The
Comfort Women
Issue
in Sharper Focus

Tsutomu Nishioka

Japan Policy InstituteCopyright © 2015 by Tsutomu Nishioka
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic ormechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning,
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Japan, or jpi-info@seisaku-center.net.

2

Contents

Part 1: The Asahi Shimbun Retracts Its Reports…4on “Comfort Women”
Part 2: Why Did Comfort Women Becomea Diplomatic Issue? … 12
Part 3: A Comfort Woman who Saved 25,000 Yen and the Actual
Circumstances of Life in a Comfort Station … 24
Appendix … 31
About the Author … 40

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The Comfort Women Issue
in Sharper Focus
The basis of the ongoing diplomatic problem between Japan and South
Korea known as “the comfort women” issue is presented in the 2014
publication entitled The Comfort Women Issue—A Review of the Facts andCommon Misunderstandings.” 1 Among the fixed perceptions refuted in thepamphlet is the misconception that “the Japanese army mobilized 200,000
Korean women as sex slaves and slaughtered many of them after the war.”In this sequel, I will examine the factual relationship of the following
points to the comfort women discussion.
1. The significance of the Asahi Shimbun’s August 2014
acknowledgment of misreporting, its apology and its
retracting of related articles on the comfort women issue;
2. The reason why “comfort women” suddenly emerged as a
diplomatic point of contention in 1992; and3. A description of the life of actual comfort women and how it
differed from that of “sex slaves.”

Part 1: The Asahi Shimbun Retracts Its Reports on “Comfort Women”
The Asahi Shimbun Acknowledges Misreporting

The Asahi Shimbun’s admission in August 2014 that many of its reports on
the comfort women issue were not true is welcome. Unfortunately, the nowestablished misconception that “Japanese military forces mobilized 200,000
Korean women as sex slaves and slaughtered many of them after the war” islargely the consequence of the Asahi Shimbun’s now-disavowed reports on
See The Comfort Women Issue—A Review of the Facts and Common Misunderstandings, by Tsutomu
Nishioka (Japan Policy Institute, 2014). http://www.seisaku-center.net/sites/default/files/uploaded/
The%20Comfort%20Women%20Issue-03.pdf.

14

this issue.2 The evidence shows:First, there are no instances in which Korean women were forcibly recruited
by government authorities to become comfort women.
Throughout the 1980’s, the theory that government authorities engaged in
the forced abduction of comfort women was prevalent in academia and themass media in Japan as well as South Korea. However, from 1992 onward,
it was taken up as a diplomatic issue, prompting bona fide research andwidespread debate to begin. As a consequence, the dominant opinion in
Japan as well as among some segments of South Korean academia has
become the realization that “there are no instances where Korean women
were forced to become comfort women by government officials.”
The 1980’s theory was based on the testimony of a person named Seiji
Yoshida, who said, “I conducted the forceful recruitment of comfort womenlike a ‘slave hunt’ on South Korea’s Jeju Island based on orders from the
Army to recruit Volunteer Corps members.”3 However, in the process of theresearch and debate that occurred following his statements and the Asahi
Shimbun articles, it was revealed that the allegations could not be corroborated
by any other evidence or witness testimony.
A consequence of the Yoshida statements and the Asahi Shimbun’s
misreporting is that the sensational allegations in the Asahi articles quickly
spread beyond Japan to the international community. Unfortunately, the post1992 research and debate in Japan and the resulting reassessment that “there
was no coercive recruitment by the authorities of Korean women as comfort
2

Ibid., footnote 1, p. 6

See Watashi no sensō hanzai: Chōsen-jin no kyōsei renkō (My War Crimes: Forceful Recruitment of
Koreans), by Seiji Yoshida (San’ichi Shobo, 1983). Mr. Yoshida, wrote “For three years from 1942 to
the end of the war, as head of a mobilization section of Yamaguchi Prefecture’s Labor Dedication to the
Nation Association, I conducted ‘slave hunts’ while engaged in the business of requisitioning Koreans.”

3

5

women” was not effectively conveyed outside of Japan. Instead, thediscredited theory that “comfort women were forcibly recruited by the publicauthorities” is still widely believed.
The spread of these misconceptions in the international community was
further accelerated by a report prepared for the U.N. Human Rights
Commission in 1996, known as the Coomaraswamy Report. The reportcondemned Japan and enumerated as evidence to support its conclusions
such allegations as the Seiji Yoshida testimony that had already been
investigated and discredited.
Compounding the error, since 2007 the U.S. House of Representatives aswell as the European Union and the Canadian Parliament, among others, hasused the Coomaraswamy report as a principal basis for their adoption ofresolutions against Japan. The resolutions hold the Japanese government
responsible for “its Imperial Armed Forces’ coercion of young women into
sexual slavery … through the duration of World War II.” 4
However, an important turn of events occurred in August 2014, which further
underscored the factual errors behind the international community’s
misconception of the issue. The Asahi Shimbun announced that it had
reexamined its own reporting on the comfort women issue for the years 1980
onward. Anxious to correct the record and maintain its reputation as a quality
Japanese newspaper, Asahi retracted many of its articles on this issue andapologized for its misreporting. In the process, the newspaper admitted thecredibility of Japanese academia’s theory that the factual record shows that
“Japanese authorities did not coercively recruit Korean women as comfort
women.”5 Relevant excerpts of the Asahi Shimbun’s explanation and apology
H. Res. 121, in the House of Representatives, U.S., July 30, 2007, p. 3; also see, among others,
European Parliament Resolution B60525/2007, December 13, 2007, and Canada House of Commons
Motion 291, May 21, 2008.

4

See The Comfort Women Issue, by Tsutomu Nishioka (Japan Policy Institute, 2014) for a full discussionof the background and debate that led Japanese academia to this conclusion.

5

6

are quoted below in the newspaper’s Q&A format.6
Question: The government has explained that no documents exist thatprovide direct evidence for forcible taking away of women, in which
the military or police abducted women like kidnappers and forced
them to become comfort women. Was there in fact no forcible taking
away of the women?
***
In 1991 and 1992, when interest was focused on the comfort womenissue, The Asahi Shimbun reported that Korean comfort women had
been “forcibly taken away.” In addition to introducing as one example
of forcible taking away of women the testimony about “hunting
comfort women” on Jeju Island made by Seiji Yoshida (explained in
the next section), the Asahi also published an editorial on Jan. 12,
1992, shortly before Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa visited South
Korea. With a title of “Do not avoid looking at history,” the editorial
said “(comfort women) were recruited or forcibly taken away under
the name of “teishintai” (volunteer corps).…
In February 1993, the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for
Military Sexual Slavery by Japan published a volume that contained
the testimony of 19 former comfort women from about 40 in total.
The 19 women were chosen because the group had confidence in theirreliability, according to Chung Chin-sung, the chairperson of theresearch group affiliated with the council. Four of the women spoke of“violence by military personnel or civilians working for the military.”
Many of the women said they were kidnapped after they were coaxedby sweet talk by agents, or were taken away after being fooled.…
See Kyosei-Renkō: Jiyū o ubawareta kyōseisei atta, published in Japanese by the Asahi Shimbun on
August 5, 2014. An English translation under the title “Forcibly taken away: Coercion that led to lost
freedom existed” was published by Asahi Shimbun Digital, August 22, 2014, http://www.asahi.com/
articles/ASG8P3CLFG8PULPT001.html.

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Since 1993, the Asahi has tried not to use the term “forcible taking
away” as much as possible.…
No official documents were found that directly showed forcible taking
away by the military on the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan, where thepeople living there were made “subjects” of the Japanese Empire
under Japanese colonial rule. Prostitution agents were prevalent due
to the poverty and patriarchal family system. For that reason, even if
the military was not directly involved, it is said it was possible togather many women through such methods as work-related scams andhuman trafficking.…
Ever since the Kono Statement7 was issued, all succeedingadministrations, including the current Abe administration, havecontinued to abide by it. At the same time, some politicians andexperts have repeatedly made the argument to the effect that thecentral government does not have to bear any responsibility on
grounds “there was no forcible taking away.” That argument is basedon the fact that no official documents of the Japanese government
have been found that show the Japanese military directly taking away
the comfort women.…
To our readers
On the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan, which were colonies of Japan,
agents who worked in line with the intentions of the military wereable to gather many women by fooling them with such statements as
On August 4, 1993, then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono issued a statement on behalf of theGovernment of Japan in which he apologized for and announced the findings of a Government study on
the issue of war era comfort women. Successive Japanese governments have confirmed this statement.
See http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/women/fund/state9308.html In June, 2014, a report on the processof the making of the Kono Statement was released by the Japanese Government. See “The Details of
Exchanges Between Japan and The republic of Korea (ROK) Regarding The Comfort Women Issue– From the Drafting of the Kono Statement to the Asian Women’s Fund ” (Japan Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, June 20, 2014), http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/files/000042167.pdf

78

“There is good work available.” No documents have been found thatshow the military systematically taking away women like kidnappers.…”
The Asahi Shimbun Admits the “Slave Hunt” Testimony Is not True
Also in the same series of newspaper articles on the results of its own
investigation into the veracity of Seiji Yoshida’s statements and otherreporting, the Asahi Shimbun acknowledged that Mr. Yoshida’s testimony
alleging “forceful taking away of women” by the authorities was afalsehood that the newspaper had published repeatedly since 1982. The
Asahi Shimbun apologized and retracted its related articles published over
the years. Relevant sections of this admission and apology are quoted
below in the newspaper’s Q&A format.8
Question: There was a man who testified in books and meetings
that he had used violence to forcibly take away women on the
Korean Peninsula, which was Japan’s colony, to make them serveas comfort women during the war. The Asahi Shimbun ran articles
about the man from the 1980’s until the early 1990’s. However,some people have pointed out that his testimony was a fabrication.
***
The man’s name was Seiji Yoshida. In his books and on otheroccasions, he said that he headed the mobilization section at the
Shimonoseki branch of the Yamaguchi Prefectural Romu Hokokukailabor organization [Yamaguchi Prefecture’s “Labor Dedication to the
Nation Association”] that was in control of day laborers.
See Saishū-tō de renkō: Shōgen urazuke erarezu kyōgi to handan, published in Japanese by the
Asahi Shimbun on August 5, 2014. An English translation under the title “Testimony about ‘forcible
taking away of women on Jeju Island’: Judged to be fabrication because supporting evidence notfound” was published by Asahi Shimbun Digital on August 22, 2014, http://www.asahi.com/articles/
SDI201408213563.html.

89

The Asahi Shimbun has run, as far as it can confirm, at least 16 articles
about Yoshida. The first appeared in the Sept. 2, 1982, morning editionin the city news page published by the Osaka head office. The article
was about a speech that he gave in Osaka in which he said “I ‘hunted
up’ 200 young Korean women on Jeju Island.”The reporter, 66, who wrote the article, was in the City News Section
at the Osaka head office at that time.
The reporter said, “I had absolutely no doubts about the contents of
his talk because it was very specific and detailed.…”In the April 30, 1992, morning edition of the Sankei Shimbun, an
article raised doubts about Yoshida’s testimony based on the results ofan investigation conducted by Ikuhiko Hata on Jeju. Weekly magazines
also began publishing articles pointing to “Suspicion of ‘fabrication’.”
In April and May 2014, The Asahi Shimbun interviewed a total of
about 40 people in their late 70s to 90s living on Jeju. However, noevidence was obtained that supported the writing by Yoshida about
forcible taking away.
In a town on the northwestern part of the island where Yoshida claimed
to have taken away several dozens of women working at a plantmaking dried fish, there was only one factory in the village that handled
fish. The son of the local man who was involved in factory management,
now deceased, said, “Only canned products were made there. I neverheard from my father about women workers being taken away.”
Yoshida wrote that the factory roof was “thatched.” Video images that
captured conditions at that time were obtained by Norifumi Kawahara,a professor of historical geography at Ritsumeikan University who
10has conducted research on the fishing industry in South Korea at thattime. The images showed the roof to be made of tin and tile.
In June 1993, Kang Jeong-suk, a former researcher at the Korean
Research Institute for Chongshindae, conducted research on Jeju
based on the writings of Yoshida. “I heard from several elderly people
at each of the locations I visited, but I did not come across any
testimony that matched the writings,” Kang said.
Yoshida wrote in his book he went to Jeju in May 1943 based on amobilization order from the Western District Army. He also wrote thatthe contents of the order were left in the diary of his wife (nowdeceased). However, Yoshida’s oldest son, 64, was interviewed forthis special coverage, and it was learned that the wife never kept adiary. The son said Yoshida died in July 2000.…
To our readers
We have made the judgment that the testimony that Yoshida forcibly
took away comfort women on Jeju was a fabrication. We retract ourarticles on him. We were unable to uncover the falseness of his
testimony at the time the articles were published. Although additional
research was conducted on Jeju, we were unable to obtain any
information that corroborated his testimony. Interviews with researchers
have also turned up a number of contradictions regarding the coreelements of his testimony.9
Both of the Asahi Shimbun articles quoted above reconfirm the fact that theviews presented in my previous publication, The Comfort Women Issue, arethe established theory in Japanese academia and journalism.10
9Ibid., footnote 8.

10

Ibid., footnote 1.

11

In addition, while the Asahi Shimbun retracted its articles related to Seiji
Yoshida, it did not apologize for their publication in its August 5 newspaper
article on the results of its investigation. The arrogance of the newspaper’s
posture in acknowledging the falsity of its reports without apologizing
attracted abundant public criticism. As a result, the president of the Asahi
Shimbun held a press conference on September 11, 2014, at which time hedid apologize.

Part 2: Why Did Comfort Women Become a Diplomatic Issue?
In 1992, the Comfort Women Issue Emerged Suddenly
in Japan-Korea Diplomacy

Observers in many countries witnessing current Japan-South Korea relations
deteriorate around the comfort women issue may have the impression that
this has been an unresolved problem and subject of diplomatic negotiations
between the two countries throughout the postwar period. That impression
would be mistaken.
The comfort women issue only became a pending bilateral issue in JapanSouth Korean diplomacy in January 1992, more than 25 years after thenormalization of relations between the two countries. The issue was notraised even once in the 15 years of negotiations between Japan and South
Korea over normalization of relations from 1951 to 1965; nor was it apending topic in Japan-Korea diplomacy for the subsequent 26 years
through 1991.
The South Korean government first took up the comfort women issue as a
diplomatic topic in 1992, soon after the 1991 launch of the Asahi Shimbun’s
campaign alleging coercive recruitment of comfort women. In the same
year, former comfort women supported by Japanese activists and lawyers
filed suit against the Japanese government, demanding postwar reparations.
However, after the Kono Statement was issued in 1993, the South Korean
12

government again did not raise the comfort women issue in its diplomacy.
Consequently, for the following 18 years the issue was not a diplomatic
problem between Japan and South Korea. It again became a diplomatic
matter and remains so today because the South Korean Constitutional Court,in the appeal of a case brought by South Korean activist groups, handed
down a judgment in 2011, saying, “It is unconstitutional for the South Korean
government not to promote diplomacy to seek reparations for the former
comfort women.”
Why did this issue emerge abruptly in 1992 as a diplomatic problem? The
backdrop for the issue may be found in the malignancy of fabricatedreporting by Japanese media led by the Asahi Shimbun, together withagitation by Japanese activists, followed by the Japanese government’s
clumsy diplomacy characterized by repeated apologies without firstinvestigating the facts. These are explained more fully below.
In South Korea No One Claimed “There Was Forceful Recruitmentof Comfort Women”
First, let us begin with the perception of comfort women in South Korea
before 1992.
I first went to study in South Korea in 1977. Living in a student dormitory, I
was called out by South Korean students and criticized for the TakeshimaIslands issue and the Japanese government’s allegedly excessive approach toNorth Korea. However, there was not even one South Korean student who
raised the comfort women issue. There was a corresponding lack of interest bySouth Korean newspapers and television, which provided much anti-Japanesecontent in their reporting but never took up the topic of comfort women.
In 1985, a Korean movie called “Women’s Volunteer Corps—Bloody Sex”
was shown in a theater on the fringes of central Seoul. Assuming it might bea violent, anti-Japanese movie, I timidly went to see it, only to find it was a13

kind of pornographic movie with a comfort woman and her Korean lover as
the main characters.11 The movie was meant to appeal to those of degenerate
taste and was full of sex scenes but had very little anti-Japanese content. It
simply depicted wartime comfort women in the same category as otherpostwar women who sadly became private sector prostitutes for economic
reasons. South Korea at the time had numerous private brothel districts andmany women were engaged in prostitution, citing reasons of poverty or,
more specifically, enabling their brothers to attend college.
Many of my Korean friends at the time enlisted in the army while they wereat university in order to fulfill their compulsory military duty. At theirfarewell parties, these students, who were due to enter the military a few
days later, would casually say they wanted to spend that night at a brothel “inorder to become an adult” before entering the military. Many brothels werein operation near the military camps to entertain Korean soldiers during theirtime off. I vividly remember those scenes, and that they were so routine.
In those days I found Koreans who reminisced fondly about their experiences
under Japan’s administration, though with some regret and humiliation
because their country could not be independent in those years. In the late1970’s, the center of downtown Seoul had some coffee shops that played
Japanese popular songs even during the day. In those places, I remember
hearing Koreans speaking fluent Japanese talk about how they enjoyed
Japanese Rakugo (comic story telling) and had been moved by listening to
the tapes of Japanese popular songs. Other Koreans told me personal stories,
such as the one who recounted how his former Japanese high school teacher
had whispered when their paths crisscrossed that “you should study
economics, because the economy will be really important for Korean
independence.” There was not a single person who told stories about“rounding up comfort women” or “slave hunting.”
A South Korean university professor who grew up as the son of the head of
11

See Gendai Koria (Modern Korea), a monthly magazine, October 1985 issue.

14the local hospital in South Hamgyong Province’s Pukchong County, which
is currently a part of North Korea, told me a story about how his father, using
his position as the hospital chief, secretly helped save some Japanese womenfrom Soviet troops in 1945. At the time, Soviet troops occupied the northernhalf of the Korean peninsula. His story is as follows:12
The commander of Soviet troops ordered the Japanese, who weredetained as a group in an elementary school building, to provide themwith some young women. The Japanese principal of the school, who wason good terms with the chief of the local hospital, sent a message to him
asking for help. As it happened, the Soviet commander had contracted avenereal disease as a result of raping women in Manchuria and wasreceiving private treatment from the hospital chief in secrecy, since hewould be punished if the Soviet military doctors learned of his condition.
The hospital chief took the opportunity to advise the commander that
“Japanese women have a very weak sense of chastity; they will have sex
with anybody, resulting in a lot of venereal disease patients. What would
be safe is to use the public prostitutes and geisha girls that are underpublic health management.” The commander, who believed the hospitalhead’s lie, then stopped preying on ordinary Japanese women and changed
his order to look for women engaged in the entertainment industry.
It is not plausible that the Korean hospital chief would have tried to protect
those Japanese women if the Japanese army had forcibly turned 200,000
Korean women into sex slaves.
A Segment of the Japanese News Media Inflamed the Postwar
Reparations Issue
The comfort women issue was being created in the late 1980’s to early
The author, Tsutomu Nishioka, obtained this testimony from Lee Myong-Yong, professor of the
Sungkyunkwan University, in an interview conducted in Seoul, South Korea, in February 1992.

1215

1990’s, just as the generation who knew the truth of the matter grew older inyears. At the same time, some Japanese anti-Japan activists went to South
Korea and instigated litigation demanding reparations from the Japanese
government. Meanwhile, the Asahi Shimbun and others launched a publicawareness campaign built on fabrications, creating the conditions for the
comfort women issue to become a major diplomatic theme between Japanand South Korea.
The August 11, 1991 edition of the Asahi Shimbun contained an article about“‘Korean military comfort women’ taken to the Sino-Japanese War andWorld War II combat zones under the name of the ‘Women’s Volunteer
Corps’ and forced to engage in prostitution with Japanese military personnel.”
It was reported that, “one such woman living in Seoul has since come to theattention of the ‘Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual
Slavery by Japan’ (TeiTaiKyo), which has begun a hearing of her story.” Theauthor of this article was an Asahi Shimbun reporter named Takashi Uemura.
This article was a “scoop” that preceded similar stories in Korean newspapers
about a former comfort woman named Kim Hak-sun.13
Prompted by this article, from the autumn of 1991 through January of 1992,
the Japanese news media with the Asahi Shimbun at the forefront beganconcentrated reporting on the comfort women issue, fueling a major
campaign in which it was demanded that “the Japanese government apologize
to and compensate former comfort women.” In December 1991, synchronizing
with Japanese private sector activists, some former comfort women filed asuit in a Japanese court demanding an apology and reparations from theJapanese government. They received enthusiastic support from Japaneseactivists and lawyers in the process.
The reporter Takashi Uemura had studied in South Korea and was proficient
See “First testimony by former comfort woman: No twisting of facts in article,” English translation published by Asahi Shimbun Digital, August 22, 2014, http://www.asahi.com/articles/
ASG8L6FQ6G8LULPT00T.html.
13

16

in the Korean language. However, his article contained serious factual flaws
which, no matter how you look at it, are of the type that cannot be attributed
to accidental misunderstanding.
On August 14, 1991, immediately after the reporter Uemura wrote his firstarticle on the issue, Ms. Kim Hak-sun held a press conference in Seoul which
South Korean newspapers reported prominently. The resulting South Korean
newspaper articles stated clearly regarding Ms. Kim’s personal history that“she was sold for training to a kisaeng (Korean female entertainment) housein Pyonyang by her mother at the age of 14 because of family hardship. After
finishing three years of training, Ms. Kim was taken by her kisaeng house‘stepfather’ to northern China for what she assumed would be her first job
placement, an area where 300-some Japanese troops were stationed.”14This is a very important point. Of course, even if she had originally been soldinto a kisaeng, Ms. Kim nevertheless suffered the pain of being a comfort
woman. However, the extent of involvement by Japanese military or
government officials is significantly different in the case of someone forcibly
taken by Japanese authorities under the name of the Women’s Volunteer
Corps as compared to the case of Ms. Kim, who was sold to a private
prostitution business as a consequence of poverty. This point is critical to thefactual examination of whether or not Ms. Kim was forcibly taken away by
Japanese authorities acting under the name of the Women’s Volunteer Corps.
Did reporter Uemura not know this when he published his newspaper scoop
four days before Ms. Kim’s press conference?
This is not the only point. On December 6, 1991, in a lawsuit filed in theTokyo District Court, Ms. Kim firmly stated, “I had been in kisaeng schoolfor three years from age 14 when, at 17 years old in the spring of 1939, I wastold about a place where ‘if you go, you can make money.…’ Accompanied
by my ‘step-father,’ I was delivered to that place in China.”
This being the case, I think that the reporter, Mr. Uemura, cannot escape the14

See The Hankyoreh Newspaper, August 15, 1991 issue

17

suspicion that he intended to conceal some of the facts. Furthermore, as thereporter whose article the Asahi Shimbun used most enthusiastically inlaunching its campaign to influence public opinion on this issue, he cannot
be forgiven for committing this kind of error.
Moreover, as it turns out the reporter, Mr. Uemura, is married to the daughterof a leader of the organization “Association of Pacific War Victims andBereaved Families,” which sued the Japanese government seeking an
apology and reparations. Mr. Uemura, though an interested party through his
relationship to a leader of the organization seeking a trial, wrote an article tosupport the court case without revealing his relationship. This is a serious
problem from the standpoint of news media ethics.
Mr. Uemura’s article became a root cause for the comfort women controversy.
However, as a result of my research in Seoul, I came to consider the story afabrication and criticized Mr. Uemura by name in an article I wrote for the
April 1992 issue of Bungei Shunju.15
At the time, many Japanese seemed to think that, if coercive recruitment likea “slave hunt” had taken place as testified by Seiji Yoshida, then there must
be some reasons for the request for reparations and an apology. Yet, thetestimony by Seiji Yoshida had obvious contradictions when consideredfrom the standpoint of wartime common sense. He narrated as his own
experience that “we hunted Korean women for comfort women under thename of the ‘Imperial Army Comfort Women’s Volunteer Corps’ under theSee“Ianfu mondai” to wa nan datta no ka (The Comfort Women Issue: What Exactly Was It?), by
Tsutomu Nishioka, Bungei Shunju monthly magazine, Bungei Shunju publishing company, April 1992
issue. Also see ibid., footnote 13, regarding the article on an ex-comfort woman written by the Asahi
Shimbun reporter Takashi Uemura. The Asahi Shimbun in its August 5, 2014 edition published an article
reporting on its investigation and failure to verify the facts of Mr. Uemura’s allegations and obstinately
insisted, in the case of this article, that “there was no intentional twisting of facts.” Also see Nikkan gokaino shin’en (The Abyss of Japan–South Korea Misunderstanding), by Tsutomu Nishioka (Aki Shobo,1992) and Asahi Shimbun: Nihon-jin e no daizai (Asahi Shimbun: Serious Crimes Against the Japanese),by Tsutomu Nishioka (Goku Shuppan, 2014).
15

18

Army’s orders.” In fact, however, operations of the “Volunteer Corps” wereto provide labor for wartime industry and had nothing to do with comfort
women. Japanese who lived through the war know this, and Koreans who
lived under Japanese wartime administration also know this from their own
experience. Japanese born in the postwar period, if they studied history,
would also have this knowledge. Despite this, Mr. Uemura’s article in the
Asahi Shimbun reported that “one of the ‘Korean comfort women’ who was
forcibly taken away under the name of the ‘Women’s Volunteer Corps’” hascome out in public with her case. As a result, almost all Japanese came tobelieve that “since someone who claims to have been hunted down in a‘slave hunt’ has come out in public, the Yoshida testimony must be true.”
President Roh Tae-woo Said “Japanese News Media Created This
Problem”
The Asahi Shimbun prominently reported in its January 11, 1992 front page
top article, “documents showing military involvement discovered” and “theJapanese military supervised and controlled the establishment of comfort
stations and the recruitment of military comfort women.” On the subject of“military comfort women” the Asahi article went on to claim that, “theJapanese military in the Pacific war forcibly recruited mainly Korean women
under the name of the Volunteer Corps. That number is said to be from80,000 to 200,000.”
This Asahi Shimbun account became the prototype for the Japan-bashinginscriptions engraved on comfort women monuments currently being built
in various places in the United States that say, “200,000 women were forcibly
recruited as sex slaves.” The same Asahi report caused the South Korean
public to become infuriated, inciting both Japanese and Koreans to raise
their voices as if hypnotized, to insist that Japan “apologize for andcompensate the comfort women.”
It can be said that this series of mass media reports inflamed South Korean
19

public opinion, which in turn elevated the comfort women issue to a diplomatic
problem. Then President Roh Tae-woo put it correctly when he said, “Inreality the Japanese mass media were the ones who proffered this issue,
inflamed our country’s anti-Japanese feelings, and embittered our people.”16
Meanwhile, around this time a steady stream of letters and messages saying,“Koreans are liars” and “I hate Korea,” arrived at the editorial department of
Gendai Koria (Modern Korea), a Japanese language journal specializing in
Korean affairs, where I was chief editor. This can be said to be the beginningof the current “hate Korea” trend. Most of those sending these messages
were elderly Japanese, all from the generation that had first-hand knowledgeof the war. They were trembling in anger, saying, “The Women’s Volunteer
Corps and comfort women were different from each other. Yet some people
contend ‘women were forcibly taken away under the name of Volunteer
Corps.’ Aren’t they liars?”
Elderly South Koreans who knew the era of Japanese administration also
spoke out, unanimously saying, “Korea in those days was poverty stricken.
As a result, many women had to work in brothels or military comfort stations.
Why is this fact not understood?”
One South Korean opposition party politician, who was more senior thanformer presidents Kim Yom-sam and Kim Dae-jun, told me, “Japanese andSouth Korean mass media report only silly things. The 2.26 Incident was an
attempted military uprising against the government caused when officers readthe letters to their soldiers, from their homes in the northeastern part of Japan,
telling of such poverty that their younger sisters had to become prostitutes.
The Korean countryside in those days was even more impoverished.”
Another South Korean, who had been mobilized to work in a wartime munitions
factory in Nagasaki, filed a lawsuit against Japan for having lost part of his arm
while working. He disclosed his honest feelings when he said, “We were forced
16

See Bungei Shunju monthly magazine, Bungei Shunju publishing company, March 1992 issue.

20into mobilization by the Japanese government and suffered damage. However,the comfort women were not forced. I am troubled by their activities.”17
The Japanese Foreign Ministry Failed by Allowing the Prime
Minister to Apologize without Checking the Facts
Another reason the comfort women issue became a diplomatic problem liesin the grievous diplomatic failures by the Japanese Foreign Ministry. In
January 1992, the then Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa visited South Korea
where he repeatedly expressed apology and remorse a total of eight times onbehalf of Japan to then President Roh Tae-woo. He did this before thegovernment checked the factual basis as to whether or not there was coercive
recruitment of Korean comfort women by the Japanese authorities.
In February 1992 I met with the deputy chief of the North East Asia sectionof Japan’s Foreign Ministry and posed the following question.
Question: Prime Minister Miyazawa visited South Korea in January,
1991, and apologized to President Roh Tae-woo. Did he acknowledge
the coercive recruitment of Korean women by Japanese authorities andapologize for it? Or considering the case of wartime Japan’s Yoshiwara
district where many Japanese women worked who had been sold into
prostitution due to poverty, did Prime Minister Miyazawa apologize
by saying ‘he is sorry’ for the tragedy of all those wartime women who
were sold into prostitution due to poverty? Of these two cases, which
was it? If it was the latter, why is it the Japanese government does not
apologize to those women who worked in Yoshiwara?
To this question, the deputy head of the Northeast Asia Section of the Foreign
Ministry answered, “We will look into it” which was shocking to me. Then I
asked a further question, “How do you view Seiji Yoshida’s testimony that
Ibid., footnote 15, Nikkan no gokai no shin’en (The Abyss of Japan–South Korea
Misunderstanding), by Tsutomu Nishioka, (Aki Shobo, 1992).

1721

he was involved in a comfort women hunt under military orders?” He repliedthat “we cannot yet judge that either. I can only say it is hard to imagine thata perpetrator would make a confession by lying.”
In June 2014 a report on the process of the making of the Kono Statement
was released by the Japanese government.18 A significant point confirmed in
the report is that the Japanese government apologized to South Korea without
investigating the facts. Relevant sections read as follows:
After the first former comfort woman came forward in the ROK on
August 14, 1991, three former comfort women from the ROK filed alawsuit in the Tokyo District Court on December 6 of the same year.
Japanese Prime Minister Miyazawa was scheduled to visit the ROK in
January 1992, but amid growing interest in the comfort women issue
and mounting anti-Japanese criticism in the ROK, diplomatic
authorities in Japan and the ROK became concerned that the issue
would surface as an outstanding issue during the Prime Minister’svisit to the ROK.… As of December 1991, the Japanese side wasalready confidentially considering within their government that, “Itwould be appropriate if the Prime Minister could effectively accept
the involvement of the Japanese military, and make an expression ofremorse and regret,” but also that, “There is a possibility that public
opinion in the ROK will not be appeased simply with a verbal apology
alone.” One option that was being cited was to make a symbolicgesture in the form of erecting a memorial for the comfort women.
In August 1991, the Asahi Shimbun published a fabricated article in which its
reporter Takashi Uemura wrote that a former comfort woman had raised hervoice, claiming to have been forcibly recruited as a member of the Women’s
Volunteer Corps. This led to the former comfort woman filing a lawsuit
Ibid, footnote 7, “The Details of Exchanges Between Japan and The Republic of Korea (ROK)
Regarding The Comfort Women Issue—From the Drafting of the Kono Statement to the Asian
Women’s Fund” (June 20, 2014), http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/files/000042167.pdf.

18

22

against the Japanese government at the encouragement of Japanese activists
and lawyers. She was a victim of poverty as a matter of fact and had beensold by her own mother to a kisaeng house for 40 yen; she was not a victim
of coercive recruitment by Japanese authorities. Yet, without investigating
the relevant factual background, officials inside the Japanese government
began considering making an apology. They theorized that “it would beappropriate if the Prime Minister could effectively accept the involvement of
the Japanese military and make an expression of remorse and regret,” while
admitting that “there is a possibility that public opinion in the ROK will not
be appeased simply with a verbal apology alone.”19
The essence of the comfort women issue is that in the early 1990’s a fiction
was accepted as fact in the public opinion of both Japan and South Korea.
The fiction is that “Japan as a nation coercively recruited numerous Korean
women into the Volunteer Corps to make them comfort women.” Using“evidence” such as Seiji Yoshida’s false testimony, anti-Japanese forces inJapan and Korea found the news media of both countries willing to write
stories that inflamed public sentiment. Against that backdrop the Japanese
government, without any effort to investigate the truth of the allegations,simply continued apologizing.
Subsequently, heated public debate unfolded in Japan, and by 1997 thefiction had collapsed. In South Korea, by contrast, the fiction fortified itself
as Koreans in the generation who personally experienced the era of Japaneseadministration dwindled. In 2005 the Roh Moo-hyon government of South
Korea adopted a policy of seeking state reparations from Japan on the
comfort women issue. Then in 2011 the South Korean Constitutional Court
ruled unconstitutional the South Korean Foreign Ministry’s posture of notpreviously seeking reparations on behalf of former comfort women.
Subsequently, both the Lee Myung-bak government and the Park Geun-hye
government again brought the comfort women issue back into theirdiplomacy with Japan. As a consequence, many Japanese have been driven
19

Ibid., footnote 18, p. 1

23

into disliking South Korea.20

Part 3: A Comfort Woman who Saved 25,000 Yen
and the Actual Circumstances of Life in a Comfort Station
Introducing Evidence of the Life of Comfort Women in the Comfort
Stations and How It Was Far Different from that of “Sex Slaves”

A slave is an entity that is a human being and yet the subject of another’sownership. A slave is not permitted human dignity, rights or freedom but istreated as the possession of others and subjected to the owner’s total control,
including forced labor and purchase and sale. Then, were comfort womenslaves? If so, who had ownership of them? One who is the object of another’sownership also may not receive compensation for their labor. However, it isclear that many comfort women had an extraordinarily large income, far
exceeding the salary of military officers at the time, and these comfort
women were also remitting large amounts of money back home.
The conclusion is that comfort women were an expansion into the war zoneof the public prostitution system in existence at the time. Life in comfort
stations in those days was not fundamentally different from life in ordinary
public prostitution houses in both the Japanese homeland and Japanadministered Korea. Mr. Ikuhiko Hata, a historian who has been studying the
comfort women issue, stated that “it is appropriate to define the system of‘the comfort women’ or ‘military comfort women’ as the war zone version of
the public prostitution system that had been established in prewar Japan.”21
The U.S. Army unit that investigated the Japanese military’s war crimes
toward the end of the war stated in one of its reports that “A ‘comfort girl’ isnothing more than a prostitute or ‘professional camp follower’ attached to
the Japanese Army for the benefit of the soldiers.” It is clear that the comfort
See Asahi Shimbun: Nihon-jin e no daizai (Asahi Shimbun: Serious Crimes Against the Japanese), by
Tsutomu Nishioka (Goku Shuppan, 2014)20

See Ianfu to Senjō no Sei (Comfort Women and Sex in the War Zone), by Ikuhiko Hata (Shincho-sha,1999), p. 27.

21

24

women system was viewed as an extension of the established Japanese
domestic prostitution system.22
The Sankei Shimbun also reported in its November 27, 2014 edition as
follows: “From 2000 and for the following eight years, the U.S. government
under both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush conducted a largescale re-investigation of war crimes by Germany and Japan and yet did not
find a single page of official government or military documentation thatwould constitute evidence of Japanese war crimes related to Korean comfort
women, or any ‘institutional enslavement of women.’ It was revealed thatduring the war era the U.S. military considered Japan’s comfort womensystem as a mere extension of Japan’s domestic prostitution system.”23
Other specific cases illustrating the life of comfort women are introduced below.
In 1991 a South Korean former comfort woman Moon Ok-ju, visited a post
office in Shimonoseki city, Japan, and requested payment of the savings she
had deposited during the war. The post office found the records and was able
to confirm that as a comfort woman she had saved 26,245 yen. During the
war this amount was large enough to buy several houses in Tokyo. In
comparison, the yearly wartime salary of a four-star general wasapproximately 6,600 yen and that of an army private was approximately 72
yen. It is clear from this that as a comfort woman in the war zone Ms. Moon
was in an economically beneficial situation and far from being a “sex slave.”
See Appendix, Report No. 49: Japanese Prisoners of War Interrogation on Prostitution, United States
Office of War Information, Psychological Warfare Team, Attached to U.S. Army Forces India-Burma
Theater APO 689 … Prisoners: 20 Korean Comfort Girls (October 1, 1944).
22This research began in 2000, in accordance with the United States’ statutes The Nazi War Crimes Disclosure
Act of 1998 and The Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act of 2000, for the purpose of thoroughly
implementing the laws’ objective of providing the disclosure of information concerning war crimes committed by Germany and Japan during World War II. An Interagency Working Group (IWG) including representatives from the Department of Defense, Department of State, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) andFederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) examined previously classified documents pertaining to Nazi war
crimes as well as Japanese Imperial Government records and released those that could be declassified to the
public. The result of the research was summarized in a report to Congress that was released in April 2007.
23

25

Some scholars argue that in the war zone, the real value of this amount ofmoney was low due to rampant inflation. However, Ms. Moon Ok-ju testified
that she had also remitted 5,000 yen to her family back home and that themoney had reached them.24
According to the testimony of former Japanese officers, many Korean
comfort women saved large amounts of money in the combat zone andremitted more than a little of their savings back home to their families.25
The testimony of Mr. S.G. (initials only), currently a resident of Osaka city,
provides another example. He was stationed in Mianyang (Benyo) Prefecture,
Hubei Province, in the Wuhan region of central China, as a paymastersergeant attached to the headquarters of the 3rd Battalion of the 216 Infantry
Regiment. Mr. S.G. testified that “Korean comfort women working in the
comfort station for that unit on average earned 150 yen to 220 yen per person
per month as take-home pay and were remitting home a minimum of 150 yen
per month. Mr. S.G. further testified that whenever he went on an assignment
to Hankou, where the Army field post office was located, the merchants who
ran the comfort stations were also on the same truck, and he saw them“tightly holding bags full of money, wheat flour sacks stuffed with banknotes, on their way to the post office for remittance.”26
There is also the diary of a Korean comfort station employee, which was
discovered by Seoul National University Professor Emeritus An Byeong-jik.
The diary contained the entry: “I remitted 600 yen from the Central Post
Office that one of the comfort women asked me to withdraw from her savings
See Mun Ok-ju: Biruma sensen Tate shidan no “ianfu” datta watashi (I who Was a Comfort Woman
for Division Tate on the Burmese Front), narration and commentary by Moon Ok-ju / Morikawa Machiko(Nashinokisha, 1996).
24

See Shōgen: Gun–kan yonjūnin ga nokoshita omei e no hanron (Testimony: A Rebuttal of Defamatory
Accusations by 40 Former Japanese Military and Government Personnel), commentary and analysis by
Tsutomu Nishioka, Seiron monthly magazine, Sankei Shimbun publishing company, December 2014 issue.

25

26

Ibid., footnote 25.

26and send out.” (Dated October 27, 1944.)27
Additional interesting evidence came through the testimony of Takeo Suzuki,
Chief of the Economic Security Section, Kaijo Prefectural Police, Mukden
Province, Manchukuo. Mr. Suzuki became a policeman in Manchuko in
August 1943, and was assigned to the Kaijo Prefectural Police as the head of
the Economic Security Section in February 1944. In his testimony, Mr.
Suzuki said, “I interviewed comfort women and gave permission for them towork,” adding the following:28
Mr. Suzuki: What are now called comfort women—except that there
was no such word as comfort women then, but they were called
shakufu (bar maids) … Women were coming to the police station withapplications for becoming a shakufu.… They could not do businesswithout a permit. They were mostly Korean and were coming to me tosubmit a copy of their family register, doctor’s health certificate,parental agreement, applicant’s photograph, and application for work.
Therefore it was not coercive recruitment, nothing like women being
forcibly taken away. How in the world would abducted parties comein with a parental agreement and copy of their family register? I, as
the head of the Security section, looked at these sets of documents,
interviewed the applicants, matched them with their photograph, andconfirmed by asking, “Weren’t you forced to do this? Weren’t you
forcibly taken away?” That was to confirm that the women were not
becoming shakufu against their wishes. When the applicant said “No,”then I put a stamp of approval on their application and submitted it to
the chief of the police station, then generally within one week thepermit was issued. Then I called the merchants, informing them ofissuance of the permit and they would come and pick it up.
27

See Mainichi Shimbun, August 7, 2014 issue.

Ibid., footnote 25. Questions from an interview at Mr. Suzuki’s residence on April 25, 1998. Testimony
was given in response to questions posed by Professor Akira Nakamura, Dokkyo University, Japan, representing the Showa History Study Institute.
28

27

Mr. Nakamura: Then the comfort women in Manchuko were under
the jurisdiction of the police, not the military?
Mr. Suzuki: Yes, yes. It was not the military.…
Mr. Nakamura: How did they gather women?
Mr. Suzuki: I asked the women why in the world they came all the way
to Manchuko. They answered, “Of course, Mister, the money is good.…”
Mr. Suzuki: The most popular of the women, who went by the name
Oshuku, told me that she was making as much as 300 yen per month[current value 900,000 yen]. Those were the days when the average salary
for a graduate of Tokyo Imperial University was about 70 yen a month.
One Korean woman told me that since she was making so muchmoney, “I sent my family money, had a house built there, and boughta field of land. Now I intend to go home with my savings.”
In those days there was an established public prostitution system. The
comfort women system was its expansion into the war zone.
The U.S. Army report on the interrogation of Korean comfort women, attachedat the end of this essay, is strongly recommended as supplemental reading on
this history. The wartime comfort women were making a generally highincome as the ability of comfort station merchants to exploit the women was
limited under strict monitoring by the police and military because they were ina war zone. On the other hand, it is also true that the freedom of movement of
comfort women was restricted because the war was going on and there wereconsiderations for both personal security and military operations.
In conclusion, life in the comfort stations in those days was essentially not
different from the life of those working in public prostitution houses either28

in Japan or Japan-administered Korea.
The women who worked in public prostitution houses and wartime comfort
stations because of poverty of course suffered serious infringement of their
human rights if judged by present-day moral values. Unfortunately, in orderto eradicate such tragedies it was first necessary to resolve the problem of“absolute poverty” through high economic growth in postwar Japan andSouth Korea. That is a historical fact.

29

Appendix
OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION
Psychological Warfare Team
Attached to U.S. Army Forces India-Burma Theater
APO 68931

OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION
Psychological Warfare Team
Attached to U.S. Army Forces India-Burma Theater
APO 689
Japanese Prisonerof War Interrogation
Report No. 49.

Place interrogated:
Date Interrogated:
Date of Report:
By:

Prisoners:
Date of Capture:
Date of Arrival
at Stockade:

20 Korean Comfort Girls
August 10, 1944
August 15, 1944

Ledo Stockade
Aug. 20 - Sept. 10, 1944
October 1, 1944
T/3 Alex Yorichi

PREFACE;This report is based on the information obtained from the interrogation oftwenty Korean “comfort girls” and two Japanese civilians captured around the tenth ofAugust, 1944 in the mopping up operations after the fall of Myitkyina in Burma.
The report shows how the Japanese recruited these Korean “comfort girls”,
the conditions under which they lived and worked, their relations with and reaction to
the Japanese soldier, and their understanding of the military situation.
A “comfort girl” is nothing more than a prostitute or “professional camp follower” attached to the Japanese Army for the benefit of the soldiers. The word “comfort
girl” is peculiar to the Japanese. Other reports show the “comfort girls” have been foundwherever it was necessary for the Japanese Army to fight. This report however deals
only with the Korean “comfort girls” recruited by the Japanese and attached to their
Army in Burma. The Japanese are reported to have shipped some 703 of these girls to
Burma in 1942.
RECRUITING;
Early in May of 1942 Japanese agents arrived in Korea for the purpose ofenlisting Korean girls for “comfort service” in newly conquered Japanese territories in32

Southeast Asia. The nature of this “service” was not specified but it was assumed to bework connected with visiting the wounded in hospitals, rolling bandages, and generally
making the soldiers happy. The inducement used by these agents was plenty of money,an opportunity to pay off the family debts, easy work, and the prospect of a new life in a
new land, Singapore. On the basis of these false representations many girls enlisted foroverseas duty and were rewarded with an advance of a few hundred yen.
The majority of the girls were ignorant and uneducated, although a few had
been connected with [sic]“oldest profession on earth” before. The contract they signed
bound them to Army regulations and to war for the “house master ” for a period of fromsix months to a year depending on the family debt for which they were advanced ...
Approximately 800 of these girls were recruited in this manner and they landedwith their Japanese “house master ” at Rangoon around August 20th, 1942. They camein groups of from eight to twenty-two. From here they were distributed to various partsof Burma, usually to fair sized towns near Japanese Army camps.
Eventually four of these units reached the Myitkyina. They were, Kyoei, Kinsui,
Bakushinro, and Momoya. The Kyoei house was called the “Maruyama Club”, but waschanged when the girls reached Myitkyina as Col.Maruyama [sic], commander of thegarrison at Myitkyina, objected to the similarity to his name.
PERSONALITY;
The interrogations show the average Korean “comfort girl” to be about twenty-fiveyears old, uneducated, childish, and selfish. She is not pretty either by Japanese of [sic]Caucasian standards. She is inclined to be egotistical and likes to talk about herself. Her
attitude in front of strangers is quiet and demure, but she “knows the wiles of a woman.”
She claims to dislike her “profession” and would rather not talk either about it or her
family. Because of the kind treatment she received as a prisoner from American soldiers
at Myitkyina and Ledo, she feels that they are more emotional than Japanese soldiers.
She is afraid of Chinese and Indian troops.
LIVING AND WORKING CONDITIONS;In Myitkyina the girls were usually quartered in a large two story house (usually a school building) with a separate room for each girl. There each girl lived, slept,and transacted business. In Myitkina their food was prepared by and purchased from the“house master” as they received no regular ration from the Japanese Army. They lived

33

in near-luxury in Burma in comparison to other places. This was especially true of theirsecond year in Burma. They lived well because their food and material was not heavily
rationed and they had plenty of money with which to purchase desired articles. They
were able to buy cloth, shoes, cigarettes, and cosmetics to supplement the many gifts
given to them by soldiers who had received “comfort bags” from home.
While in Burma they amused themselves by participating in sports events withboth officers and men, and attended picnics, entertainments, and social dinners. They
had a phonograph and in the towns they were allowed to go shopping.
PRIOR SYSTEM;
The conditions under which they transacted business were regulated by theArmy, and in congested areas regulations were strictly enforced. The Army found it
necessary in congested areas to install a system of prices, priorities, and schedules forthe various units operating in a [sic] particular areas. According to interrogations theaverage system was as follows:
1. Soldiers
2. NCOs
3. Officers

10 AM to 5 PM 1.50 yen
5 PM to 9 PM 3.00 yen
9 PM to 12 PM 5.00 yen

20 to 30 minutes
30 to 40 minutes
30 to 40 minutes

These were average prices in Central Burma. Officers were allowed to stay overnightfor twenty yen. In Myitkyina Col. Maruyama slashed the prices to almost one-half of
the average price.
SCHEDULES;
The soldiers often complained about congestion in the houses. In many situations they were not served and had to leave as the army was very strict about overstaying. In order to overcome this problem the Army set aside certain days for certain
units. Usually two men from the unit for the day were stationed at the house to identify
soldiers. A roving MP was also on hand to keep order. Following is the schedule used by
the “Kyoei” house for the various units of the 18th Division while at Naymyo.
SundayMondayTuesday

18th Div. Hdqs. Staff
CavalryEngineers34

Wednesday
ThursdayFridaySaturdayDay off and weekly physical exam.
MedicsMountain artillery
Transport

Officers were allowed to come seven nights a week. The girls complained that even withthe schedule congestion was so great that they could not care for all guests, thus causing
ill feeling among many of the soldiers.
Soldiers would come to the house, pay the price and get tickets of cardboard
about two inches square with the prior on the left side and the name of the house on theother side. Each soldier's identity or rank was then established after which he “took histurn in line”. The girls were allowed the prerogative of refusing a customer. This wasoften done if the person were too drunk.
PAY AND LIVING CONDITIONS;The “house master” received fifty to sixty per cent of the girls' gross earnings
depending on how much of a debt each girl had incurred when she signed her contract.
This meant that in an average month a girl would gross about fifteen hundred yen. She
turned over seven hundred and fifty to the “master”. Many “masters” made life very
difficult for the girls by charging them high prices for food and other articles.
In the latter part of 1943 the Army issued orders that certain girls who had paid
their debt could return home. Some of the girls were thus allowed to return to Korea.
The interrogations further show that the health of these girls was good. They
were well supplied with all types of contraceptives, and often soldiers would bring theirown which had been supplied by the army. They were well trained in looking after boththemselves and customers in the matter of hygiene. A regular Japanese Army doctor visited the houses once a week and any girl found diseased was given treatment, secluded,and eventually sent to a hospital. This same procedure was carried on within the ranksof the Army itself, but it is interesting to note that a soldier did not lose pay during theperiod he was confined.
REACTIONS TO JAPANESE SOLDIERS;
In their relations with the Japanese officers and men only two names of35

any consequence came out of interrogations. They were those of Col. Maruyama, commander of the garrison at Myitkyina and Maj. Gen.Mizukami [sic], who brought in reinforcements. The two were exact opposites. The former was hard, selfish and repulsive
with no consideration for his men; the latter a good, kind man and a fine soldier, withthe utmost consideration for those who worked under him. The Colonel was a constant
habitué of the houses while the General was never known to have visited them. With thefall of Myitkyina, Col. Maruyama supposedly deserted while Gen. Mizukami committed
suicide because he could not evacuate the men.
SOLDIERS REACTIONS;
The average Japanese soldier is embarrassed about being seen in a “comfort
house” according to one of the girls who said, “when the place is packed he is apt to beashamed if he has to wait in line for his turn”. However there were numerous instancesof proposals of marriage and in certain cases marriages actually took place.
All the girls agreed that the worst officers and men who came to see themwere those who were drunk and leaving for the front the following day. But all likewise
agreed that even though very drunk the Japanese soldier never discussed military mattersor secrets with them. Though the girls might start the conversation about some military
matter the officer or enlisted man would not talk, but would in fact “scold us for discussing such un-lady like subjects. Even Col. Maruyama when drunk would never discusssuch matters.”
The soldiers would often express how much they enjoyed receiving magazines,
letters and newspapers from home. They also mentioned the receipt of “comfort bags”
filled with canned goods, magazines, soap, handkerchiefs, toothbrush, miniature doll,
lipstick, and wooden clothes. The lipstick and cloths were feminine and the girls couldn't
understand why the people at home were sending such articles. They speculated that thesender could only have had themselves or the “native girls” [sic].
REACTION TO THE MILITARY SITUATION;
It appears they knew very little about the military situation around Myitkyina
even up to and including the time of their retreat and capture. There is however some
information worth nothing:“ In the initial attack on Myitleyna and the airstrip about two hundred Japanese36died in battle, leaving about two hundred to defend the town. Ammunition was very low.
“ Col. Maruyama dispersed his men. During the following days the enemy
were shooting haphazardly everywhere. It was a waste since they didn't seem to aim at
any particular thing. The Japanese soldiers on the other hand had orders to fire one shotat a time and only when they were sure of a hit.”
Before the enemy attacked on the west airstrip, soldiers stationed around
Myitkyina were dispatched elsewhere, to storm the Allied attack in the North and West.
About four hundred men were left behind, largely from the 114th Regiment. Evidently
Col. Maruyama did not expect the town to be attacked. Later Maj. Gen. Mizukami of
the 56th Division brought in reinforcements of more than two regiments but these wereunable to hold the town.
It was the consensus among the girls that Allied bombings were intense andfrightening and because of them they spent most of their last days in foxholes. One or
two even carried on work there. The comfort houses were bombed and several of thegirls were wounded and killed.
RETREAT AND CAPTURE;
The story of the retreat and final capture of the “comfort girls” is somewhat vague
and confused in their own minds. From various reports it appears that the following
occurred: on the night of July 31st a party of sixty three people including the “comfort
girls” of three houses (Bakushinro was merged with Kinsui), families, and helpers,
started across the Irrawaddy River in small boats. They eventually landed somewhere
near Waingmaw. They stayed there until August 4th, but never entered Waingmaw. From
there they followed in the path of a group of soldiers until August 7th when there wasa skirmish with the enemy and the party split up. The girls were ordered to follow thesoldiers after a three-hour interval. They did this only to find themselves on the bankof a river with no sign of the soldiers or any means of crossing. They remained in a
nearby house until August 10th when they were captured by Kachin soldiers led by an
English officer. They were taken to Myitkyina and then to the Ledo stockade where theinterrogations which form the basis of this report took place.
PROPAGANDA;
The girls know practically nothing of any propaganda leaflets that had been used37

against the Japanese. They had seen a few leaflets in the hands of the soldiers but most ofthem were unable to understand them as they were in Japanese and the soldiers refused
to discuss them with the girls. One girl remembered the leaflet about Col. Maruyama(apparently it was Myitkyina Troop Appeal), but she did not believe it. Others heard thesoldiers discussing leaflets from time to time but no tangible remarks resulted from theireavesdropping. However it is interesting to note that one officer expressed the view that
“Japan can’t win this war”.
REQUESTS;
None of the girls appeared to have heard the loudspeaker used at Myitkyina
but very [sic] did overhear the soldiers mention a “radio broadcast”.
They asked that leaflets telling of the capture of the “comfort girls” should not
be used for it would endanger the lives of other girls if the Army knew of their capture.
They did think it would be a good idea to utilize the fact of their capture in any droppings
planned for Korea.
Appendix“A”
Following are the names of the twenty Korean “comfort girls” and the two
Japanese civilians interrogated to obtain the information used in the reports. The Koreannames are phoneticized.
[Omitted for reasons of privacy.]38

About the Author
TSUTOMU NISHIOKA is a professor at Tokyo Christian University, where
he has taught since 1991. He is a scholar specializing in Korean peninsulastudies, for which he developed a passion early in his education. He was an
exchange student at Yonsei University in the International Division (197778) during his undergraduate studies at Tokyo International Christian
University (BA, 1979). While completing his Master Degree in Area Studies
at Tsukuba University (MA,1983), he was selected as a Foreign Ministry
Research Fellow for which he was assigned to the Embassy of Japan inSeoul, South Korea, from 1982-84. He is known for his research and prolificwriting on contemporary Korean issues and served as the Editor in Chief ofthe foreign affairs journal Gendai Koria (Today’s Korea) from 1990-2000.
Among his many books, the following relate closely to his most recent examination of South Korean-Japanese history and the comfort women issue:
Nikkan gokai no shin’en (The Abyss of Japan-South Korean Misunderstanding), Aki Shobo (1992); Koria tabū o toku (Solving the Korea Taboo), Aki
Shobo (2007); Yami ni idomu: Rachi, kiga, ianfu, han-nichi o dō haaku suruka (Deciphering the Darkness: Abductions, Starvation, Comfort Women and
the Anti-Japan Movement), Tokuma Shoten (1998-99); Nikkan “rekishi
mondai” no shinjitsu (The Truth About the Japan-South Korea History
Issue), PHP Research Institute (2005); Yoku wakaru ianfu mondai:Zōho
shimpan (The Comfort Women Issue Decoded, Revised Edition), Soshisha(2012).

40