Home

>

Kyoikukan Inxex>

The Truth about the Comfort Women

The Truth about the Comfort Women
Version 20150220©

Doro Norikazu
August 3, 2014

Japanese Version =>

Table of Contents

1. Were Comfort Women Sex Slaves?
2. Comfort Women Were Sex Slaves 
3. Which Domestic Law Did Comfort Woman Suppliers and the Police Constitute Violate?
4. Is the Testimony by Former Comfort Women Credible?
5. On the Criticism that the Label, “Comfort Woman,” Is Wrong
6. Comfort Women Who Were Japanese Nationals after Japan Lost the War
7. How Comfort Women Worked and How Much They Were Paid I: Re-Examination of the Contracts Drawn Up by the Comfort Woman Suppliers
8. How Comfort Women Worked and How Much They Were Paid II: Re-Examination of the Contract Manual of the Japanese Military
9. How Comfort Women Worked and How Much They Were Paid III: Criticism of   Hata Ikuhiko’s Theory
10. How Comfort Women Worked and How Much They Were Paid IV: Ms. Moon Ok-su’s Savings Account Book
11. How Comfort Women Worked and How Much They Were Paid V: Remittance Made by Ms. Moon Ok-su and Other Matters
12. Is It All Settled Now That Japan Has Paid Reparations to Korea? I
13. Is It All Settled Now That Japan Has Paid Reparations to Korea? II
14. On the Question: Why Do We Have to Apologize Again and Again? Give Us a Break.
15. Did Comfort Stations Prevent Raping from Happening on the War Fronts?
16. Closing Remarks

=>Download PDF file

↑

The title sounds like something taken from an Internet right winger site
There are still a lot of people who are fooled by the false propaganda that is rampant on the Internet.  I hear that even some among those who are in the counter-movement community are fooled by it.  Dr. Watanabe, an FB friend of mine, has told me about it.   Luckily, many of my counter-movement friends read my pages on the Internet.  So, as a review of this issue I have decided to put together, in a clear and simple way, something about the comfort women who worked for Japanese military.  It is my hope that this article helps you when you review what you have learned on this issue so far, and I also hope it will serve as a tool to counter the Internet right wingers.   At this point I do not know how many chapters there will be.  I intend to answer any questions you may have as thoroughly as possible.

Before I begin discussing the comfort women issue, I would like to explain one strategy I use that I believe is effective in countering the right wing demagogues and their “groupies.”

Those right wingers believe in total lies and attack us with hate.
So, with the kind of details I will present in the subsequent pages, I yell at them in the street:

Dumb, stupid, ****, scum, get lost!

I am fully aware that some of you do not approve of such abusive language, but these people deserve this much abuse (I think).

It may look like two groups of idiots throwing verbal dung at each other.  I yell, “Stupid, scum,” for a reason; there is logic behind it.  I would hope that you at least see that I am not another one of those who spouts abusive language because he has nothing else to say.   Well, not a very convincing excuse, I admit.

So why do I do it?

The ideologues among them, who can almost be called prisoners of conscience, intentionally distort history to serve their political cause.  They are professional right wingers, professional demagogues.   They know what they are doing and saying, so they wouldn’t budge when they are criticized and even when they are argued down.  Some of those who wave the flag of Japan and shout out loud in the street are also almost prisoners of conscience in their belief in discrimination.
These action-oriented activists are also incorrigible.  No matter how they are criticized they wouldn’t change their behavior.  They will be demagogues and advocates of discrimination until they die.   It is futile to try to take them seriously.
Nothing gets through to them.  To beat them, we need to rip them from their support system. We need to separate them from their supporters and dry them up.

Logical warfare is meant to undermine the conviction that the “go-with-the crowd” segment cling on to. They are a wishy-washy bunch.  I stick up my middle finger, look them in the eye, and yell at them, “Hay, Stupid!” to physically scare them away. 

These two strategies look very different but designed to work together.  We don’t just make noises.  What we, the counter community, do is a few notches above the stupid right wingers.

This has actually gotten results.  The counter action, which began in the spring of 2013, has definitely reduced the number of action-oriented conservative participants to a fraction since its heyday.

The leaders of our country see through that they cannot move forward with the mass self-protection rights and revising of the constitution in a straightforward and logical way.  Democratic thinking and peace-oriented thinking are well established in Japan.  They try to attack our emotion, to stir up urges to discriminate others, and other low passions, to win our heart.  We just can not cave in.  We need to form a coalition of peace movement, democratic movement, and anti-hatred movement.

That said, let us look at the first topic in this series.  Chapter 1 will make Internet right wingers go wild because it will say that comfort women WERE sex slaves.

1. Were Comfort Women Sex Slaves?

What are “sex slaves”?  Sex slaves are women who are forced to do sex labor under the condition of slavery.

What are slaves, then?  A slave is a laborer who is stripped of freedom, and whose body and personhood is fettered.  Having one’s body and personhood fettered means that one has been stripped of the freedom to live in a place of one’s choice, has been forced to live where the employer designates, and has no freedom to move at will.  Having been stripped of freedom means that one has no choice to change jobs, resign from or terminate the employment, that one is forced to keeping working.

Some say comfort women are not slaves because, they say,

Comfort women volunteered to become comfort women.
Comfort women were paid high salaries.
Comfort women were free to go home as long as they paid back the debts.
Comfort women even had the right to deny their clients.

Let's assume these statements are true.  Does it make the working condition of comfort women not of those for slaves?  Let’s compare comfort women with the courtesans in the Edo Era.

In the Edo Era, prostitution was publicly authorized in places like Yoshiwara.
Prostitutes in Yoshiwara were paid certain wages, had the right to decline clients, and were allowed to terminate the employment as long as they paid back the debts.
This condition was the same as that of comfort women.  Were they, then slaves or not?

The brand new Restoration Government of Japan in the 5th year of Meiji (1873) described the courtesans in Yoshiwara as “not different from cows and horses.”  This was in the official notice of the Ministry of Justice that was published along with the Emancipation Proclamation for Geisha and Prostitutes Emancipation Proclamation for Licensed Prostitutes of 1873.  I will attach the document at the bottom of this chapter for your reference.   In contemporary Japanese it reads, “Licensed prostitutes and geisha have lost their rights as persons, and are equal to cows and horses.”

The word “slave” was not in the vocabulary of the Japanese language at that time, but the phrase, “not different from cows and horses” suggests that they recognized slavery.  So why are they “not different from cows and horses?”

No matter how poor one is, the body belongs to the person.   If one loses the freedom to one’s body because of debts, the person has lost her or his last freedom, that s/he is no different from a cow or a horse.  The loss of the last freedom available to a person makes her/him a slave.

If courtesans in Yoshiwara were “no different from cows and horses” because they were chained to their debts, we can say that the comfort women who were treated in a similar manner were “no different from cows and horses.”

In conventional indentured servitude, the servant is not tied down to a loan.  S/he simply has a contract for a fixed term.  We need to be careful not to confuse these two types of conditions.

Thus, it is not unreasonable to consider comfort women as slaves.  Even in 1873 people had this much understanding of human rights.  Mr. Abe and others, who live in the 21st Century, deny the notion that comfort women were in slavery.  What a sad, sad situation.

In the meantime, the Japanese government had this much good sense at the beginning of the Meiji Era, but went backward in their discernment later.  They started saying, “Contracting licensed prostitutes is not human trafficking, and thus, licensed prostitutes are not slaves.”  In the next chapter I will discuss why this happened, and why comfort women were sex slaves after all, given this degenerate remark.

 

Reference

Official Notice of the Ministry of Justice, No. 22, Clause 2, October 9, 1873

“Licensed prostitutes and geisha have lost the rights to their body, and are no different from cows and horses.  It is unreasonable for humans to demand payback  of goods from cows and horses.  Thus, monetary loans to licensed prostitutes and geisha, who are equal to cows and horses, and any outstanding credit shall not be collected.”
http://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/
(Handling of the actions relating to human trafficking such as lending and borrowing in connection with licensed prostitutes and geisha)

The photo below is from the Modern Digital Library.  Unfortunately, this particular document does not include Official Notice of the Ministry of Justice, No. 22.

Doro Norikazu
July 29, 2014

↑

1. Know the Difference between Legal Prostitution Contracts and Illegal Prostitution Contract

In this chapter I will discuss that comfort women were sex slaves even from the standpoint of the domestic law of Imperial Japan.

In the previous chapter we saw that the Meiji government recognized that the contracts for licensed prostitutes were slavery contracts because, they say, licensed prostitutes were “no different from cows and horses.”  It was because the contract for licensed prostitutes constituted human trafficking and because the contract took away the freedom to the person’s own body.

Department of State Proclamation No. 295, 1873

“Selling and buying humans have been prohibited since olden days.  However, in reality the practice goes on in the names of fix-term, indentured servitude and others.  The capital (namely the contract fee which is loaned to the parents) used to hire the prostitute is considered stolen money.  The plea that the money be paid back is denied.”

It seems like some would justify their act of forcing people into prostitution by saying, “I didn’t buy my daughter; I adopted her.  The parent has all the rights to have his/her daughter do whatever s/he wants.” 

The Department of State Proclamation goes on to say:

“Trading children and women for money and calling it adoption, making them to work as licensed prostitutes and geisha, is practically human trafficking.”

The Meiji government did not prohibit prostitution, but prohibited prostitution when it was based on human trafficking contracts.  This Department of State Proclamation was repealed in 1900.  The Department of State Proclamation completed its function because The Regulations Regarding Licensed Prostitutes (Department of Interior Order, N. 44) were issued in the same year.

The Regulations Regarding Licensed Prostitutes prohibited prostitution in general.  However, they permitted prostitution as an exception when the practice observed certain conditions stipulated in the law.  Because of this, the Imperial government maintained that, “contracts for licensed prostitution are not slavery contracts.”  The law stipulated that, “no one is allowed to prevent [the prostitute] from retiring from her work.”

The Regulations Regarding Licensed Prostitutes recognized the prostitute’s “right to cancel the contract,” and “freedom to retire.”   She could retire anytime as long as she submitted the application to the police.  On the other hand, it was not possible for slaves to cancel their contracts.

Contracts for licensed prostitution are different in that they do not fetter the body and personhood [of the prostitute] into her identity, and thus they do not make [the prostitutes] into slaves.

Prostitutes were free to retire as long as they submit a statement [to retire or terminate the employment].  This is an important point to keep in mind.

If the prostitute had loans, the debt contract was still in effect when she left her job.  In reality, some were not able to retire as long as she had the obligation to pay back the loan.  It no longer took the form of human trafficking, but they (the prostitutes) were placed in the state of debt servitude.

The freedom to retire was in fact legally guaranteed.  The person could retire if s/he could be bold enough to pass the debts to the co-signer (usually the parent).  If the person declares bankruptcy, the person herself /himself got off the hook.  It was illegal for the employer to force the prostitute to stay just because she could not pay back the debts.  We find a lot of sentences like these by the equivalent to current Supreme Court.

2. Was the Comfort Woman System a Legal Prostitution System?

The act of the parent making his/her daughter a prostitute because the daughter was the collateral to the loan was called ”body-selling.”   There were many instances of body-selling in poor farming villages.   As the expression, “body-selling”, indicates it is practically human trafficking, but legally it was not considered human trafficking because the daughter had the freedom to retire, and thus she was not collateral.

Thus, those who deny the existence of comfort women argue that “comfort women were not the only ones who suffered atrocity, nor were they slaves.  Comfort women for the Japanese Military practiced prostitution under the “body-selling” contract.  It was an atrocity, but was common practice at that time. It was also legal.”

Are they right?

Let’s assume, for the time being, it is legitimate to say that body-selling contracts are not slavery, and examine what exactly comfort women contracts were like.

Most documents concerning comfort women are almost all lost, but luckily the original contract copies from Malay Military Administration District still exist (see photo).  Malay is current Malaysia.

The Southern Expeditionary Army, which occupied Malay at the time, placed the jurisdiction authority for comfort women with the Southern Expeditionary Army headquarters, and not with the Division.  Therefore we can surmise that the contract was used in South Eastern Asia as in Malay Military Administration District.

This is what this document says:

  “The employer and workers are not allowed to change jobs or change affiliations without the authorization of the Military Administration.”

“When the employer and the worker want to terminate the employment, they must submit the application to the local governor and receive permission from him.”

Comfort women needed permission to retire.  They were not allowed to retire without the permission from the authority.  They could not retire from their jobs at their own will.

We have seen earlier that prostitutes needed to submit a statement [to retire or terminate the employment] when they wanted to retire or terminate the employment.   They were free to terminate the employment as long as they submit the statement, and the Imperial government insisted that was why their employment was not human trafficking, which binds one’s person to her/his identity, that it was not the slavery contract.

Comfort women were different.  Termination of the employment needed permission.  There was no freedom to retire.  Thus their contract that binds one’s person to her/his identity amounts to human trafficking.   In other words, comfort woman contracts were slavery contracts, which the Imperial government prohibited.  Moreover, it was the government office that granted permission.  The government was directly involved in the maintenance of the system of biding one’s person to her/his identity=the system of slavery.  The Japanese government has no business arguing, “comfort women are not sex slaves.”

Doro Norikazu
July 30, 2014

↑

In the previous chapter we saw that the Southern Expeditionary Army forced the slavery contracts upon comfort women, which the Imperial government prohibited.

Government organizations including the military and comfort women employers violated many other laws, so let us look into it in this chapter.

You will see clearly that prostitution was legal but employing comfort women was not.

• Violation of the Regulation Regarding Licensed Prostitutes  

  The military exercise the police authority in occupied areas because the military establishes a military administration.   However, they enlisted comfort women, not in occupied areas, but mostly in Korean Peninsula and inside Japan, where the Regulations Regarding Licensed Prostitutes were enforced.   Comfort women were hired on the condition that they would work overseas, but the Regulations Regarding Licensed Prostitutes did not anticipate such conditions.  In Clause 7 it states, ‘Prostitutes shall not reside in areas other than that which is designated by the municipal order.’

However, where the comfort women were sent was a military secret, and thus the government agency was unable to designate their domicile. The system of comfort women itself is fundamentally illegal.

The Regulations Regarding Licensed Prostitutes stipulate the following, but comfort women were pretty much outside these regulations, and there is no evidence that the military who contracted the employers reinforced this law.

1. Any one who wishes to be a licensed prostitute must describe the unavoidable circumstance which compels her to become one, and submit it to the head of the police district with signatures from both parents and two guarantors.
2. The applicant herself must appear at the police district office and file the application.
3. The police must interview the applicant in person to confirm the intent of the applicant herself.
4. Anyone who wishes to be a licensed prostitute must submit the letter of confirmation by the head of the police district to the Metropolitan Police Department.
5. Any one who has not reached the age of 18 shall not become a licensed prostitute.
 

None of the above were rarely observed. 

As you see, comfort women contracts were illegal, because they were against the Regulations Regarding Licensed Prostitutes.  The traders should have been prosecuted under normal circumstances.

 

• Violation of the Civil Law Clause 90 (Public Order and Standards of Decency)

(Any legal action that aims at disrupting public order and standards of decency will be nullified.)

When one conceals that a contract is illegal, and takes advantage of the other party’s ignorance of the law and has the party sign the contract, the contract will become null because it is against public order and standards of decency, according to the Meiji Civil Law, Clause 90.

Becoming null means that the contact has never existed.

 

• Violation of the Criminal Law Clause 226

(Abducting and kidnapping a person for the purpose of transporting the person overseas)

(If a person abducts and/or kidnaps another person for the purpose of transporting her or him overseas, the person will be sentenced to prison for 2 years or longer.)

To take someone away by deceiving her or him even though the contract is null and void constitutes abduction.

The definition of abduction, seen in legal precedents, is as follows: Removing a person from her/his living environment illegally by means of deceit and kidnapping in order to place the person under the abductor’s or a third party’s control by force.
The case of comfort women fits exactly the description of the violation of Criminal Law, Clause 226, where kidnapping for the purpose of taking the person overseas is ruled illegal.

The perpetrators, which include the employer, the Home Ministry who authorized the trip, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who issued the ID, and the Military who assisted the transportation, are all accomplices and guilty.

To deviate from the topic for a moment, Ms. Arimoto Keiko and three others, who were victims of the abduction by North Korea, entered North Korea on their free will, having been told that they would have the opportunity to obtain good jobs.

Although their action was made on their free will, this still constitutes kidnapping because they were taken to North Korea by deceit.  The government recognizes Ms. Arimoto and the others who were kidnapped as victims of abduction, so here kidnapping is considered abduction.

Abduction is synonymous with forced displacement.

Thus, comfort women, who were taken away under a false pretext that good and legal jobs would await them, were in fact kidnapped.  According to the definition by the Japanese government, they were abducted, and forcefully taken away from their domicile.

 

• Violation of Criminal Law Clause 227

〈3. When a person transfers, receives, transports, or hides another person who has been plundered,  kidnapped, or sold and bought for the purpose of making profits out of, inflicting an act of obscenity to, or inflicting physical harm or death to this other person, he or she will be sentenced to 6 months or longer and 7 years or shorter in prison.〉

Comfort women were kidnapped because someone intended to make profits out of them and to inflict an act of obscenity on them.

Operators of comfort stations handed comfort women over to the military, and the military received and transported them.   Both parties are joint principal offenders of Criminal Law Clause 227.

There is no way anyone can defend these multiple violations of the law.  This is a state crime where government organs, including the military, were directly involved.

 

• A Precedent Where The Law Was Actually Enforced

In 1937, the Supreme Court handed the guilty verdict to the trader and his associates who tried to take some women out of the country for the purpose of prostitution.  Fifteen Japanese women were sent from Nagasaki to Shanghai as prostitutes by a trader and his associates.  The 4th Criminal Division of the Supreme Court rejected the final appeal on the ground that “the joint principal offenders” “kidnapped women and transported them overseas.”　They were guilty as charged. 

When the law is properly executed, the guilty verdict is issued.  The reason this trader was found guilty, though, was because he was not connected to the military.
It was a time when no one could fight against the authority of the military. 

It does not make one feel good to admit that Japan was such a country in the period of Imperial Japan.  However, if we are willing to learn a lesson from history, we can choose a different path.   If we justify the history, similar future will await us.

http://hougakuzasikirou.nobody.jp/ron/kei/kei-ronsyou33.html

Doro Norikazu
July 31, 2014

↑

Testimonies by former comfort women do not ring true in many cases.  That she watched TV on the ship while being transported.   It cannot be true.  Human memory is unreliable.

Koreans publish such unnatural testimonies without altering it.   It seems they do not “coach” the woman that there was no TV during the war.  They understand the basic principle of oral history data collection: record the testimony as is, even if we know it is incorrect.

Ms. Kim Bot-ton is a former comfort woman.

The right wingers have launched an all-out attack on the validity of her testimony, saying that her testimony is questionable.

Ms. Kim says she went to Singapore with the 15th Division, but it is a lie, because the 15th Division was a unit in Burma.   Ms. Kim says that she was forced to be a comfort woman at the age of 14, worked for 8 years, and was released at the age of 19.  The arithmetic is inconsistent.  Can’t she even do additions?  She is a fake comfort woman, and so on and so on.  To this day, she repeats what seems to be inconsistent everywhere she gives a talk.  It is as if she is saying that that is what she remembers no matter how inconsistent it is.  Perhaps she has confidence in her memory based on her personal experience.

In this chapter we will examine how unreliable her testimony is.

 

• Memory That Goes Against the Public Documents of the Time 

Ms. Kim’s Testimony:  I traveled with the Headquarters of the 15th Division of the Army to Taiwan, Guangdong, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Sumatra, Indonesia, Java, Singapore, and Bangkok.

(Testimony at the gathering: Dear Mayor Hashimoto, this is the truth about the Japanese military’s “comfort women” issue, September 23, 2012)
http://blog.livedoor.jp/woodgate1313-sakaiappeal/archives/18155831.html 

Ms. Kim: First I was put into the comfort station in Guangdong, China.
( June 3, 2013)
http://chosonsinbo.com/jp/2013/05/0527ry03/　

Ms. Kim testifies that she went to various places with the 15th Division.  Public documents contradict this testimony.  The record of the 10th Army Hospital of the Southern Expeditionary Army, dated August 31, 1945, lists Kim Bot-ton as a military employee, and that her family registry is hers.  They say there is no doubt that it is Ms. Kim.

“The record that lists the real name of the former comfort woman of the Japanese military,  Kim Bot-ton, has been discovered”  (an article in )
http://f17.aaacafe.ne.jp/~kasiwa/korea/readnp/k285.html 

The name of this record is:
“Korean Personnel Away List of the 4th Section of the Southern Group of the Unit directly under the 16th Headquarters”

As the title of the record indicates, Ms. Kim Bot-ton was under the command of the 16th Army, which was stationed in the Island of Java, Indonesia.  No one would have been in a place like this other than comfort women.   She was no doubt a comfort woman.
It is an indisputable fact.

However, the 15th Division, which Ms. Kim Bot-ton testifies she was with, fought in Burma.
The two divisions had no connection whatsoever.  Ms. Kim Bot-ton testifies she went to Singapore and Indonesia, but the 5th Division was never in these places.  If Ms. Kim indeed was with the 15th Division, there are many unsolvable contradictions.

It is important to honor one’s memory, but if it contradicts the public documents of the era, we need to assume that the public documents are correct.  Her memory that she was with the 15th Division has to be wrong.  However, Ms. Kim’s testimony is very realistic if we ignore where she mentions the 15th Division.  Let us examine how it is so.

First let us start in Guangdong.

 

• The Guangdong Period 

Testimony #1: First I was put into the comfort station in Guangdong, China.
( June 3, 2013)
http://chosonsinbo.com/jp/2013/05/0527ry03/　 

Guangdong Province adjoins Hong Kong and Macao to the north, and is famous for its Shenzhen special economic zone.   Ms. Kim says she was taken there when she “was 14.”
(Testimony at the gathering: Dear Mayor Hashimoto, this is the truth about the Japanese military’s “comfort women” issue, September 23, 2012)

We saw earlier that she was 19 in August, 1945, so she was born in 1926.
She was born before the war ended, so, using the method of counting ages common at that time, she adds one year to her actual age when she counts her age.   She was taken away at the age of 14 in her calculation, in 1939.
What was going on in Guangdong in 1939?

In the previous year, 1938, the Battle of Guangdong was proclaimed.  The battle commenced in October.  By November, all major strategic points had been occupied.
The Japanese military began occupation of Guangdong then.  A three-division corps, consisting of the 5th, 18th, and 104th, was deployed. 

The next year, public peace was stabilized, at least in the urban section. This generated a demand for a large number of comfort women.  Ms. Kim Bot-ton was taken there right during that period.  There are no discrepancies between the battles fought by the Japanese military and her testimony.

Why was she taken there at such a young age?  There is a document that explains it.
At that time the Japanese military was plagued by VD, and it seems they were looking for “young women” of Korea.  There is a document from a different area named, “The 14th Division Medical Corp Document,” dated April 10, 1938, and it has this description in it:

“According to the test results of Chinese prostitutes, almost all of them tested positive of DV.  Thus, do not go to Chinese brothels.”

It means that local prostitutes had DV and could not be used as comfort women.
In the same time period, the document called “the 11th Army 14th  Base Hospital Document” calls comfort women who were sent from Japan “tramps,” and they encouraged to use the “young women” from Korea who did not have DV when DV was rampant.  It is surmised that Korean girls such as Ms. Kim were picked as desirable, upon request from the Military. 

 

• From Guangdong to Malaysia and Singapore

Testimony #2: I accompanied the Headquarters of the 15th Division of the Army to Taiwan, Guangdong, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Sumatra, Indonesia, Java, Singapore, and Bangkok.
(Testimony at the gathering: Dear Mayor Hashimoto, this is the truth about the Japanese military’s “comfort women” issue, September 23, 2012)
http://blog.livedoor.jp/woodgate1313-sakaiappeal/archives/18155831.html 

In Testimony #2, Guangdong, which was the first stop, is listed as the second.
This shows that the places are simply a list of stops that came to her mind, and not in the chronological order of the travel.

To clarify how the military that occupied Guangdong moved, we will number the places that Ms. Kim lists for convenience.
 
1) Taiwan, 2) Guangdong, 3) Hong Kong, 4) Malaysia, 5) Sumatra, 6) Indonesia, 7) Java, 8) Singapore, and 9) Bangkok. We need to note that 5) Sumatra and 7) Java are both locations within 6) Indonesia.  That is, 6) contains 5) and 7).

Let us visit the places one at a time with this in mind.

November, 1941
The Imperial Headquarters ordered to prepare for the Southern Operations including operations in Malaysia.  The Guangdong operation was totally a different operation from the Malay operation, and the participating units were totally different as well.  It would be very unusual for comfort women stationed in Guangdong to move to Malay. Ms. Kim Bot-ton’s testimony is implausible at first glance.

However, there was one unit that was pulled out from Guangdong and sent to Malay.
The 18th Division stationed in Guangdong was added to the newly formed 25th Army and shifted to Malay.  The only division which was shifted from Guangdong to Malay was the 18th Division.  (The 15th Division that appears in her testimony did not participate in the operation.)  And, the places in Ms. Kim’s testimony, one after another, appear in the 18th Division record.  It is logical to think that Ms. Kim Bot-ton accompanied the 18th Division. The 18th Division moved from Guangdong via 3) Hong Kong to Hainan Island in preparation for their naval journey.

December, 1941
The Malay operation began, and the first attacks were against Thailand.  Having traveled on the sea, the 18th Division was stationed in 9) Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, as a unit of the 25th Army. It took no time for the Japanese army to occupy the entire Malay Peninsula. The 25th Army began the Singapore operation, and occupied Singapore.  The 18th Division was stationed in 8) Singapore.

Let us check under whose jurisdiction the comfort stations were.  Records show that there was no clear definition of jurisdiction in the Chinese Front.  It seems each unit managed their own. It is not good for the control of the military if lower level units get directly in touch with Japan and the Governor-General of Korea and ask for comfort women.  Perhaps because of this experience,  the Southern Expeditionary Army centralized the jurisdiction under the Military Government.  The Military Government is not under individual Divisions.  It is an organ of the 25th Army, which ranks above the divisions.

As for Ms. Kim Bot-ton who accompanied the 18th Division from China, she must have been put under the jurisdiction of the Military Government of the 25th Army as it was the rule.

 

• To Indonesia

April, 1942

The 18th Division, which traveled together with the 25th Army, left for Burma.
Ms. Kim Bot-ton’s comfort station was directly under the 25th Army and was separated from the 18th Division.  It is presumed that the comfort station remained in Singapore.

May, 1943
The Military Headquarters of the 15th Army left Singapore and was stationed in Kota Bukittinggi in Sumatera (5).  (Sumatera is a place in Indonesia (6)).  Ms. Kim and her colleagues accompanied this group.

 

• Going Home

Testimony #3: I was moved around among various war fronts, and forced to be a comfort woman for 8 years.
(The Okinawa Times, May 20, 2013)
http://article.okinawatimes.co.jp/article/2013-05-20_49450

August, 1945

Japan loses the war.

September, 1945

A record of “Kim Bot-ton, Age 19” remains in the directory of the 10th Army Hospital in Java (7).

(“Korean Personnel Away List of the 4th Section of the Southern Group of the Unit directly under the the 16th Headquarters “)

Her age is based on the method of adding 1 to the actual age, because it is a public document.   Why did Ms. Kim Bot-ton leave the jurisdiction of the 25th Army and was placed under the jurisdiction of the 16th Army?  It is assumed that she was to get ready to go home.

Here is a document from another unit.  According to the document prepared by the Citizens’ Affairs Department of the 2nd Army at Celebes Island (dated June 20, 1946), the Allied Forces ordered that  the 2nd Army had the soldiers (the 16th Army) on Java Island under their jurisdiction and assembled them at the Port of Parepare.

The survey on the comfort station, which had been under the jurisdiction of the 16th Army, was also put together by the 2nd Army.  This is irregular, given the combat ranking in the Japanese military.  They say they did it by the order from the Allied Forces.  The move was designed to facilitate the routes and ports of SS George Poindexter, the repatriation ship which the Allied Forces had prepared.

(The above documents are included in The Asian Women’s Fund’s Collection of Materials Relating to the Wartime Comfort Women Issue: Government of Japan Survey-1999, Vol. 3)

That was how things worked, so there is nothing peculiar about Ms. Kim Bot-ton being handed over from the 25th Army to the 16th Army. 

1946-1947
Kim Bot-ton leaves Indonesia and comes home.

The first thing the Allied Forces told the Japanese military to do was to send comfort women home.  “Allied Forces Instruction No. 1” instructs to “pull out the brothels and comfort women together with the Japanese military.”

(Allied Forces Instruction #1 to the Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Southern Expeditionary Army, dated September 7, 1945,  in Collection of Materials Relating to the Wartime Comfort Women Issue: Government of Japan Survey-1999, Vol. 4)

It seems as if the Allied Forces were rebuking the Japanese military who was not acting promptly to return the comfort women home.  Because the instruction was sent to the Supreme Commander, the homecoming of the comfort women was relatively early.  Based on all the information gleaned from various documents, all the surviving comfort women should have returned home by June 1946.

If Ms. Kim Bot-ton returned home in 1946, she had been gone for 8 years since 1939.
This perfectly fits her testimony that she “was forced to be a comfort woman, moving from one war front to the next in Asia for 8 years.”

She should have been 20 years of age by the modern calculation method, and 22 years in the old way of calculation.  The right wingers mix up the modern calculation method and the old calculation method and clamor that her arithmetic doesn’t jive.
It wouldn’t jive if we calculated her age their way.   What a waste of time.

This concludes the research for this chapter.

If you had some knowledge of the Japanese military, the trail that Ms.  Kim Bot-ton describes looks implausible.  There is no way [she] would have moved between theaters of operation, nor her jurisdiction would have moved between two units, I thought first.   To my surprise the research shows that it actually was backed by logical explanation.

Ms. Kim Bot-ton could have remembered wrong; the “15th Division” in her testimony could have been the “18th Division.”  If this hypothesis is true, there is no discrepancies in the timeline of her trip, her age, and almost all the places perfectly fit with the facts.

 

The only mystery is “Taiwan.”   We have nothing to back her testimony on it with.

Ms. Kim Bot-ton’s testimony perfectly fits with the timeline, but of the 9 places there is one that has no document to validate her testimony with.  That’s how “unreliable” her testimony is.  If she is a fake comfort woman and her story is all made up, how is it that she describes most of the places so accurately?  That’s what I conclude.  If some people still want to get hung up on the one place and insist that her story is all false and that she is a fake comfort woman, I can only tell them it is their prerogative.

Doro Norikazu
July 31, 2014

 

↑

The naysayers are hung up on the label, “military comfort women.“

The title of “military” is used to describe those civilian employees who are officially employed by the military.  However, comfort women are civilians who were taken away by civilian prostitution traders, and whose clients were solders.  Thus, it is wrong to put “military” in their title; they were “tag-alongs.”  This is their rhetoric.

No one wants to admit that the national government supported the comfort woman system.  Of course, their logic is flawed.  There was a discussion on comfort women at the Diet 46 years ago in 1968.

The 058th Diet: Committee on Social and Labor Affairs, No. 21
April 26, 1968
 http://kokkai.ndl.go.jp/SENTAKU/syugiin/058/0200/05804260200021c.html 

Rep. Goto Toshio of the Japan Socialist Party asked questions regarding the application of the support law to comfort women, and a member of the government committee of the then Ministry of Welfare answered that [the government] granted comfort women a semi military civilian employee status with no pay [during the war].

If comfort women were military civilian employees, they served in the war.
Comfort women received their salary from their immediate employer, so the military naturally didn’t pay their salary.  The government committee member suggested that comfort women were not official military civilian employees, but that they were part time workers who were “military recruits.”   Ms. Kim Bot-ton whom we discussed in the previous chapter was one of those military recruits.   In any case, comfort women were employees of the military, and the military provided them with lodgings, so calling them “military tag-alongs” is really disrespectful.

The government committee member from the then Ministry of Welfare also answered that the comfort women who lost their lives when the transport ship got sunken were eligible for support.

Any support law applies only to those who ”lost their lives while performing their official duties,” so he is acknowledging that comfort women were on the transport ship in their official capacity.  Thus, they ware not mere civilians; to call them “military” civilian is correct.

This is important information, so I list the summary of this government committee member’s answer below.

1. The military provided accommodations for comfort women while they were on the front.
2. [The military] granted the military civilian employee without-pay status to comfort women.
3. Some comfort women picked up the gun and fought, and played the role of military nurses, in the war zone.
4. Those comfort women who cooperated with the military and were killed are recognized as official or semi-official civilian employees of the military, and are eligible for support by the support law.
5. Those comfort women who lost their lives when the transport ship got sunken are also recognized as official or semi-official civilian employees of the military, and are eligible for support by the support law.

(Photo)
The same committee member also stated: Because of the nature of the work, some [former comfort women] may have difficulty coming forward.  Some may be shedding tears without knowing about the support law.  We would like to do our best to save every single one of them.

When he said “every single one,” he meant “every deceased comfort woman who cooperated with the military, who lost her life when the ship was sunk in transit, who was recognized as an official or semi-official civilian employee of the military,”
and her surviving family.  No support was provided for those comfort women who survived.

How have those survivors lived the post war period?
The next chapter is on this topic.

Doro Norikazu
July 31, 2014

---

 

Translator’s Note: Any misunderstanding and mistranslation of the original text are solely the responsibility of the translator.  Some key concepts do not yet have the definitive English equivalent.  The translator appreciates any suggestions, comments, and corrections from the reader.  Thank you.   Kyoko Saegusa, Translator. saegusa@colorado.edu