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Getting Closer to the Truth about Japanese Military Comfort Women with Testimonies and Data

At the National Diet of Japan in June 1990, Tsudao Shimizu, director-general of job stability at the Japanese Ministry of Healthy, Labour and Welfare, made a statement that articulated that the “comfort women” were used and carried out by private contractors who were not related to the military and thus, a factual survey would be impossible. Victim Kim Hak-sun testified in August 1991, but written materials that could bring to light the relationship between Japanese military comfort women and the military were nowhere to be seen at the time. However, Kim Hak-sun’s testimony allowed researchers and civic groups to find the related materials without fail. As Professor Yoshimi Yoshiaki of Juo University discovered and disclosed materials verifying comfort women’s relationship with the military at the library of the Defense Agency in January 1992, the Japanese government acknowledged the fact that the government and the army were involved in the use of comfort women. Since then, the Japanese government has conducted its own surveys twice to reveal relevant data, but materials were far from reaching the truth. After that, the truth behind comfort women began to be uncovered through testimonies from Japanese people and other materials.

Solidarity of Researchers and Civic Groups Opens the Floodgates to True History

It was researchers and civic groups who took the lead in excavating materials related to comfort women since the mid-1990s. In Korea, since the turn of the 2000s, the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and other state organizations began full-fledged research into materials and data. Researchers and civic groups collected data and shared the output because of the need to hold the Japanese government accountable based on historical facts. The website of the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace (hereafter referred to as “WAM”), a Japanese civic group, serves as a data-sharing platform. The Foundation’s latest work, “Data List of Japanese Military Comfort Women,” is highly indebted to such a platform.

“Data List of Japanese Military Comfort Women” that Pieced Together Scattered Truths

The main contents of the “Data List of Japanese Military Comfort Women” are as follows. Volumes 1 and 2 of the data list are based on information from the WAM website. A total of 589 materials from the website are compiled in the data list. Documents made by the Japanese government and the military can be classified into three kinds. First, there are documents related to the establishment of comfort stations. The Japanese army created plans to set up comfort stations and ordered each expeditionary army unit to establish them. Second, there are documents related to the mobilization and transfer of comfort women. These documents show the fact that Japan’s foreign and interior ministries and police cooperated with the military to recruit and relocate comfort women abroad. Third, there are documents related to the conditions of the brothels, including provisions of use. The provisions enable us to confirm how each army unit was managed and how they used comfort stations. Also, it has been confirmed that comfort women were embroiled in violent situations then and many women were raped under Japan’s occupation.

Volume 3 of “Data List of Japanese Military Comfort Women” is based on 202 materials from the Allied Forces. The Allied Forces’ data include materials of the NARA in WAM, “U.S. Materials Related to Comfort Women I, II, and III” published by the research team led by Jeong Jin-sung of Seoul National University in 2018, and Volumes 1, 2, and 3 of “Documents of General Headquarters, Southwest Pacific Area, Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS)” compiled by the National Institute of Korean History in 2017. The materials can be classified into two types: general data and video data generated by intelligence agencies. 130 materials in volume 3 were produced by intelligence agencies such as ATIS, Office of Strategic Services (OSS), United States Office of War Information (OWI), Southeast Asia Translation and Interrogation Center (SEATIC), and Combined Service Detailed Interrogation Center (CSDIC). These are data that the relevant agencies produced while interrogating Japanese prisoners of war while the video data was excavated mainly by the Jeong Jin-sung research team. These materials also include data confirming massacres of comfort women.

Volume 4 of “Data List of Japanese Military Comfort Women” includes materials obtained from China, Taiwan, and Thailand. Chinese materials are preserved in a basic manner in Danganguan (Historical Archives of China). As China was also one of Japan’s occupied territories in which they established a collection of comfort houses, the Foundation has been collecting related documents since 2012. Materials preserved in China’s eight Danganguan are presented in Volume 4. These data show that Japanese troops were directly involved in mobilizing comfort women and establishing comfort houses, as well as the fact that management provisions were created by Japanese troops. Specifically, materials of Danganguan in the Heilongjiang Province reveal that the Japanese army looked for brothels and that the stationed unit supervised the establishment of comfort stations exclusively for Japanese soldiers.

Materials obtained from Taiwan show how comfort houses in China’s Guangdong region were built, the mobilization of comfort women, and the involvement of the Government-General of Taiwan and Taiwan Colonization Company. Zu De-ran, researcher at the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Center of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, published the “Research Database of Taiwanese Comfort Women” in 1999 and the Foundation compiled lists based on this index. Thai materials aggregate to 60 and were collected from the National Archives of Thailand in August 2011. Thailand declared neutrality right after World War II broke out but had a close relationship with Japan. As if to disprove this, materials related to Japanese military comfort women were included in documents from Thailand’s Supreme Command. According to the Thailand-Japan Mutual Defense Treaty signed on December 21, 1940, more than 150,000 Japanese troops were dispatched to Thailand. Documents reveal that Thailand provided red-light districts for Japanese soldiers. Towards the end of the war, Thailand’s Ayutthaya Prison accommodated both Koreans and Taiwanese people, many of whom were comfort women disguised as nurses.

Compass for Research and Collecting Data Related to Comfort Women

The “Data List of Japanese Military Comfort Women” is very comprehensive, despite the absence of its original text. The original text is not attached, but readers will be able to confirm the bigger picture of the Japanese military comfort women system and actual damage inflicted after reading the compiled contents, from cover to cover. If you want to identify more in detail, you can confirm information using the documents based on this data list. The data list will enable you to figure out the present status of the excavated documents. If you refer to this data list when collecting documents, you can identify where to collect what materials and where there are empty documents. Hopefully, this data list will serve as a compass or map for research and data collection surrounding Japanese military comfort women. The Northeast Asian History Foundation will continue to collect and analyze materials related to comfort women to publish key data lists.

<Footnote>

1. The Korean version corresponds to the National Archives of Korea. There are more than 20 provincial level administrative units corresponding to the provinces of Korea and there are Danganguan in cities and wards too. Materials vary according to Danganguan.