“Comfort women”

During World War II, approximately 200,000 Chinese, Korean, Singaporean, Malaysian, Taiwanese and Filipino women and girls were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army. An estimated 75% or so died in captivity, and many of those who survived experienced post-traumatic stress disorder even 60 years after the war. According to a United Nations report, Japan first started using military brothels, or “comfort stations,” in 1932, but the practice spread with the Japanese soldiers to various parts of East Asia during WWII. They “seem to have been found wherever the Japanese army was based,” the report states, and are known to have existed in China, Taiwan, Borneo, the Philippines, many of the Pacific Islands, Singapore, Malaya, Burma and Indonesia. “Recruiters” used “deception … violence and outright coercion,” according to the report.
In 1993, Japan officially acknowledged this mass sexual abuse. In 1995, the government established the Asian Women’s Fund, which offered compensation of 2 million yen (now worth around $18,000) and a letter of apology from then-prime minister Tomiichi Murayama to victims. Ami Lynch, professor of women’s studies at George Washington University, has stated that activists opposed the gesture because the compensation money came from private citizens, not the government. Hsu reports that some former Taiwanese comfort women “refused to accept the money as they felt it did not show that the Japanese government was taking responsibility for [its] actions.” The fund was dissolved on March 31, 2007.
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