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Comfort women were locals forced into prostitution and sexual
slavery in military brothels during the Second World War by the
Japanese military. It was systematic, widespread and supervised by
the Japanese Army. Historians estimate from 10,000 to 200,000 were
abused in the Philippines, China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam,
Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia and other countries occupied by Japan
during the war.
Systematic rape and forced prostitution are but
part of a multitude of atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese
military during the Second World War. These include genocide of
occupied civilian populations such as those in Nanking, China and
Manila; the torture, starvation and denial of aid to prisoners of
war such as those in Bataan and Cabanatuan; the testing on unwilling
locals of biological warfare agents such as those in Pingfan and
Yunnan Province, China; among many others.
Brutality was the norm in Japan’s wartime
conduct. The historical evidence for this is both overwhelming and
undeniable. The barbarism and bestiality exhibited by Japan at
war—from the random yet widespread and unmitigated violence of its
lowliest privates; to the systematic atrocities sanctioned and
organized by its highest ranking bureaucrats; to the support and
complicity of its civilian citizenry—belie the myth of bushido
[the supposedly chivalric code of the samurai warrior] as well as
Imperial Japan’s delusion of racial superiority. Japan’s refusal
to recognize its atrocities in its own history and textbooks casts
doubt in any change of character in its culture and brings further
shame to its people.
-- Rome Jorge
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