THE TRUTH ABOUT THE “COMFORT WOMEN”
Moteki Hiromichi, CEO
Sekai Shuppan

This article is dedicated to the self-proclaimed champions of truth and justice who fell
victim to the tales spun by Yoshida Seiji, the fabulist of the century. And may it also
serve as a reminder to Americans who are so patronizing to the Japanese: Have you
forgotten about the brothels that flourished during the Vietnam War?

Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact ©

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE “COMFORT WOMEN”
Moteki Hiromichi, CEO
Sekai Shuppan
Misguided activists
They argue that members of the Women’s Volunteer Labor Corps were forced to
become military prostitutes, which is total nonsense. They institute lawsuits. They
demand apologies. Every Wednesday they hold demonstrations. And now they haveoutdone themselves by installing a statue of a young woman in front of the Japanese
Embassy in Seoul to symbolize Korean women whom they allege were coerced into
sexual slavery during World War II. Who are these Koreans, and why do they
continue to indulge in such shameless behavior?
The claim that members of the Women’s Volunteer Labor Corps were military
prostitutes is worse than misguided; it is an outright lie. The two have absolutely noconnection with each other.
In accordance with the National Labor Mobilization Order issued in 1941, allunmarried women between the ages of 14 and 25 were required to serve their country
by working in a factory or other production facility for a total of 30 days per year. An
administrative order issued by a vice-minister in September 1943, and intended toencourage women to help the war effort by doing factory work, resulted in theformation of groups of volunteer female workers (the Women’s Volunteer Labor
Corps). In March 1944, with the expansion of the program, the term of service was
extended to one year. In August 1944, with the issuance of the Women’s Volunteer
Labor Ordinance, industrial service became mandatory for women. The ordinanceapplied to Korean women as well, but unlike in Japan proper, it elicited little response,
but the Government-General did not want to force the issue by making women’s labormandatory. When Korea was a tributary state of China, women were sometimes
offered to the Chinese as tribute; the Koreans misunderstood the term “Women’s
Volunteer Labor Corps,” thinking that they were being asked to render sexual services.
But most of the volunteer work took place in nearby factories. It was very rare toassign Korean women to factories in Japan proper. And the corps never had any
connection with military prostitutes, who worked in overseas war zones.
In fact, not one interview of a former military prostitute has revealed that women who
joined the Women’s Volunteer Labor Corps were then forced to serve as prostitutes.
An Byeong-jik, a former Seoul University professor, supervised a research reportbased on interviews with former military prostitutes (Testimonies, Part I: Korean
Women Forced To Serve as Military Prostitutes). According to that report, of 19
somewhat reliable testimonies, only two of the women said that they were compelled
to join the Women’s Volunteer Labor Corps and taken to Busan, in one case, andToyama, in the other. Both allegations are dubious and, in any case, neither Busan nor
Toyama was a battle zone.1

1

Nishioka Tsutomu, Yoku wakaru ianfu mondai (Complete guide to the “comfort women” issue)(Tokyo: Soshisha, 2007), p. 98; English title: Behind the Comfort Women Controversy: How Lies
Became Truth, http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/39_S4.pdf, p. 41.

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Yoshida’s “confession” repudiated
One of the more prominent Korean organizations focusing on the “comfort women”(the term often used to describe military prostitutes) issue is the Korean Council for
the Women Drafted for Sexual Slavery by Japan. (Its English-language name ismisleading and deceptive: a literal translation of the original name is “Council on the
Korean Volunteer Labor Corps Question.”) The council’s founding principle is abald-faced lie — there is no other way to put it — and the behavior of its members isshameless and shrill. It is destined to bring dishonor to the Koreans.
However, in examining source material relating to the comfort women, I have had
occasion to feel respect for the Korean people. One instance was my reaction to areport entitled “Special Questions on Koreans,” which is housed in the US National
Archives (My subsequent search for the English-language version was unsuccessful,but I believe that the document is genuine.)2
This is what the three Korean prostitutes told the Americans: “All Korean prostitutes
working in the Pacific theater applied for that work of their own free will, or weresold by their parents. If the women had truly been abducted, Koreans, young and old,
would have gone on a rampage and, heedless of possible repercussions, killed theJapanese.”
This made perfect sense to me, as I know how proud the Korean people are. If women
had been abducted, there would have been riots.
Another instance is the hunt for prostitutes described by the infamous Yoshida Seiji in
My War Crimes.3 He claims that a “roundup” of potential military prostitutes took
place on Jeju Island. Heo Yeong-seon, a reporter for the Jeju Ilbo, a daily newspaper,
decided to investigate; she visited the village where the abductions supposedly took
place.
She spoke to Chon Ok-tan (85), a resident of Seongsan-li, who rejected Yoshida’s
story: “It’s not true. There are only a little over 250 houses in this village. If an
incident that serious, where 15 people were abducted, had taken place, everyone
would have heard about it. But no one did.”
Local historian Kim Bong-ok, infuriated by Yoshida’s lies, said: “It is a totally
immoral book that shows how corrupt the Japanese are.”
These seem to be very healthy responses from respectable Koreans. Unfortunately,
the article in the Jeju Ilbo was ignored in Korea. And Koreans failed to react toYoshida’s book, which maintains that the Japanese treated Koreans brutally andunjustly, and that the latter neither resisted nor protested. They might just well have
said, “Our women were abducted and taken away, and we, their miserable
2“Composite Report on Three Korean Navy Civilians,” List No. 78, 28 March 1945. US National
Archives.
3

Yoshida Seiji, Watakushi no senso hanzai: Chosenjin kyosei renko (My war crimes: abduction of
Koreans) (Tokyo: San’ichi Shobo, 1983).

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compatriots, offered no resistance.” I don’t think anyone would blame me for asking,“Where is your pride as Koreans? You should be ashamed of yourselves.”“Strongman” Syngman Rhee silent on “comfort women”
How did this whole controversy begin? Not in Korea, but in Japan! The first
assertions that Korean women were coerced into serving as military prostitutes weremade not by Koreans, but by Japanese. The anti-Japanese movement in Korea owes
its existence to Koreans who were fooled by the lies of a Japan-hating Japanese.
Prior to World War II, Japan never attempted to conceal or control information about
the existence of military prostitutes. In fact, recruitment notices appeared innewspapers (see Fig. 2). Private brokers made strenuous efforts to recruit them, forobvious reasons. At that time prostitution was legal in Japan, just as it was in most of
the world’s nations. It was therefore not at all unusual to establish brothels in battle
zones. That is why Korea’s leading newspapers carried advertisements intended to
attract women to work in those brothels. It is also common knowledge that a large
number of Korean women worked in war zones as military prostitutes.

Fig. 1: Source material
released by the Korean
government in an attempt
to demonstrate that Korean
women were coerced into
serving as comfort women;
strangely
enough,itincludesnewspaper
advertisements for comfort
women (see Fig. 2)

Fig. 2: Advertisements for comfort
women in Seoul newspapers stating that
remuneration is ¥300 per month, andthat advances of up to ¥3,000 may be
granted; (left)
Keijo Nippo (July 26, 1944) and (right)
Mainichi Shimbun (October 27, 1944)

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After Japan was defeated in World War II, Korean President Syngman Rhee
implemented uncompromising anti-Japanese policies, making demand after demand,
including reparations for having impressed Koreans into the labor force. But he did
not insist that reparations be paid to military prostitutes, because such a demand
would exceed the bounds of common sense. Rhee certainly knew about military
prostitutes and the high wages they commanded. Everyone knew.
It is common knowledge that Koreans residing in Japan at the end of the war claimed,
preposterously, that they were citizens of a victor nation and should be treated as such.
There were many Koreans holding high-ranking positions in the JCP (JapaneseCommunist Party), among them Kim Cheon-hae, who voiced strenuous demands
relating to the rights of Koreans residing in Japan. However, no one referred torequisitioned labor as “forced labor.” No demands for reparations or accusations thatprostitutes were coerced were forthcoming, precisely because they would have had nobasis.
Immediately after World War II, when memories of the time previous to the conflict
were still vivid, no one made up stories about how women had been compelled toserve as prostitutes. It wasn’t until memories had begun to fade, in the 1970s, thatjournalist Senda Kako wrote a book entitled Military Comfort Women. In it he usedlanguage (“military comfort women,” for instance) that didn’t even exist before or
during the war, and is also misleading. For instance, “military comfort women” gives
the impression that the prostitutes were attached to a military unit, like militarycorrespondents were, but this was not at all the case. Nevertheless, many left-wing
human rights activists embraced what Senda wrote as though it were the truth.4 Then
Aoyagi Atsuko and Takagi Ken’ichi (a lawyer) entered the scene; they went to Korea,
where they encouraged former military prostitutes to institute lawsuits. They were notresponding to Korean demands for redress. It was not Koreans, but left-wing Japanesehuman rights activists who launched a “comfort women campaign” founded on lies.
Yoshida: fabulist of the century
When the lies about women having been coerced to serve as military prostitutes began
to spread, Yoshida Seiji burst onto the scene with his earth-shaking confession.
The year was 1983, and Yoshida’s published confession was entitled My War Crimes:
Abduction of Koreans. The author, who claims to have been head of the Shimonoseki
Branch Mobilization Department, which operated under the oversight of the
Yamaguchi Prefectural Labor Association, recalls receiving an order from Western
District Army Headquarters stating that 200 Korean women from the Women’s Labor
Volunteer Corps were to be mobilized as military prostitutes. Yoshida then proceeds
to describe how women were rounded up on Jeju Island and elsewhere.
Those who weren’t aware of the facts (or rather, those who were convinced thatJapanese military personnel were evil personified), must have thought that Yoshida’s
realistically woven tale was true. Surely they felt new anger at the unforgivablecriminal acts he recounted.

4

Senda Kako, Jugun ianfu (Military comfort women) (Tokyo: Futabasha, 1973).

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The book had a tremendous impact. Asahi Shimbun and other publications of its ilk
were already entrenched in the conviction that Japanese soldiers were wicked
creatures. Those publications gave Yoshida’s book a tremendous amount of coverage,
primarily because he validated their own credo. It isn’t difficult to understand why the
many Diet representatives who simple-mindedly believe that the Asahi Shimbun is thefont of wisdom believed Yoshida as well. So widespread had the myth of womencoerced into prostitution become that even a Foreign Ministry bureaucrat, whenquestioned about the veracity of Yoshida’s claims, said “Why would an admitted
wrongdoer lie?” Nishioka Tsutomu felt compelled to include this comment in his
book.5
Yoshida Seiji didn’t stop with My War Crimes. He set out on an atonement
pilgrimage, travelling to Korea, where he prostrated himself and begged forforgiveness!
But as I have already stated, everything he wrote or said was untrue. His lies further
entrenched Korean misconceptions, even inspiring the erection of a statuecommemorating the suffering of the “coerced comfort women,” an act historic in its
imbecility.
At long last Yoshida’s lies were exposed, and even the Asahi Shimbun and television
coverage of his book and adventures ceased. But I find it unforgiveable that neither
the Asahi Shimbun nor the television networks had the decency to print or broadcast a
retraction. That means that many Japanese continue to harbor the notion, howevervague, women really were coerced into serving as military prostitutes, and byextension, that Japanese military personnel must have been involved in other acts
involving compulsion and fraud.
Why did Yoshida Seiji go to the trouble of making up stories that incriminated him,
and then broadcast them to the world? Readers may wonder, as did the Foreign
Ministry bureaucrat, why someone would confess falsely. But it is not difficult toarrive at an explanation.
It is righteous to condemn the evil Japanese military. It is categorically righteous toexpose evil deeds perpetrated by the Japanese military and to denounce them. It may
seem as though Yoshida is apologizing for having been party to those evil deeds. But
in actuality he becomes symbolic of the Japanese military; when he confesses to his
sins and prostrates himself, he enters the realm of absolute righteousness. And one
might add that it is permissible to lie to attain absolute righteousness.
We should be mindful that, to use the language of Lenin, the notion that the end
justifies the means is coursing through leftist minds.
And he calls himself a lawyer!
The term “sex slave” is now in widespread use all over the world, particularly in thecontext of military prostitutes who serviced Japanese soldiers. For this we haveTotsuka Etsuro, a Japanese attorney, to thank. Totsuka represents International
5

Nishioka, op. cit., p. 59; English translation at http://www.sdh-fact.com/CL02_1/39_S4.pdf, p.25.

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Fig. 3: Article in
MainichiShimbun
(May
12,
1992
edition) about former
military
prostitute
Mun Ok-ju, who
accumulated ¥26,145
in savings; headlines
read “Records ofmilitarysavings
account
found”;“Right to claim has
not expired. Give me
my money!”

Education Development (IED), a Japanese NGO. Sex slaves is the term he used in his
relentless petitions to the UNCHR (UN Commission on Human Rights) for theopportunity to address the comfort women issue. It is indeed unfortunate that the
UNHCR adopted Totsuka’s terminology.
According to left-wing doctrine, lying is a permissible means to an end. To achieve
righteousness (condemning the Japanese military as evil), it is perfectly all right to lie.
We can forgive the world outside Japan for being unfamiliar with military prostitution
and how it works. But here we have a Japanese lawyer who is convinced that the6military prostitutes visited by Japanese soldiers were sex slaves. How can someone beso ill informed and ignorant?
“Comfort women” is a term often used to describe military prostitutes who worked inoverseas war zones where the Japanese fought. How could Totsuka not know that? It
is hard to imagine how someone so ignorant could manage to exercise the legal
profession.
An article in the Mainichi Shimbun (Fig. 3) dated May 12, 1992 states that Mun Ok-ju,
a former military prostitute who worked in Burma, once visited the Shimonoseki Post
Office to claim funds she had deposited in her postal savings account during her termof service (two years and six months). Ms. Mun had accumulated a balance of¥26,145! Since it is unlikely that she deposited all the money she earned, she may
have been making as much as ¥1,000 per month. This was in an era when an Army
officer earned a monthly salary of ¥70 (or at the maximum, ¥90, if one includes acombat allowance). Ms. Mun must have been paid more than 10 times that, or 40 or
50 times the salary of a rank-and-file soldier.
Does Totsuka Etsuro really think women with such high earnings were sex slaves?
Whatever the case, ¥26,000 would have bought Ms. Mun 10 houses in her native land.
Does Totsuka not know that women from poor families were willing to take risks andface danger when a great deal of money was at stake?
It would seem that Totsuka Etsuro, in petitioning the UNCHR on behalf of “sexslaves,” was guilty of a crime of conscience motivated by leftist ideology. Perhaps
that was not the case, but his behavior was certainly shameful.
Mike Honda and the US Congress
By adopting the term “sex slaves,” the UNHCR perpetuated the grossly mistaken
notion that the Japanese forced women into prostitution. Furthermore, the words havesuch a powerful impact that they robbed listeners or readers of their reasoning power,
and caused outrage to multiply exponentially.
Totsuka and other Japanese left-wing human rights activists, as well as like-minded
anti-Japanese Koreans, shared their views about military prostitutes with American
left-wing human rights activists. Consequently, in 2006 a resolution condemning
Japan was brought before the House Committee on International Relations, which
passed it; however, it did not go further that that.
The Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact sent messages protesting theinjustice of the resolution via facsimile to all 435 members of the US House ofRepresentatives. Nevertheless, Rep. Mike Honda submitted another, similar resolution
in 2008. We sent a list of open questions to Honda, which explained, in great detail,exactly why the resolution was unjust. We sent copies of those questions to Rep. Tom
Lantos, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (the new name of theHouse Committee on International Relations), and to the other committee members.
In those open questions we placed particular emphasis on an official US document
emanating from the US Office of War Information, Psychological Warfare Team
attached to the US Army Forces, India-Burma Theater. The document states that7

“‘comfort girls’ are nothing more than a prostitute or professional ‘camp follower,’”
and that the that “the girls’ average total monthly earnings were 1,500 yen, and 750
yen went to their master.”This is a very reliable document, based on interviews of prisoners of war conductedby US military personnel. The comfort women were not coerced, and they were paidvery well for their services. The document thoroughly repudiates the claims about sex
slaves stated in the resolution. Incidentally, Japanese Army sergeants at the time were
paid ¥30 per month; therefore, the prostitutes made 25 times what they did.
This document alone negates the portion of the resolution that reads as follows:
Whereas the ‘comfort women’ system of forced military prostitution by theGovernment of Japan, considered unprecedented in its cruelty and magnitude,
included gang rape, forced abortions, humiliation, and sexual violence
resulting in mutilation, death, or eventual suicide in one of the largest casesof human trafficking in the 20th century;6

This notwithstanding, our open questions and protests were ignored. We even wrote
to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asking her to review the facts carefully before voting
on the resolution. This appeal too was ignored, and the US House of Representatives
passed a resolution based on lies, and thus unparalleled in history.
Mike Honda and the US Congress must be made to understand that they passed acriminally fallacious resolution.
How the US military procured prostitutes
Throughout history all the world’s nations have formulated policies designed torespond to the sexual needs of their soldiers stationed overseas, in accordance withdomestic laws governing prostitution. In Japan prostitution was legal; therefore,brothels were established in war zones and run as businesses.
Since prostitution was not legal in the US, prostitutes were procured locally. There isno need to go back 70 years to learn what the situation was. In her best-selling
Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, Susan Brownmiller describes the situationin Vietnam 50 years ago, and the behavior of American GIs.
Military brothels on Army base camps (“Sin Cities,” “Disneylands” or“boom-boom parlors”) were built by decision of a division commander,
a two-star general, and were under the direct operational control of abrigade commander with the rank of colonel. Clearly, Army brothels in
Vietnam existed by the grace of Army Chief of Staff William C.
Westmoreland, the United States Embassy in Saigon, and thePentagon.7

Americans seem to believe that their soldiers are innocents who would never6

http://www.thomas.gov/home/gpoxmlc110/hr121_ih.xml.

7Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975),
p. 95.

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Fig. 4: Articles from Dong-a Ilbo dated January 31, 1961 (left)
and September 14 of the same year (right) about Korean
government establishing brothels for American GIs
patronize a prostitute, but they are in for a huge surprise. They are still doing what
Japanese military personnel were doing during World War II. The only difference is
how the prostitutes were hired (domestically or locally).
And what were American GIs doing in Korea? Articles appearing in Dong-a Ilbo, oneof Korea’s leading dailies, on January 31 and September 14, 1961 (Fig. 4) answer thequestion.
The January 31 article describes a training course for 800 prostitutes conducted by US
Army officers and Korean police. Taking strict precautions to prevent the spread ofvenereal disease was the main focus of the program. The September 14 article statesthat the police in Seoul had asked municipal authorities to oversee the registration of
prostitutes who serviced United Nations Command soldiers, again in an attempt toprevent the spread of venereal disease.
Therefore, we know that American military personnel procured prostitutes locally,
with the cooperation of the Korean government. Americans have no businesscondemning Japan. But more important, I recommend that Koreans and theirgovernment, if they object so much to the procurement of military prostitutes, focus
their wrath not on events that occurred nearly a century ago, but something much
more recent and much closer to home.
Kono Yohei owes Japan an apology
As already stated, the Japanese government did not coerce Korean women
into serving as military prostitutes. Nor was it necessary to do so, given thelaws and mores of that era. Interviews of former military prostitutes havefailed to prove otherwise.
But one Japanese politician issued a statement that pandered to demands
from the Korean government. On August 4, 1993, Chief Cabinet Secretary
Kono Yohei issued what is now known as the Kono Statement. In it heconceded that women were indeed coerced into serving as military
prostitutes in some cases, for which he apologized. Kono was admitting tocoercion “in a broad sense,” an extremely bizarre turn of phrase. His words
were exceedingly ill-chosen, since they implied that every unfortunate
9event in society can be blamed on “coercion by the authorities” (the womencame from poor families). Furthermore, as a result of his statement, the ideathat the Japanese forced women to serve as military prostitutes, turningthem into sex slaves, and mistreated them, soon spread all over the world.
The Kono Statement was issued even though Deputy Cabinet Secretary
Ishihara Nobuo had said that an examination of all research resources,
including interviews with former comfort women, had revealed no proof of
coercion. Then what motivated Kono to issue the statement, with its “broad
sense” excuse?
My guess is that that Kono is a victim of the Tokyo Trials mindset,
meaning that he is convinced that the Japanese military committed
atrocities during World War II. Consequently, he felt that he should
apologize because, despite the fact that there was no conclusive proof of
those evil deeds, Japanese soldiers must have committed crimes. The media,
including Asahi Shimbun, had devoted an inordinate amount of time andspace to Yoshida Seiji’s comfort women hunt tales. But they never issued aretraction, even after they discovered he had been lying, probably because
in the back of their minds was the thought that there really had been
coercion, somewhere, somehow. And the government must have issued thecriminal statement for the same reason, because they thought it was theright thing to do.
The ignorance and the masochistic perception of Japanese history that arise
from laziness, which prevented him from doing a careful investigation into
the facts, makes Kono Yohei guilty of crimes against Japan. He should
apologize for the statement he made. If he has a conscience, that is.
Fraud with international repercussions
The first attempt at government regulation of prostitutes was made in Parisin 1798. Not long thereafter Great Britain enacted a law designed to preventthe spread of venereal disease, which was to be administered by military
authorities (British colonial policy involved dispatching a great number ofsoldiers to foreign outposts).
By the mid-1850s the concept of the oversight of venereal disease had been
introduced to Japan from Great Britain and other European nations. Japan
made genuine efforts to regulate prostitution and manage venereal disease
in both the civilian and military populations.
The Relationship Between ‘Comfort Women’ and Medical Treatment,
written by Amako Kuni and Aso Tetsuo, traces the history of prostitution in
the modern era, as well as attempts to prevent the spread of venereal
disease. It also describes efforts made by the Japanese military along thoselines in detail. Dr. Aso writes about his experiences as an army physician
and his efforts to prevent venereal disease and to improve methods ofcombating it. The book also includes an essay he wrote entitled “Assertive
Venereal Prophylaxis,” which contains Dr. Aso’s descriptions of methods
used to fight venereal disease in France, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, the10

US and the Soviet Union. It turns out that the Japanese were more
conscientious than other nations in waging war with these diseases. Anyclaims that the Japanese rounded up and abused “sex slaves” are utter
nonsense.
Once their coercion argument is thoroughly discredited, human rights activists will
broach the charge that prostitution should be regarded as the abuse of women, andattempt to continue with their condemnation of the Japanese military.
But prostitution and military prostitution have been practiced all over the world sinceancient times. Singling out the Japanese military as a horrible example would benothing less than discriminatory. If they truly care about women’s rights, as theyclaim to, these activists should focus not on the past, but on the present, since
prostitution exists all over the world, as does military prostitution.
Furthermore, if their protest is against women whose rights were violated because
they suffered in a battle zone, they should not limit their attention to the comfort
women. People of any occupation may be subject to unfair treatment, and may suffer
in many ways in a battle zone. It is hard to see the point in dredging up events that
allegedly transpired 70 years ago. Former comfort women’s statements are likely to
be unreliable, or even contrived. One cannot help but conclude that there is a hidden,
ulterior motive to their demanding reparations and apologies from Japan on the basisof groundless accusations.
Now that the “coercion” accusation has been discredited, one would think that the
comfort women issue would be laid to rest. But then someone mentions “coercion in
the broad sense,” which encourages human rights activists to continue their railingabout the comfort women issue. The only conclusion possible is that they are hellbent on vilifying Japan, even today, by branding the Japanese military as evil
incarnate.
The Japanese did not force anyone into sexual slavery. Accusing them of having done
so and calling them the worst violators of human rights in history does nothing toprotect anyone’s human rights. The only outcome is the sullying of Japan’s national
honor. Those who brandish the human rights banner in this particular case arecommitting unconscionable, international fraud.

(This essay originally appeared in the January 2012 issue of Rekishi tsu (The History
Enthusiast), published by WAC Magazines Co., Ltd.)
Moteki Hiromichi was born in Tokyo in 1941. After graduating from Tokyo
University with a degree in economics, he worked for Fuji Electric and theInternational Wool Secretariat. In 1990 he established Sekai Shuppan, a publishingcompany. The company launched Mangajin, a monthly bilingual magazine forstudents of the Japanese language and culture. Mr. Moteki is secretary-general of theSociety for the Dissemination of Historical Fact.

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