on
top of horrors. Um and many of the girls had
already been prostituted and abused multiple times by their own
(31:26):
families as well. Yeah and so so. The author so
writes that yes, Japan's colonialism absolutely perpetuated this system, and undoubtedly,
she wrote, facilitated the large scale victimization of tens of
thousands of Korean women who suffered an unspeakable sexual ordeal
(31:47):
and ethnic discrimination. However, she writes that their lifelong sufferings
are more complex, and what makes them more complex is
the gender based violence it was tolerated in They're already
patriarchal home and family structures, and they themselves in Korea
were quote steeped in masculinist sexual culture and so a
(32:11):
lot of times money for the family and men's sexual
drives and dominance were more important than women's health and
safety and agency. And a lot of families would sell
their daughters for years at a time, and this is
outside of the Japanese soldiers even taking them. They would
(32:33):
prostitute their daughters for four to seven years at a time,
usually getting to take a cut of whatever their daughters
earned in the brothels. So once we get into the
comfort stations, what was going on, Well, we know details
about life in there because it was highly regulated and maintained.
(32:54):
You have the Japanese military meticulously recording details of this
system um that really appeared to be regarded as just
another amenity of military life. So you have the rules
for comfort stations in places like Shanghai, Okinawa and other
parts of Japan and China and the Philippines that still survived,
(33:14):
detailing rules for hygiene, hours of service, contraception, payment of women,
and prohibitions of alcohol and weapons. Um. So even though
brothels already existed in Japan, there was license prostitution, you
still had these comfort stations. It was like again, that's
(33:36):
where the amenity factor comes, and it's like, oh, well
here's here's a bonus um and all of those regulations
don't even make all that much sense. You know, it's
obviously a good idea to keep booze and weapons out
of there, but the attempt to impose fear, treatment and
decorum are in stark contrast to the brutality that these
(33:59):
women reported. And the significance of this documentation is that
it really shows not only how widespread this comfort woman
practice was and how deeply rudeed it was, but also
how legitimized it was. I mean, they're, like Kristen said,
the Japanese are providing comfort stations, even in Japan where
they were already brothels and houses of pleasure, because it
(34:24):
was regulated. It was like, Okay, you've got to go
to the doctor, and then you've got to go visit
the comfort station because you know, it's regulated and more
quote unquote hygienic than I guess going to your average
Japanese brothel. And to get a glimpse into sort of
the range of experiences that women had at these places,
it was common for some, not all, to have quote
(34:46):
unquote day jobs. Uh they might be working in the fields, farming, Uh,
they might be cooking, digging trenches, et cetera, only to
then start their night job where they were raped all
night long. Uh. Their movement was restricted, they lived behind
barbed wire, they were guarded, they had no free time,
(35:07):
and many of the women the first hand accounts after
the war described barely even having time to wash themselves
and the places that they would do. All of this varied.
I mean, it might have been building taken over by
the military. It might be a makeshift structure. They would
create rooms and quotes by just hanging mats up as dividers,
(35:31):
and there was really only room for a mattress on
the floor. There was no protection from the heat or cold,
and healthcare was provided but only for treating STDs. Physical
injuries like bruises, cuts and burns were simply dismissed. And
I mean, of course, it's worth noting that these bruises,
cuts and burns were from the soldiers. They weren't just
(35:51):
like bumping into things, So it didn't matter what the
soldiers did to them as long as they did not
have an STD. And I mean, we we read a
bunch of first hand accounts across several projects. There are
it's not just the documentary filmmaker that we cited earlier
in the podcast. There are photographers who are trying to
(36:14):
keep track of these women's experiences so we don't lose them.
There's one resource called the True Stories of the Korean
comfort Women from nineteen nine two uh they spoke with
Kim chuk Chin, who describes her experience of being seventeen
years old in nineteen thirty seven and hearing that girls
were being recruited to work at factories in Japan. She
(36:37):
she heard about this man who was in town and
that he would give you a good job. You just
had to travel to Japan to get your factory job.
And this is the woman that Kristen hinted at earlier
in the podcast. So Talkin gets on a boat to
Nagasaki and she's full of optimism. She's excited to make money,
and she starts to realize that something's fishy when she
(36:58):
and other girls start to notice that they're being guarded
by soldiers, and she starts asking, you know, what's going on,
what's happening. That first night that they land in Japan,
she was raped by a high ranking Japanese soldier and
she and the other women were then taken to an
official military brothel near Shanghai, and she told her interviewer
(37:19):
that each of us had to serve an average of
thirty to forty men each day, and we often had
no time to sleep. And she also writes about how
condoms were common in the house. They were in every
room available, and about half of the men agreed to
use them. The other half, however, UH didn't care because
(37:44):
they even when she lied and said I have a
venereal disease, if you catch it, you'll die, she had
so many men who said, I don't care. I'm going
to die on the battlefield anyway, And so she really
feared for her life from every angle. Yeah, I mean
she feared also you know, catching contracting CD, also getting pregnant. UM.
(38:06):
I mean, they had no control over their own bodies.
And and that's also to why I think that these
UM visual documentaries of these women, whether it's on film
or through photography, is also so powerful, because reading these
accounts is almost so horrifying that it is hard to
grasp and believe, and seeing the faces of these women
(38:29):
humanizes UM their experiences so much. UM. A woman named
Neem is another one who Jan Banning has taken photographs
of and interviewed UM. She was taken in when she
was just ten years old, and she told Banning, I
(38:49):
was nothing but a toy. As a human being, I
meant nothing and that's how it felt during the Japanese era.
And another Filipino woman that Banning profiled was a woman
named math Dia who told her that she was picked
up by a Japanese captain to be his personal comfort woman.
And this wasn't uncommon. I mean, you had women living
a full range of admittedly all horrific experiences during before
(39:14):
and during the war as comfort women, whether they were
living in a brothel with a hundred other women, or
whether they were a personal sex slave to a high
ranking officer. But Massias said that she lived with this
captain in his barracks and had to travel with him
from place to place. And after the war, when she
finally made it home, she went through what she described
(39:37):
as a religious cleansing to wash away sin, but she
was always an outcast after that, people literally called her
a quote Japanese hand me down. And talking about the
the continuing trauma that these women experienced after they returned home,
Banning also profiles a woman named r Nashi who was
(39:58):
kidnapped on her way home from school at their teen
and she said that in order to get home after
the war, she was so in pain all over her
body that she couldn't walk, and so she crawled home.
And she said, I only married late because I first
wanted to think my wound sat and healed. Yet I
was afraid and I wanted to get better first, And
(40:19):
she ended up having to have surgeries for internal injuries.
And that's also another theme that you hear in interviews
with these survivors of the physical damage that was done
to their bodies as well, in addition to force sterilization. Yeah, yes, exactly,
some of these women uh ended up sterile after these experiences,
(40:42):
whether it was because of the extent or the of
the physical trauma, or whether it was because doctors removed
their uteruses. So, I mean, the amount of physical, mental,
and emotional trauma that these women faced cannot be overstated.
And thing really didn't get that much better once the
war ended. And this is coming A lot of this
(41:04):
information today has come from a really incredibly detailed and
horrifyingly comprehensive nineteen UN report that the Japanese government tried
to have retracted, but the author avoided that um so
after the war, many of these comfort women were killed
(41:26):
by the retreating Japanese troops or simply abandoned like so
much trash uh in Micronesia. For example, the Japanese army
killed seventy women in a single night quote because quote
they felt the women would be an incumbrance or an
embarrassment were they to be captured by the advancing American troops.
(41:46):
And the ones who weren't abandoned or killed, like women
who were serving at frontline comfort stations, they were expected
to take part in the last ditch effort fighting, including
going on suicide missions with soldiers, and many, like Rnashi,
had to crawl or walk miles and miles and miles
back to their village, where they may or may not
(42:09):
have been accepted by the surviving members of their family.
But for those women who had to find their way
back home, a lot of them would have no idea
where they were because they had been you know, taken
along with the army. So when the war ends and
they're completely abandoned, it's not like they have some kind
(42:31):
of GPS system, do you know, to be able to
get back to their village. So even just getting back
home was a whole other ordeal, and they had no money,
very few ever received any payment. Um. And then afterwards,
of course they're grappling with trauma and fertility, poverty, STDs
and the continuing stigma of having been a sex slave essentially, Yeah, exactly,
(42:56):
because I mean think about the try that they went
through and then being turned away frequently by family members
and other village residents. I mean, it's no wonder that
it took until nine for the first former comfort woman
to speak out, and she was afterward followed over the
(43:17):
course of twenty or so years by more than two
hundred other women. But still, I mean, that's an incredible
number of women who were forced or felt forced to
live in silence after the fact. And as we'll talk
about more in our next episode. Um, you know, the
the comfort woman system and structure really existed across militaries
(43:44):
from the nineteenth century, I mean and earlier on, and
so this system of treating women like like just sex
toys was not uncommon across the globe. And that's why
it's so important to talk about this shameful history well,
(44:05):
and use the word shameful. I mean, it seems like
that's something that has kept the survivors silent for so
long because of a shame attached to it, and it's
also something that has held up diplomatic negotiations and also
apologies to these women, formal reparations to these women, because
(44:27):
it is a shameful chapter in you know, both countries histories,
and no one really wants to take full ownership of it. Um.
There is this place called the House of Sharing, which
is essentially like a living museum and also a nursing
home for Comfort Station survivors, and one of them in
(44:49):
told the BBC, we're all very old and we're dying
each year, one by one. Historically speaking, the war might
have stopped, but for us it's still going on. It
never ended. We want the Japanese emperor to come here,
kneel before us and apologize sincerely. But I think the
Japanese are just waiting for us to die, and I
(45:09):
think that's why we have to make sure that well,
I mean, obviously they are going to die at some point,
but we can't let the history of what happened to
them die. Yeah, we absolutely can't let the history be
buried with them. And we can't, I mean, we can't
let people off the hook just because there are members
(45:33):
of the military of whatever era, of whatever country. Yeah,
I mean, it just kind of turned to turn a
blind eye because it's a hard thing to talk about.
Who wants to think about such an atrocity, but we
have to. And I think that part of what has
let people turn a blind eye, whether it is comfort
women in Asia or whether it's forced prostitution anywhere, is
(45:57):
just really awful and twisted ideas about women as objects
and women's sexuality and men just having a right to
women's bodies, especially in wartime. Rape is an act of terrorism,
and this system is really no different. Yeah, I mean,
and hinged to that as well, But there's the whole
(46:19):
disbelief of women about what they say happened to their bodies.
Um So, listeners, now we want to hear from you.
I mean, we were especially curious to hear from Korean
and Japanese listeners about this because obviously we're talking about
this from an extremely Western American point of view. Um So,
(46:42):
we would really like to get more insight into all
of this and sort of the tone and the feelings
within these communities about what happened during World War two
and even afterwards. So mom S of It house o
works dot com is our email address. You can tweet
us at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook, and
(47:03):
we've got a couple of messages to share with you
right now. Okay, well, I have a letter here from
Victoria in response to our sexual harassment history episode. Victoria says, first,
thank you as usual for not forgetting to mention us
trans women and how these issues can often affect or
not affect us. This episode was very timely. I came
(47:26):
out as transgender and started living full time as a
woman last December at thirty seven years old, and I
think I experienced my first instance of sexual harassment last
week by another woman, the CEO of our company. It
was great to hear you talking about this issue. This
isn't something I ever imagined i'd be dealing with, and
I haven't had the experience of growing up as a girl,
(47:47):
and my mom never talked to me about this kind
of thing. I'm struggling not to blame myself. I'm struggling
to convince myself that this is really happening. I'm struggling
to convince myself that even though this is something many
women go through, that doesn't get okay. Right now, I'm
just struggling to make it through the day without crying.
Thank you for talking about this, and I'd love to
hear from any other transgender women who have gone through
(48:09):
their first experience with sexual harassment. Keep up the great work. Well.
Thank you for sharing your story of Victoria. And I've
got a letter here from Kimberly also about the sexual
harassment episode in which we broke down um where sexual
harassment is most prevalent like industry wise, and arts and
entertainment was one of them. So Kimberly wrote in saying
(48:30):
I wanted to shed a little light on your surprise
at arts entertainment being fields with high rates of reported
sexual harassment. I'm an audio engineer for live theater and
have worked in the film, television, and music industry. While
as you mentioned, I'm sure dealing with clients and customers
can't expose folks with some pretty nasty behavior, it's also
worthwhile to note that women only make up a tiny
(48:51):
fraction of the crew and positions of creative control, and
the plenty of harassment comes from our coworkers. My own
field is almost male and often pretty rough technical crews
are a fairly blue collar lot, and the environment isn't
unlike working with team stories iron workers or longshoreman. Sexism
and sexual harassment are pretty rampant. Men also occupy the
(49:14):
majority of director and producer roles. As you mentioned, the
casting couch is a reality, but once they get a
foot in the door, women, artists and technicians are subject
to threats of professional repercussion if they don't respond favorably
to their supervisor's sexual advances. Kesh's recent story comes to
mind of how producers can abuse their artists. The vulnerability
(49:34):
of folks to sexual harassment in arts and entertainment is
seriously compounded by the lack of structure to report problems
to Lots of production companies are either too small to
have HR or don't make it available to their employees,
who are mostly freelance contractors. Plus, there's hardly any time
to seek recourse when production companies form LLCs that only
(49:55):
exists for the length of the gig. By the time
and investigation gets ar did, the show has wrapped. It
can be pretty tough out here, but I think it's
getting better. I see more and more women in my
own little field of live audio every year and lots
of big names celebrities are coming forward to share their
stories about the discrimination and harassment women face and show biz.
(50:17):
I hope that sheds a little light on things well,
absolutely does, Kimberly, and thank you so much, and thanks
to all of you who have written into us. Mom
Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our email
address and for links all of our social media as
well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts with
our resources. So you can learn more about Japan's comfort women,
(50:38):
head on over to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
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