Solid evidence debunks Ramseyer's denial of Japan's sexual slavery

By Yuji Hosaka
Professor of political science, Sejong University

Harvard Law School Professor J. Mark Ramseyer has reignited anger and outrage in Korea and theworld over the "comfort women" issue by denying that the victims were forced to provide sex for theJapanese military in his paper "Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War." Having spent a large part of myacademic career researching this very topic, I will refute his claims in this paper.

1. The Japanese military did hire recruiters to abduct womenRamseyer makes a mistake by applying game theory to economics to explain the issue of the "comfort
women," or victims of sexual slavery by the Japanese military. He claims that the women were not sex
slaves because they and their recruiters both agreed to "credible commitments." But the official
document below shows that the recruiters intended to kidnap the women for forcing them into sexual
slavery.

"(Omission in the beginning) They said the recruiters told the women, who were unaware ofnegotiating methods, that they could earn money just for consoling the (Japanese) army, which
would provide their meals. Because of the suspicion of abduction, we accompanied the suspect toinvestigate. (Regarding the Incident of Kidnapping Women, Using the Current Situation, National
Archives of Japan, Feb. 7, 1938)

2. Both the Japanese government and military designated the recruiters

After investigating, however, police found that the Japanese military stationed in Shanghai ordered
recruiters to send women to work as "barmaids" (for serving drinks to soldiers) to Japan and Joseon(Korea). (Regarding the Incident of Kidnapping Women, Using the Current Situation, National
Archives of Japan, Feb. 7, 1938)

Ramseyer claims the recruiters had no connection to the Japanese military, but this is false. He even
seems unaware of or glosses over how the Japanese government and military designated the recruiters.
As seen in the document below, the Japanese government and military did choose the recruiters. After
1938, the Japanese government and police cracked down on recruiters not certified by the Japanesemilitary but supported those who were. In other words, the Japanese government and military were
fundamentally responsible for this sex slave trade since they backed the recruiters, a fact Ramseyer
seems to overlook.

-----------------------------------------------------[Document No. 136, Police Security Bureau of Ministry of Home Affairs, Nov. 8, 1938]
Case related to handling women making passage to southern China
Women making passage to China must abide by the rules under Notice No. 5 of the Ministry ofHome Affairs on Feb. 23 this year (1938). The military stationed in southern China apparently needs
such special women for the purpose of prostitution. They have yet to make passage and the military
there wants them, so we have no choice. Therefore, this is being handled as strictly confidential case as
below.
(1) Designation and handling of recruiters (pimps)(a) Among the brothel owners (pimps), we select as contractors people with good backgrounds whoare considered to have no problem running military comfort stations in southern China as pimp leaders.
Those who wish to install and operate these stations need to convey such an intent to the people incharge, so that the latter recommend and select them based on their voluntary wishes.
(b) (Omission in the middle) To lead the women, we permit the designation of suitable people toallow pimp leaders to hire women confidentially.
(Omission in the middle)(c) To send certificates to the military, we must allow the passage of women slated for confidential
hiring for the purpose of prostitution.
(Collection of Data on Military Comfort Women, 1997, Vol. 1, pp. 87-94)----------------------------------------------As seen in the documents above, the Japanese government selected the recruiters under strict
confidentiality and allowed them to exclusively hire the women, while prohibiting unlicensed recruitersfrom doing so. Under the supervision of the Japanese government and military, the licensed recruiters
handled all related matters ranging from recruiting the women to managing comfort stations.

In other words, overseas prostitution through 1937 was separate from the Japanese military's sexual
slavery after 1938. But Ramseyer's paper erroneously claims that the Japanese military had noconnection to such prostitution in Japan or Joseon that developed into a business overseas.

3. An official document proves that the Japanese government's policy (February1938) of sending only prostitutes to overseas comfort stations was violated
Quoting a notice from the Ministry of Home Affairs in February 1938, Ramseyer insists that women
sent to serve at the comfort stations overseas were originally prostitutes. But the official document
quoted below shows that the Japanese government's policy was violated.

"One tendency is that local military police issue certificates to those neither attached to nor employedby the military, or mostly special women who want to make passage to China. But as a matter of course,
we ask that you consider such certificates as those issued by the consulate." (Case of Handling Women
Making Passage to China, 1940, cited in Collection of Data Related to Military Comfort Women, 1997,
Vol. 1, p. 142)

The above document says the women could travel to China with a certificate issued by Japanese military
police in the region, not one from police (the consulate). In this case, the women were allowed to go to
China without undergoing a preliminary inspection in Japan on their purpose of travel. As a result, thisled to a situation in which they could be easily duped to go to comfort stations under the guise of being
hired as waitresses at military cafeterias. The testimony below is from a book written after World War
II by a former Japanese military police officer on Japan's abduction of the women.
The following passages are from a book written by Takushiro Suzuki, a former sergeant in the Japanesemilitary police in Nanning, southern China (Military Police Squad Leader, 1974, p. 91).
-----------------------------------------After Nanning was occupied in summer 1940, I patrolled every day a shabby comfort station with asignboard reading "Military Comfort Station Beijiangxiang (北江郷)," a private home turned into a
comfort station. The order from the brigade command was intended to prevent any incident fromoccurring at this military-opened station.
A man surnamed Hwang there managed about 15 Korean girls ages 15-23. This young man reminded
me of a teacher at an elementary school in the countryside. He said he was the second son of a landowner
who brought the daughters of tenants there. The contract said the women were to work as waitresses at
military-run tea shops and restaurants, but he seemed to feel deeply responsible for forcing these young
women, who called him "big brother," into prostitution.
---------------------------------------------This testimony shows how the Japanese military opened the station. Hwang and the women were
scammed with false contracts and abducted. The author, a Japanese military police officer at the time,
did nothing about his military's crimes when he could have. This is because the station he was at was a
military brothel. His book describes the many cases told by the victims and said all the women were
kidnapped. So why is Ramseyer ignoring this historical testimony?

Plenty of evidence shows that the women were not initially prostitutes. Japanese Prisoner of War
Interrogation Report No. 49 of the Allies was about 20 Korean victims of sexual slavery who were
captured. Only a few of them had prior experience in prostitution, and records said the women were
forcibly taken to Burma under false pretenses.
(http://www.exordio.com/1939-1945/codex/Documentos/report-49-USA-orig.html)

This document shows that many of the victims were not originally prostitutes. It also proves that they
could travel overseas with a certificate from Japanese military police without the need to report at apolice station that they would work as prostitutes. This clearly contradicts Ramseyer's claim.

4. Ramseyer's claim of "credible commitments" made by the women is patently false

Did sex service contracts truly exist? To jump straight into the answer, sexual service contracts might
have existed for women within Japan or Joseon but not for those sent abroad. This was because theJapanese Imperial Diet in 1925 ratified the International Convention for the Suppression of the Trafficin Women and Children. As a result, Japan banned the sending of both minors and women abroad forprostitution.

To avoid violating the convention, the Japanese government abolished the licensed prostitution systemstarting in Shanghai, China (Collection of Data on Military Comfort Women, 1997, Vol. 1, pp. 447-450).
Since Shanghai was a Japanese-occupied territory at the time, many Japanese nationals, including
licensed prostitutes, lived there.

The signing of the convention and the abolition of the licensed prostitution system by Shanghai
authorities, however, led Japanese officials to do away with licensed prostitutes. Against this backdrop,
the termination of licensed prostitution gradually expanded from Shanghai to other Japanese-held
territories abroad. In the end, Japan as a country revoked the licenses of prostitutes overseas.

Despite this development, Japanese authorities introduced the restaurant barmaid (shakufu) system toreplace the licensed prostitution system (Collection of Data on Military Comfort Women, 1997, Vol. 1,
pp. 447-450). Shakufu literally means a woman who pours alcoholic drinks but does not denote a
prostitute.

Japanese police clearly distinguished among prostitutes, performers, and barmaids in their statistics(Ikuhiko Hata, Comfort Women and Sex in the Battle Zone, 1999, p. 84). Originally, the barmaids did
not engage in sex with customers. When requested, however, some might have agreed to do so withcustomers, but even in such cases, they never thought of themselves as prostitutes (Ikuhiko Hata,
Comfort Women and Sex in the Battle Zone, 1999, p. 84). The introduction of the barmaid systemoverseas to replace the licensed prostitution system eventually led to the adoption of the comfort womensystem.

What is important here is that though the barmaids were not originally prostitutes, the Japanese military
recruited women using this title and forced them into prostitution. Against this backdrop, these women
were later referred to as "comfort women" instead of "licensed prostitutes."

After Japanese authorities in Shanghai abolished the licensed prostitution system, Japan's National
Police Agency released new statistics on women who relocated to China. In these data sets, theprostitute category was eliminated. According to the agency's statistics from 1938-43, women who

entered China were classified as performers, barmaids, waitresses, housemaids, dancers, or other types
of workers, but none were categorized as prostitutes (Ikuhiko Hata, Comfort Women and Sex in the
Battle Zone, 1999, p. 87).

Women who signed contracts to work as barmaids, however, were later forced into prostitution by theJapanese military, and this showed the true nature and origin of the comfort women system. Contrary
to what their contracts stipulated, the women were coerced into providing sex to Japanese soldiers as
the agreements were based on a fraudulent premise.

Among these deceptive contracts, one signed by a victim had her believing that she would work at afactory in Tokyo for one year. In this case, the victim, a schoolteacher in Joseon (Korea), was taken to
Burma (present-day Myanmar) and forced into prostitution (Ikuo Omata, Battlefield and Reporter, 1967,
pp. 333–334).

Later, the narratives of women duped into serving as comfort women were documented and published(Yuji Hosaka, Forced Recruitment of Japanese Military ‘Comfort Women’ Witnessed ThroughDocuments and Testimonies, 2019, pp. 189–209).

In December 1937, the Japanese military decided to aggressively establish military comfort stations andcommissioned recruiters to recruit women as barmaids. Unaware that the position required providing
sex to Japanese soldiers, these women signed work contracts prepared by the recruiters. This is what
Ramseyer means by "credible commitments," but these women never considered their barmaid
employment contracts as those for sexual services, as barmaids were not assumed to be prostitutes. As
such, the contract forms provided by the recruiters said nothing about sexual services.

A recruiter arrested in Japan's Gunma Prefecture in January 1938 was found to have a four-page barmaid
contract that included a letter of request for cooperation. The contract included such phrases as "a twoyear contract period," "income will be 10 percent of generated revenue," "required to perform the dutyof a barmaid at an army comfort station," and "mid-term cancellation of the contract will incur apenalty." This contract form referred to by Ramseyer remains the only surviving copy of its kind.

Recruiters could easily deceive the women, who were mostly illiterate and thus unable to properly
comprehend the contractual terms. In particular, the illiteracy rate of Korean women according to data
was 32.1 percent in 1955, 10 years after liberation. The global average was 67 percent in the 1930s(https://ourworldindata.org/global-education#literacy), thus based on this, the assumption is that theilliteracy rate of Korean (Joseon) women exceeded 60 percent in the 1930s. So they probably failed tounderstand the sentences in the contracts even if they signed them.

The written consent section in the contract said in an inconspicuous manner "the duty of a barmaid(equivalent to that of a shogi)." Yet an ordinary woman at the time would have been unable to recognizethat shogi meant prostitute. The recruiters apparently inserted the expression in parentheses in a bid tofully exploit the women's lack of knowledge and avoid legal problems. For example, Japanese police

in one instance arrested recruiters on suspicion of defrauding and kidnapping uneducated women who
were unfamiliar with the contractual terms (Regarding the Incident of Kidnapping Women, Using theCurrent Situation, National Archives of Japan, Feb. 7, 1938, reference code: A05032044800).

Given these circumstances, the women put up fierce resistance after arriving at their destinations,realizing that they had been conned. But the Japanese military ignored their protests and forced them toserve as comfort women.

The following excerpt from a military doctor describes a case in which a woman who was deceived into
going to a comfort station strongly resisted, but she eventually gave up and accepted her fate as acomfort woman.
------------------------------------------------------The manager of the Senshokan (戦捷館) comfort station dragged in an unfamiliar young woman,grabbing her by the hands. But she continued to resist and lurch backwards, recoiling with her bottom
pushed backwards. When she saw me, she backed away even more fiercely with the scared face of acornered dog.

I removed his hand that was grabbing hers, brought him behind the curtain, and asked about the situation.
The manager said she arrived yesterday from mainland Japan and had to receive a physical exam today
to start working tomorrow, but she was not cooperating and giving him trouble.

I brought her behind the curtain. Her tanned face suggested that she was brought straight from a farm.
While crying, she said with an accent, "I was told that I only needed to serve soldiers at a place called
a comfort station, and never knew I was required to perform this kind of act at this kind of place. I want
to go home. Please help me go home." Hearing this, the manager looked very troubled. (omitted)

The next day, she returned to the medical office with the manager and the recruiter. … Whether frombeing slapped by the manager and the recruiter or because she had cried continuously, her face was soswollen that her eyes were shut. As if having made up her mind, she climbed up and lay on theexamination bed this time without resistance. She hid her face with her sleeves. Her legs stiffened with
nervousness and began to tremble. (omitted)(The next day,] I heard her crying. I looked out the window and saw the woman from yesterday sticking
her face out the window and vomiting from a washroom of the Senshokan (戦捷館) comfort station
located next to my building. … She cried while vomiting, and when the vomiting stopped, she cried out
again like a baby. … She was heavily in debt with no way to return, with her hometown too distant. Her
cry could not be answered by her parents, siblings, family, friends, or anyone else. The only thing she
could do must have been to cry out in a shrieking voice. After a while, a fellow comfort woman showedup, placed the other woman's arm over her shoulder, and took her out.

(Nagasawa Kenichi, Hankou Comfort Station, 1983, pp. 146–149)-------------------------------------------This is the true story of a woman who was told that a comfort station was where women provided solace
to soldiers but later realized that it was a brothel and resisted. The military doctor knew that she was a
victim of fraud but took no action. This situation on the ground at a comfort station debunks Ramseyer's
claim that the women made "credible commitments," or sexual service contracts concluded under acredible premise between recruiters and women, to willingly provide sex to Japanese soldiers for pay.

5. Ramseyer mixes up contracts for prostitutes with those for barmaids

The fatal mistake in Ramseyer's paper is his assumption that the contracts for prostitutes (shogi) andbarmaids were the same as that for sex workers. The reason for this grows obvious from the many
documents confirming that barmaids and prostitutes were classified separately.

For instance, a document dated May 4, 1025, that the governor of Japan's Fukuoka Prefecture sent to
the police commissioner of the Ministry of Home Affairs reported the following case. A woman named
Hatsu Kono promised to register as a prostitute to work overseas and received advance payment, but
was found working as a barmaid and did not register as a sex worker. (Prostitute register, May 4, 1925,
Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR); reference code A05032277300] This document
clearly classifies prostitutes separately from barmaids.

There are other examples. The “Article 23 of Regulations on Commercial Job Placement Business”
describes regulations for arranging women's jobs that confirm that the rules applied to performers andbarmaids but not to prostitutes. The regulations give the reason for this as "prostitution is hitherto treatedas an independent business." This document also classifies prostitution as a job different from barmaid(Case of Regulations on Cracking Down on Violations in Job Placement for Profit Businesses, Dec. 11,
1925, JACAR; reference code A05032288000).

Thus, under Japanese law, prostitutes (sex workers = licensed prostitution) and barmaids were different
occupations, but Ramseyer makes the mistake of considering them the same.

According to a document dated May 1, 1926, "General Conditions of Licensed Prostitution" (May 1,
1926, Ministry of Home Affairs document, JACAR; reference code A05020102900), the only subject
described as licensed prostitution (prostitute) is sex worker. In this document, barmaids are notmentioned as licensed prostitutes.

In another document dated February 1931 (Licensed Prostitution and Private Prostitution, February
1931, Ministry of Home Affairs document, JACAR; reference code A05020127200), licensed
prostitution is described as being done by sex workers. Barmaids are mentioned in the following passage:"Private prostitution might be carried out by performers, barmaids, companions, waitresses working incafes, bars, restaurants and other places, and saleswomen working at department stores or otherbuildings, but there are difficulties in the investigation of such" (p. 316 of aforementioned document).
In other words, barmaids could freely engage in romantic relationships with customers but were notprostitutes. Thus in Japan, licensed prostitutes had the same standing as sex workers and vice versa, but
performers, barmaids, companions and waitresses were not prostitutes.

To become a licensed prostitute, a woman had to sign a sex worker job contract that specified thefollowing:"First, as (subject's name) is registered with the district police station according to Article 3 ofRegulations on Sex Workers (44th Decree of the Ministry of Home Affairs) ------ licensed prostitution
is implemented" (p. 106 of aforementioned document).

In other words, the contract of a prostitute was based on that of a sex worker. But the only format of acomfort woman's contract that survives to this day is that of a barmaid, not of a sex worker. So theoriginal contract between the Japanese military and its designated contractors is confirmed as that for abarmaid, not a prostitute, based on the contract format. And no such form of the contract for Korean(Joseon) women has survived to the present day.

Barmaids could earn money from serving customers or selling liquor (p. 321, aforementioned document)or repay their advance payment from such revenue. These women could also receive advance payment
under their barmaid contracts.

But for operating the Japanese military's comfort facilities with women contracted as barmaids, theJapanese military prohibited sales of food and liquor as well as drinking at these facilities for thefollowing reasons:"The sales of food, liquor, and other snacks will be prohibited within comfort stations, and the said
comfort stations must be kept sanitary at all times." (Regulations on Special Comfort Job, Morikawa
unit, Dec. 14, 1939, Collection of Data on Military Comfort Women, 1997, Vol. 2, p. 330)

"Drinking liquor within comfort stations is prohibited." (Regulations on soldier clubs, Aug. 16, 1942,
cited in Collection of Data on Military Comfort Women, 1997, Vol. 3, p. 150)

The Japanese military concluded contracts with women working as barmaids but prohibited them fromperforming such work at military comfort stations. Thus the Japanese military and its contractors clearly
violated this rule through their contracts with these women.

In the end, the contractors selected by the Japanese military concluded contracts with women forworking as "performers, barmaids, companions, waitresses at mess halls or military restaurants, or
practical nurses at naval hospitals," but forced them into prostitution at military sites. This clear contract
violation was a criminal act, and the Japanese military and its contractors took actions that were clearlyorganized crimes by abducting women through deception.

Though the women cried injustice, they had received advance payment and running away was
impossible given strict surveillance of them in warzones. So becoming a sex slave was the only andinevitable reality for the Japanese military's so-called comfort women.

6. The comfort women did not earn high incomesFirst, Ramseyer miscalculates the amount of money earned by sex workers in Japan's prostitution
industry. In 2.2. Japan 1-(d) of his paper, he says the following:“(d) Under the typical contract, the brothel took the first 2/3 to 3/4 of the revenue a prostitute generated. It applied
60 percent of the remainder toward the loan repayment, and let the prostitute keep the rest.” <2.2. Japan 1-(d)>Yet he clearly misinterprets the above contract as follows:“(c) An example. Consider some simple calculations (Keishi, 1933: 96–98; Kusama, 1930: 227–28). In 1925,
customers made 3.74 million visits to the 4,159 licensed prostitutes in Tokyo. Aside from payments for food anddrink, they spent 11.1 million yen. Of this amount, prostitutes kept 31 percent, or 3.4 million yen -- 655 yen perprostitute. Under the standard arrangement, the prostitute would have applied 60 percent of this amount (393 yen)
toward the repayment of her loan and kept the rest (262 yen). She would have repaid her initial loan of 1,200 yen
in about three years.”Ramseyer omits from the above calculations that two-thirds to three-fourths of the amount earned by
women were taken by their brothel managers. He says 60 percent of the 655 yen a woman earned wasused for loan repayment and that she received the remaining 40 percent, but Ramseyer fully andmistakenly ignores how the managers took two-thirds to three-fourths of the 655 yen from his
calculations.

With this in mind, a recalculation shows that the women received 163-218 yen from the 655 yen andthen determined their loan repayments from that sum. So Ramseyer's method of calculating that the
women repaid 60 percent and kept 40 percent of their earnings is fundamentally incorrect. Ramseyer
argues that because the women accepted high wages in return for the risk of working at the comfort
stations abroad, they earned a large advance payment. This is another groundless allegation.

As he mentions, internal documents of the Ministry of Home Affairs from 1938 indicate that only four
records of initial loans to the women after signing contracts remain. Those sums were 470, 362,

(Regarding the Incident of Kidnapping Women, Using the Current Situation, National Archives ofJapan, Feb. 7, 1938), 642, and 691 yen (Case of Prostitute Recruitment in Shanghai Expedition ForceBrothels, Feb. 14, 1938).

If this is the case, were the women who went overseas in February 1938 required to repay the entire
sum in two years? No. These contracts were different from those for prostitution within Japan.

The only contract information that can confirm this is below:"Loan repayments were annulled at the conclusion of the contract period. Even in the event of
convalescence due to illness during the contract period, initial loans were considered fully repaid at theconclusion of that period." (Case of Prostitute Recruitment in Shanghai Expedition Force Brothels, Feb.
14, 1938)

In other words, the women did not need to fully repay the initial loan once the two-year contract wascompleted. They did, however, have to fully repay the loan if they stopped working before the period
expired.

"There is no interest on the initial loan during the contract period, but monthly interest of 10 percent
shall be applied to the initial loan balance if work is ceased during the contract period.” (Ibid.)

Ultimately, the brothel managers decided that the loan was automatically repaid without issue if thewomen worked for two years because the women had to pay 90 percent of their income to the managers
as follows.

"Ten percent of the money earned is paid monthly to the barmaid as income but half of this must be
saved." (Ibid.)"The brothel manager shall be responsible for the costs of clothing, bedding, food, bathing, and medicalcare." (Ibid.)

Ramseyer ignores the above information from surviving prostitution contracts. More simply, if thewomen earned approximately 700 yen annually as they would have in Japan, they would only receive
70 yen per year. This equates to a mere 5.8 yen per month. Of this, 50 percent (2.9 yen) had to be saved,
so the women were given no more than 2.9 yen per month.

How can this be considered high income? Brothel managers were responsible for living expenses suchas food costs so that the women could at least survive, but they could not live well.

Ramseyer also makes a generalization based on the case of the comfort woman Moon Ok-ju, claimingthat she earned a high income. He fails to mention, however, that she was a talented singer and dancer
who was always booked for military banquets and could earn a lot of money even without having sex.

These facts are recorded in detail in the book “Moon Ok-ju: I Was a Comfort Woman in a Shield Divisionon the Burma” (2015, Machiko Morikawa and in statements by Moon) Moon's case was simply an
outlier among comfort women and should not be used to generalize about other victims.

7. The comfort women were sex slaves

Why were they sex slaves? First, the women were deceived with false offers to work as barmaids,
performers, waitresses, factory workers, or other jobs and taken to military brothels. Since the areaaround a brothel was a battlefield, the women could not flee. One account said the women could go out
shopping and spend time freely on their days off, but that was exceptional. Even in such a case, they
were unable to leave zones guarded by Japanese soldiers or military police.

Even surviving documents describe the women being monitored so they could only move within arectangular perimeter of 50-100 meters around a brothel. Typically, one comfort woman was designatedfor every 100 soldiers. On their days off, nearly 100 soldiers would descend on one comfort woman,
who was literally a sex slave. Ramseyer's omission of these cases is simply incomprehensible. The
following is an official document from the Japanese military describing this situation.

"One comfort woman is designated for every 100 Japanese soldiers. (omitted) Industry personnel (e.g.,
employees, comfort women or waitresses) shall walk only in those zones indicated on the attachedmap." (Regulations for Special Comfort Work at Takamori Base, Oct. 11, 1940)

The attached map is as follows. The area enclosed by x-x-x-x was where the comfort women werepermitted to walk, a rectangular zone of a mere 50-100 meters.

The following image is a scene from a graphic novel by Shigeru Mizuki depicting his brothel experience
while serving in the Japanese military on the island of New Britain, Papua New Guinea. He tells of 7080 soldiers per woman lining up in front of a comfort station where three comfort women lived on thesoldiers' days off or when combat was expected the following day. (Onward Toward our Noble Deaths,
June 1995, p. 14)

The following is how Mizuki described the women:"The soldiers were also destined for hell, but those 'comfort women' may have experienced a worse
hell... Stories of compensation for the comfort women sometimes appear in newspapers, but they must
be incomprehensible to those who never experienced such things. That was hell. That's why I always
thought that the comfort women deserved compensation." (The Record of Karan Koron DriftingTeacher GeGeGe Talks a Lot, <“カランコロン漂泊記-ゲゲゲの先生大いに語る”>, 2010. p. 8)

8. Conclusion
It is impossible to fully cover the subject of the comfort women in this text. I wrote this only to pointout the major errors in Ramseyer's paper. I have briefly commented on the problems with the gametheory he applies to the issue, how the Japanese government and military were always in the backgroundbecause they selected the recruiters of the women, the fact that the contracts signed by the women were
not for prostitution, the coercion used to force the women into prostitution at comfort stations of theJapanese military, his miscalculation of the women's earnings, and his misguided notion that they earned
high salaries. For more details, please refer to my works "New Pro-Japanese Groups" (Neo ProJapanese Group <신친일파>, 2020, written in Korean), “Forced Recruitment of Japanese Military‘Comfort Women’ Witnessed Through Documents and Testimonies” <⽂書・証⾔による⽇本軍「慰安婦」強制連⾏＞ (2019, written in Japanese), and “The Collection of Documents Proving Japan’s
Comfort Women Problem 1” <일본의 위안부문제 증거자료집1>, 2018, written in Korean). These
works will see publication in English in the near future.