Adjunct Associate Professor Ustinia Dolgopol
79 McLauchlan Road
Windsor Gardens, South Australia 5087
Australia
Phone: +61407600011
Email: tina.dolgopol@flinders.edu.au
Editorial Board
International Review of Law and Economics(letter sent via email to various members of the Board)emanuela.carbonara@unibo.it
jklick@law.upenn.edu
dabrams@law.upenn.edu
marianna.belloc at uniroma1.it
paige.skiba@vanderbilt.edu
support@elsevier.com

Dear Colleagues,
I must admit that I was surprised when I read Professor J. Mark Ramseyer’s article inyour journal. As an academic the first thing that struck me was its lack of rigour. Muchof the article is based on assumptions that are not backed by historical evidence. It iscurious that in an academic piece no attempt is made to deal with the extensive
material that contradicts Professor Ramseyer’s arguments which of course is part andparcel of what should be in a journal article of note. Beyond the issue of the Comfort
Women there is no serious discussion of the elements of game theory he claims to beutilising.
Before going into specifics I would point out that there is extensive documentation
about the manner in which women throughout the Asia-Pacific region were forcibly
taken, kidnapped and tricked for the purpose of being put into the Comfort Stations on
the website of the Asian Women’s Fund (the Fund has ceased to operate but has
maintained the website so that researchers may consider the documents it amassed).
The Fund was set up by the government of Japan as an act of atonement for thetreatment of women put into the Comfort Stations. On the website is the text of a letterof apology that was sent to every woman who received money from the Fund. Thoseletters were signed by whoever held the position of Prime Minister when money wastransferred. Clearly the government of Japan would not be apologising if all thewomen in the Comfort Stations had been able to freely negotiate advantageous
contracts as asserted by Professor Ramseyer.

Although it is true that licensed prostitution existed in Japan and Korea (establishedby Japanese officials), that institution was criticised both domestically andinternationally due to the coercion that often-accompanied women’s entry into
prostitution, the connection between poverty and the placement of girl children into
both licensed and unlicensed prostitution and the power imbalance that existed within
Japanese and Korean families. To assume as Prof Ramseyer did that women had
significant bargaining power during the 1920s and 1930s goes against the weight ofevidence. It is also important to recognise that Japan was criticised in this period by
the League of Nations Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children for
its violations of the 1921 Convention on the Prohibition of the Trafficking of Womenand Children. Japan was a signatory to that Convention. During the war there is little
doubt that Japan’s movement of women from both Japan and from the Korean
peninsula violated this Convention as many of the women were in fact under the ageof 21 and some met the legal definition of being a minor. Professor Ramseyer does
not discuss the question of trafficking in his article.
Perhaps more problematically is the sleight of hand by which Prof Ramseyer suggeststhat the same type of contracts that existed for licensed prostitutes in metropolitan
Japan (a system that was overseen by the Japanese Interior Ministry) governed theComfort Women System. Professor Ramseyer ignores a range of historical facts thatundermine his argument. Some of the more important are:••Women of various nationalities were forced or tricked into being placed in theComfort Women system. It is not clear why Professor Ramseyer did notmention this. Reports of the different Allied Nations compiled during andimmediately after the war list the following nationalities Dutch, Korean, Chinese,Japanese, Taiwanese, Filipino, Indonesian, Malaysian and Timorese.
Evidence about the treatment of the women from various nationalities can begleaned from the following:o The Government of the Netherlands tried several Japanese militaryofficials for taking Dutch POWs from camps in Indonesia and forcing
them to act as Comfort Women during the Class B war crimes trials heldin what was then Batavia;o Allied soldiers reported seeing fake Red Cross armbands on Timorese
women who were forced into the Comfort Stations (material held in theAustralian War Memorial);o Japanese and Korean soldiers interviewed after their capture by theAllies (Professor Ramseyer is incorrect in stating that no Koreans served
as soldiers in the Japanese military; documents held the Australian War
Memorial contain interviews with captured Korean soldiers as well as
references to the behaviour of such soldiers by Allied troops);o Resistance fighters in the Philippines recounted after the war and thenlater what they witnessed about the treatment of women in the Comfort
Stations (a number of the Philippine women taken by the Japanese had
been in the resistance).
Allied documents as well as Japanese military records refer to the manner inwhich the Military exercised extensive control over the Comfort Stations. A
range of those documents are discussed in Comfort Women, The Unfinished•

Ordeal published by the International Commission of Jurists. The report isavailable online.
One particularly egregious falsehood is the statement that the main motivation
for the creation of the Comfort Stations was the existence of venereal disease.
Whilst it is true that a number of military officials discussed this issue in memos
to each other and those sent to commanders in the field, the main reason for
the establishment of the Comfort Stations was the mass rapes being committed
by Japanese troops in all theatres of war. An example of the concern within theJapanese military about the extent of the rapes is contained in a circular issued
by the Chief-of-Staff of the North China Expeditionary Army Naosaburo Okabe(Lt. General of that Unit), dated 27 June 1938. It cautioned that security wasjeopardized in North China, the main reason being the increase in rapes
committed by the Japanese troops. It stated that the Chinese would resent suchconduct and take revenge by killing Japanese soldiers. In order to appease
Chinese sentiments and to stop the rapes, the setting up of comfort houses atthe earliest was under consideration. (ICJ report at 31 – 32)
o The mass rapes in China and the Philippines were considered during thehearings of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.

Given the inaccuracies in Professor Ramseyer’s article it is to be hoped that you will
withdraw the article from publication. Academic freedom does not include the right topublish evident falsehoods and to overlook extensive documentary historical evidence
in an attempt to create inaccurate perceptions about history and the place of womenin history.
Should you have any questions about the source of my information I am happy toanswer your queries. I would appreciate an acknowledgement of your receipt of thisletter as well as your response to my concerns.

Sincerely Yours,(sent via email)Ustinia Dolgopol
Adjunct Associate Professor of Law,
Flinders University of South Australia