Japanese comfort women in Southeast Asia

Since 1992, a number of official and private documents relating to the use of 'comfort women' by the Japanese Imperial Army have come to light, and this has been followed by the publication of numerous articles. While these developments mark a watershed in wartime historiography, previous commentators have not only regarded the comfort women as a homogeneous group, but have tended to overestimate the involvement of Korean women. In this article, an attempt is made to redress this imbalance through an analysis of the recruitment and deployment of women from Southeast Asia. Most of the women from Southeast Asia were drawn from among the local population, while methods of recruitment differed markedly from those employed in Korea. The same can be said for China, where most comfort women were recruited locally. The comfort women system was introduced into Southeast Asia despite the opposition of Foreign Ministry officials who were equally determined to repatriate Japanese prostitutes from overseas territories. Although the military comfort women system was not unique to the Japanese military, it did represent an extreme case of systematic exploitation of women by the state.

Keywords:

• Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia
• Japanese war crimes
• Asia-Pacific War
• comfort women
• prostitution
• sexual violence