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Justice for Comfort Women
Throughout history, when a war took place, people¡¯s focus centered on the country that won the war, the general who led the war, and the number of fallen soldiers who fought in the war. Little attention was given to the numerous civilians who were injured, abused or killed because of the war. Victimized civilians were often regarded as necessary yet secondary sacrifice to win the war. In addition to the indifference to these innocent victims, justice for them was generally not given. One of the most horrifying crimes committed upon civilians by the Japanese military before and during World War II was the ¡°comfort women¡± ordeal. Between 1937 and 1945, over a hundred thousand women were repeatedly and systematically raped for months or years by the Japanese military. They were lured or forced into sexual slavery in military camps in the Japanese-controlled territories. The women had to bear continuous rapes, violence, malnutrition and wretched living conditions. However, no reparations were made for these women in the Tokyo War Criminal Trial after the war. Neither the Japanese government nor their own local governments financially or legally supported them until recently. A great number of these women have suffered from poverty, chronic illness, and disgrace throughout their lives. Moreover, many have died due to old age. The Japanese government should issue an official apology and provide appropriate reparations for the victims as soon as possible because the ¡°comfort women¡± case is an atrocious crime against humanity.
The Roman Statute of the International Criminal Court defines that ¡°rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity¡± is a crime against humanity when ¡°committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack¡± (Schabas 170). The ¡°comfort women¡± case is a crime against humanity for two reasons: thousands of women were treated inhumanely by abduction, rape, and violence for months or years, and the crime was committed under systematic control of the Japanese imperial government throughout many East Asian countries.
First, violence of the crime is shown starting with the recruitment process of the ¡°comfort women.¡± The crime involved women ¡°estimated about 100,000 to 200,000¡± from Korea, China, Taiwan, Myanmar, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other Japanese territorial East Asian countries. (Oh 9). The first method of recruitment was to lure young women into bogus job or educational opportunities. To many women in their teens and early twenties, the Japanese government¡¯s bait of opportunities sounded attractive, especially to Korean women. Korea was a Japanese colony at the time, and its economic situation was worse than ever. Korean agricultural and industrial products were exploited by Japan.
The second and the most common method was to abduct women from the Japanese territories, mainly from Korea. Women were kidnapped from streets, farms, or houses by recruitment officers who were accompanied by Japanese police. Kyung-paeng Jin was kidnapped at the age of 14 while she was working at her parents¡¯ farm. Bun-sun Kim was forced onto a truck by a Japanese policeman at the age of 15. Yoon-shim Kim was kidnapped at the age of 12. The young age of many of the victims shows not only the shamelessness and inhumanity of the crime but also a violation of child trafficking laws.
The third method was to forcibly transfer workers from the Women's Voluntary Service Corps to the ¡°comfort stations.¡± The Women's Voluntary Service Corps was a ¡°non-voluntary¡± organization that the Japanese government forced Korean woman students to join in order to work for war industries. The figure universally quoted for the drafted women totals 200,000, of whom 80,000 were comfort women (Hicks 172).
The last major method was to buy women. Often, parents sent their daughters to work in another territory for advanced payment against the daughter¡¯s labor. Neither parents nor daughters were informed that their work would involve sexual services. In one example, ¡°The Kitamuras, a husband-and-wife team of comfort station operators, ¡¦ bought twenty-two unmarried Korean women in 1942¡¦ They paid the girls¡¯ parents between 300 and 1,000 yen, depending on the girls¡¯ characters, appearances, and ages (200-300 yen, according to the former report)¡± (Yoshimi 105).
The most vicious aspect of the crime was how the ¡°comfort women¡± were treated in the military camps. The recruited women were transferred to the countries where the Japanese military fought such as China, Manchuria, Taiwan, Burma, Indonesia, and other East Asian countries. The Japanese troops frequently moved to new battlefields, and the ¡°comfort women¡± had to move with them. Wherever a troop settled, a ¡°comfort station¡± was quickly established. If a building with a large number of rooms was found nearby the troop¡¯s camp, it was used as a ¡°comfort station.¡± Often it was difficult to find such a building. In that case, a squalid wooden barrack with several rooms was built in a few days near or in the camp.
The interiors of the rooms were various. In some ¡°comfort stations¡±, ¡°the rooms were separated from one another only by hanging woven rush mats¡± (Yoshimi 134). In some cases, ¡°the rooms were about 5 square meters (about 6 square yards), each with a futon and one square meter of dirt floor¡± (qtd. in Yoshimi 134). There were some ¡°comfort stations¡± where ¡°a simple wooden fence was put up and inside a rush mat was laid down¡¦ like a communal latrine¡± (qtd. in Yoshimi 135). In these wretched places, each ¡°comfort woman¡± ¡°had to serve twenty to forty men a day, at a rate of a man every thirty minutes¡± (Oh 12). Yoshimi quotes former ¡°comfort station¡± operator Katsuki Ky?ji to show another number: ¡°there were times when comfort women were forced to have intercourse with sixty men in a single day ¡¦ even during innumerable times when {her} genitals were swollen¡± (139).
A single rape is malignant enough for the victim to develop severe posttraumatic stress disorder. If the victim is minor, the impact of rape can be much more damaging. The victim is more likely to experience physical health problems, mental disorders including PTSD, eating disorders, and substance abuse problems. Rape is ¡°violence that seeks to destroy a woman based on her identity as a women¡± and ¡°has the potential to profoundly debilitate, to render the woman homeless in her own body and destroy her sense of security in the world¡± (Copelon 347). When a single rape can shatter a person¡¯s whole identity as the above quotation, it¡¯s impossible to imagine how horrible it had been for the ¡°comfort women¡± to be continuously raped twenty to forty times or more a day.
Many of them were minors. The late former ¡°comfort woman¡± Duk-kyung Kang remembered her experience:
From that time on, my life became a nightmare. I was only 13 years old and did not even know the word ¡®menstruation.¡¯ Many soldiers had come and gone. I could not even begin to count the number of soldiers who raped me¡± (Schellstede 17).
Repeated rape was not the only ordeal that the ¡°comfort women¡± had to suffer. Their life in a ¡°comfort station¡± had no freedom and was strictly regulated. They had to provide labor for the camps day and night if they were not being raped. They were also exposed to grave violence at the hands of the Japanese soldiers. Women were severely beaten when they refused to have sex or even without any specific reasons. The brutality and inhumanity of the Japanese soldiers¡¯ violence is shown in this testimony of a former ¡°comfort woman¡± Dae-il Kim:
So we were made sex slaves and were forced to service 40 to 50 soldiers each day. One time a soldier sat on top of the stomach of a pregnant ¡®comfort woman¡¯ who was almost full term. Apparently this act induced labor. As a baby started to appear, he stabbed both the infant and the mother and exclaimed, ¡®Hey, these senjing (dirty Koreans) are dead. Come and see¡¯¡± (Schellstede 26).
The second reason that the ¡°comfort women¡± case is a crime against humanity is that the whole process was thoroughly planned and systematically managed by the Japanese imperial government. When rape got more and more frequent in Shanghai in the early 1930s, Vice Chief of Staff of the Shanghai Expeditionary Force of the Japanese military, Okamura Yasuji proposed for ¡°comfort stations¡± to be created (Yoshimi 45). His proposal was implemented, and the first ¡°comfort station¡± began operating in 1932. This shows the immorality of the Japanese officials. As a solution for increasing rape by the soldiers, they chose to rape designated women only in organized stations ¡°instead of investigating the outbreak of rapes¡± (Yoshimi 45). They greatly expanded ¡°its officially sanctioned and closely regulated ¡®comfort system¡¯ for the sexual gratification of the Japanese soldiers¡± after thousands of rapes occurred during Nanking Massacre in 1937 (Ahmed). While preventing rape was the main rationalization of the Japanese government for establishing the ¡°comfort women¡± system, ironically a note from the Japanese commander of the 11th army, Okamura Yasuji, shows that nevertheless the rape of civilian women never stopped:
At present, almost all units are accompanied by comfort women corps. It has reached the point where {a comfort women corps} is just one more line of communication corps. But even though such units as the 6th division march with a comfort women corps, there is no end to the rapes (qtd. in Yoshimi 66).
The Japanese government also wanted to keep soldiers from being infected from sexual diseases. This was another rationale for the Japanese government to decide to operate organized military rape stations. There was also a conventional belief in Japanese military culture that having sex before they go into a battle would raise morale. This explains the euphemism for calling the victimized women ¡°comfort women¡± and the places ¡°comfort stations.¡± On top of these various rationales, the ¡°male-dominated [and] militaristic¡± Japanese society helped the Japanese government to establish this immoral system (Oh 6).
The payment system for comfort women, either by money or by redeemable tickets, also shows that the Japanese government controlled ¡°comfort stations.¡± The Japanese military had a titular payment system to make it look commercial rather than public. It is a cunning way to disguise the fact that it was operated by the Japanese military since they hardly paid the women. The operation center sold soldiers tickets, which soldiers were supposed to give to the ¡°comfort women.¡± However, the ¡°comfort women¡± were able neither to exchange the tickets for money nor to keep them because the operation center took them. In summary, the detailed planning from the beginning of the operation and thorough control over the lives of the ¡°comfort women¡± show that it is a severe crime against humanity.
The ¡°comfort women¡± case was never brought up at the Tokyo War Criminal Trial in May 1946. The Trial ¡°neglected the issue of sexual violence¡± including the ¡°comfort women¡± issue (Matsui). ¡°The comfort women were not unknown to the Allies¡±, but ¡°the sufferings of the comfort women did not matter enough for an issue to be made out of them¡± (Hicks 270). Even now, the Japanese government has never accepted liability for this crime. This denial of the crime increases the gravity of the vice, especially when compared to Germany. Through various programs, ¡°Germany has paid out more than $35 billion in reparations to the Zionist state and to millions of individual victims of National Socialism¡± as of 1988 (Weber, par. 1). The compensation that Germany has made was not only for physical injury but also for ¡°loss of freedom, property, income, professional and financial advancement as a result of¡± persecution (Weber, par. 17). In contrast, surviving former ¡°comfort women¡± have suffered for decades from physical illness and mental damage without any compensation from the Japanese government. The majority of the ¡°comfort women¡± were killed by the Japanese military or were abandoned when Japan lost the war in 1945. Most of the ¡°comfort women¡± who survived the war lived a painful and lonely life in a shame. They tried to hide their past. This was especially severe in Korea, China, and Taiwan where a woman¡¯s chastity was considered as her most important virtue.
Regarding reparations for Korean comfort women, who made up about eighty percent of all ¡°comfort women¡±, the Japanese government argues that the 1965 Japan-South Korea Treaty settled all issues regarding compensation. However, it should be considered that the settlement in the agreement was between two nations. The Treaty did not include reparations for individual victims. The Treaty ¡°was never intended to and did not include ¡®claims¡¯ involving the violations of human rights¡± such as the ¡°comfort women¡± case and the case of forced deportation of Koreans to the Japanese imperial territories (Dolgopol, par. 19). The following passage from a recent The Korea Times article summarizes the statement of the treaty:
In the treaty, first the Japanese government guaranteed the residency rights, equal access to public education and social welfare benefits for Koreans living in Japan. Second, the controversial maritime demarcation line ¡¦ was replaced by the 12 miles ... Third, Japanese government agreed to pay of [sic] $300 million grant-in-aid, $200 million in government loans, and $300 million in commercial loans by 1967. ¡¦Fourth, both countries resumed trade relations and travelers¡¯ visitation (Kim, par. 9)
As this passage illustrates, the Treaty mainly focused on economic aspects between two countries. The priority of Korean President Jung-hee Park in 1965 was the economic development of the nation. The claim of the Japanese government is not valid. The Japanese government is still accountable for the ¡°comfort women¡± case not only because it was not specified in the 1965 Treaty but also because a crime against humanity like this cannot be settled without righteous judgments.
In order to deny providing official reparations, the Japanese government established a private fund, Asian Women¡¯s Fund. Even though it was initiated ¡°based on a decision of the Japanese Government¡± and includes former government officers as administrators, it is still a private, not a government, organization (What, par. 3). This is another way to avoid taking official responsibility and providing official compensation. It is not surprising that the Japanese government rejects efforts to have them pay official compensation since the government ¡°continues to deny legal liability for the Japanese military¡¯s actions with respect to the ¡®establishment and management¡¯ of the comfort stations¡± (McDougall 137). The Japanese government had denied involvement in the crime but finally admitted, with reluctance, that the ¡°comfort stations¡± were operated by the Japanese imperial military only when official documents were discovered in 1993. Upon numerous requests for an official apology, the Japanese government only provided a few officers¡¯ regrets. Their words were private, not official, and ambiguous. The Washington Post describes Japanese Prime Minister Murayama¡¯s announcement in 1995 as "a near apology" (Chronology).
The Japanese government is long overdue in issuing an official apology for this inhumane crime and providing reparations to the victims. Dealing with physical and mental damage of the trauma, most of the former ¡°comfort women¡± lived difficult lives. The majority of them couldn¡¯t marry because they were devaluated ¡°in a society dominated by patriarchal views of chastity and morality¡± (Hicks 165). Many of them couldn¡¯t bear babies due to physical damage even when they got married. They were not able to adapt themselves into the society. Social discrimination against the ¡°comfort women¡± caused them much despair. They chose not to tell the truth because they were afraid to be, in words of one former comfort woman, ¡°beaten to death¡± (qtd. in Hicks 196). When the truth was exposed, they were despised as if they were ¡°something filthy¡± (qtd. in Hicks 196). In addition, not many of them have survived. Among 223 registered former ¡°comfort women¡± in Korea, 104 women have died including 15 in 2005. In China, ¡°only about 60 of them ¡¦ are still alive today¡± as of 2001 (Zongwei).
What the Japanese imperial government did to over 100,000 women was an explicit crime against humanity as defined by the Roman Statute of the International Criminal Court. They organized and systematically maintained the ¡°comfort women¡± system whose victims were repeatedly raped over a period of years. The Japanese government should stop trying to evade their liability using deceptive private funds and ambiguous apologies from individual officers. They should immediately take full responsibility and officially apologize to the victims with all sincerity. The Japanese government should also provide appropriate reparations for any surviving former ¡°comfort women.¡± Only in doing this, can the Japanese government show to the world that they are sincerely sorry for what they did. A former ¡°comfort woman¡± Ms. K¡¯s request in the following message summarizes what they did and what should be done:
I was forced to have sex with 20 to 40 soldiers a day. I worked from eight in the morning till ten at night, but there were many nights I had to sleep overnight with an officer.¡¦ We all ended up having venereal diseases. Some girls died from these and other illnesses. Some girls became hysterical and crazy.¡¦
If I were to speak to the Japanese government, there is only one question I would ask: Is it right to ignore me like this as if they did nothing to me? Are they justified after trampling an innocent and fragile teenage girl and maker her suffer for the rest of her life? How would you feel if your own daughter met the same fate as mine?
This should never happen again in this world. I hope that Japanese people will also join mankind¡¯s march for justice and peace (Schellstede 103-105).
The Roman Statute of the International Criminal Court defines that ¡°rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity¡± is a crime against humanity when ¡°committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack¡± (Schabas 170). The ¡°comfort women¡± case is a crime against humanity for two reasons: thousands of women were treated inhumanely by abduction, rape, and violence for months or years, and the crime was committed under systematic control of the Japanese imperial government throughout many East Asian countries.
First, violence of the crime is shown starting with the recruitment process of the ¡°comfort women.¡± The crime involved women ¡°estimated about 100,000 to 200,000¡± from Korea, China, Taiwan, Myanmar, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other Japanese territorial East Asian countries. (Oh 9). The first method of recruitment was to lure young women into bogus job or educational opportunities. To many women in their teens and early twenties, the Japanese government¡¯s bait of opportunities sounded attractive, especially to Korean women. Korea was a Japanese colony at the time, and its economic situation was worse than ever. Korean agricultural and industrial products were exploited by Japan.
The second and the most common method was to abduct women from the Japanese territories, mainly from Korea. Women were kidnapped from streets, farms, or houses by recruitment officers who were accompanied by Japanese police. Kyung-paeng Jin was kidnapped at the age of 14 while she was working at her parents¡¯ farm. Bun-sun Kim was forced onto a truck by a Japanese policeman at the age of 15. Yoon-shim Kim was kidnapped at the age of 12. The young age of many of the victims shows not only the shamelessness and inhumanity of the crime but also a violation of child trafficking laws.
The third method was to forcibly transfer workers from the Women's Voluntary Service Corps to the ¡°comfort stations.¡± The Women's Voluntary Service Corps was a ¡°non-voluntary¡± organization that the Japanese government forced Korean woman students to join in order to work for war industries. The figure universally quoted for the drafted women totals 200,000, of whom 80,000 were comfort women (Hicks 172).
The last major method was to buy women. Often, parents sent their daughters to work in another territory for advanced payment against the daughter¡¯s labor. Neither parents nor daughters were informed that their work would involve sexual services. In one example, ¡°The Kitamuras, a husband-and-wife team of comfort station operators, ¡¦ bought twenty-two unmarried Korean women in 1942¡¦ They paid the girls¡¯ parents between 300 and 1,000 yen, depending on the girls¡¯ characters, appearances, and ages (200-300 yen, according to the former report)¡± (Yoshimi 105).
The most vicious aspect of the crime was how the ¡°comfort women¡± were treated in the military camps. The recruited women were transferred to the countries where the Japanese military fought such as China, Manchuria, Taiwan, Burma, Indonesia, and other East Asian countries. The Japanese troops frequently moved to new battlefields, and the ¡°comfort women¡± had to move with them. Wherever a troop settled, a ¡°comfort station¡± was quickly established. If a building with a large number of rooms was found nearby the troop¡¯s camp, it was used as a ¡°comfort station.¡± Often it was difficult to find such a building. In that case, a squalid wooden barrack with several rooms was built in a few days near or in the camp.
The interiors of the rooms were various. In some ¡°comfort stations¡±, ¡°the rooms were separated from one another only by hanging woven rush mats¡± (Yoshimi 134). In some cases, ¡°the rooms were about 5 square meters (about 6 square yards), each with a futon and one square meter of dirt floor¡± (qtd. in Yoshimi 134). There were some ¡°comfort stations¡± where ¡°a simple wooden fence was put up and inside a rush mat was laid down¡¦ like a communal latrine¡± (qtd. in Yoshimi 135). In these wretched places, each ¡°comfort woman¡± ¡°had to serve twenty to forty men a day, at a rate of a man every thirty minutes¡± (Oh 12). Yoshimi quotes former ¡°comfort station¡± operator Katsuki Ky?ji to show another number: ¡°there were times when comfort women were forced to have intercourse with sixty men in a single day ¡¦ even during innumerable times when {her} genitals were swollen¡± (139).
A single rape is malignant enough for the victim to develop severe posttraumatic stress disorder. If the victim is minor, the impact of rape can be much more damaging. The victim is more likely to experience physical health problems, mental disorders including PTSD, eating disorders, and substance abuse problems. Rape is ¡°violence that seeks to destroy a woman based on her identity as a women¡± and ¡°has the potential to profoundly debilitate, to render the woman homeless in her own body and destroy her sense of security in the world¡± (Copelon 347). When a single rape can shatter a person¡¯s whole identity as the above quotation, it¡¯s impossible to imagine how horrible it had been for the ¡°comfort women¡± to be continuously raped twenty to forty times or more a day.
Many of them were minors. The late former ¡°comfort woman¡± Duk-kyung Kang remembered her experience:
From that time on, my life became a nightmare. I was only 13 years old and did not even know the word ¡®menstruation.¡¯ Many soldiers had come and gone. I could not even begin to count the number of soldiers who raped me¡± (Schellstede 17).
Repeated rape was not the only ordeal that the ¡°comfort women¡± had to suffer. Their life in a ¡°comfort station¡± had no freedom and was strictly regulated. They had to provide labor for the camps day and night if they were not being raped. They were also exposed to grave violence at the hands of the Japanese soldiers. Women were severely beaten when they refused to have sex or even without any specific reasons. The brutality and inhumanity of the Japanese soldiers¡¯ violence is shown in this testimony of a former ¡°comfort woman¡± Dae-il Kim:
So we were made sex slaves and were forced to service 40 to 50 soldiers each day. One time a soldier sat on top of the stomach of a pregnant ¡®comfort woman¡¯ who was almost full term. Apparently this act induced labor. As a baby started to appear, he stabbed both the infant and the mother and exclaimed, ¡®Hey, these senjing (dirty Koreans) are dead. Come and see¡¯¡± (Schellstede 26).
The second reason that the ¡°comfort women¡± case is a crime against humanity is that the whole process was thoroughly planned and systematically managed by the Japanese imperial government. When rape got more and more frequent in Shanghai in the early 1930s, Vice Chief of Staff of the Shanghai Expeditionary Force of the Japanese military, Okamura Yasuji proposed for ¡°comfort stations¡± to be created (Yoshimi 45). His proposal was implemented, and the first ¡°comfort station¡± began operating in 1932. This shows the immorality of the Japanese officials. As a solution for increasing rape by the soldiers, they chose to rape designated women only in organized stations ¡°instead of investigating the outbreak of rapes¡± (Yoshimi 45). They greatly expanded ¡°its officially sanctioned and closely regulated ¡®comfort system¡¯ for the sexual gratification of the Japanese soldiers¡± after thousands of rapes occurred during Nanking Massacre in 1937 (Ahmed). While preventing rape was the main rationalization of the Japanese government for establishing the ¡°comfort women¡± system, ironically a note from the Japanese commander of the 11th army, Okamura Yasuji, shows that nevertheless the rape of civilian women never stopped:
At present, almost all units are accompanied by comfort women corps. It has reached the point where {a comfort women corps} is just one more line of communication corps. But even though such units as the 6th division march with a comfort women corps, there is no end to the rapes (qtd. in Yoshimi 66).
The Japanese government also wanted to keep soldiers from being infected from sexual diseases. This was another rationale for the Japanese government to decide to operate organized military rape stations. There was also a conventional belief in Japanese military culture that having sex before they go into a battle would raise morale. This explains the euphemism for calling the victimized women ¡°comfort women¡± and the places ¡°comfort stations.¡± On top of these various rationales, the ¡°male-dominated [and] militaristic¡± Japanese society helped the Japanese government to establish this immoral system (Oh 6).
The payment system for comfort women, either by money or by redeemable tickets, also shows that the Japanese government controlled ¡°comfort stations.¡± The Japanese military had a titular payment system to make it look commercial rather than public. It is a cunning way to disguise the fact that it was operated by the Japanese military since they hardly paid the women. The operation center sold soldiers tickets, which soldiers were supposed to give to the ¡°comfort women.¡± However, the ¡°comfort women¡± were able neither to exchange the tickets for money nor to keep them because the operation center took them. In summary, the detailed planning from the beginning of the operation and thorough control over the lives of the ¡°comfort women¡± show that it is a severe crime against humanity.
The ¡°comfort women¡± case was never brought up at the Tokyo War Criminal Trial in May 1946. The Trial ¡°neglected the issue of sexual violence¡± including the ¡°comfort women¡± issue (Matsui). ¡°The comfort women were not unknown to the Allies¡±, but ¡°the sufferings of the comfort women did not matter enough for an issue to be made out of them¡± (Hicks 270). Even now, the Japanese government has never accepted liability for this crime. This denial of the crime increases the gravity of the vice, especially when compared to Germany. Through various programs, ¡°Germany has paid out more than $35 billion in reparations to the Zionist state and to millions of individual victims of National Socialism¡± as of 1988 (Weber, par. 1). The compensation that Germany has made was not only for physical injury but also for ¡°loss of freedom, property, income, professional and financial advancement as a result of¡± persecution (Weber, par. 17). In contrast, surviving former ¡°comfort women¡± have suffered for decades from physical illness and mental damage without any compensation from the Japanese government. The majority of the ¡°comfort women¡± were killed by the Japanese military or were abandoned when Japan lost the war in 1945. Most of the ¡°comfort women¡± who survived the war lived a painful and lonely life in a shame. They tried to hide their past. This was especially severe in Korea, China, and Taiwan where a woman¡¯s chastity was considered as her most important virtue.
Regarding reparations for Korean comfort women, who made up about eighty percent of all ¡°comfort women¡±, the Japanese government argues that the 1965 Japan-South Korea Treaty settled all issues regarding compensation. However, it should be considered that the settlement in the agreement was between two nations. The Treaty did not include reparations for individual victims. The Treaty ¡°was never intended to and did not include ¡®claims¡¯ involving the violations of human rights¡± such as the ¡°comfort women¡± case and the case of forced deportation of Koreans to the Japanese imperial territories (Dolgopol, par. 19). The following passage from a recent The Korea Times article summarizes the statement of the treaty:
In the treaty, first the Japanese government guaranteed the residency rights, equal access to public education and social welfare benefits for Koreans living in Japan. Second, the controversial maritime demarcation line ¡¦ was replaced by the 12 miles ... Third, Japanese government agreed to pay of [sic] $300 million grant-in-aid, $200 million in government loans, and $300 million in commercial loans by 1967. ¡¦Fourth, both countries resumed trade relations and travelers¡¯ visitation (Kim, par. 9)
As this passage illustrates, the Treaty mainly focused on economic aspects between two countries. The priority of Korean President Jung-hee Park in 1965 was the economic development of the nation. The claim of the Japanese government is not valid. The Japanese government is still accountable for the ¡°comfort women¡± case not only because it was not specified in the 1965 Treaty but also because a crime against humanity like this cannot be settled without righteous judgments.
In order to deny providing official reparations, the Japanese government established a private fund, Asian Women¡¯s Fund. Even though it was initiated ¡°based on a decision of the Japanese Government¡± and includes former government officers as administrators, it is still a private, not a government, organization (What, par. 3). This is another way to avoid taking official responsibility and providing official compensation. It is not surprising that the Japanese government rejects efforts to have them pay official compensation since the government ¡°continues to deny legal liability for the Japanese military¡¯s actions with respect to the ¡®establishment and management¡¯ of the comfort stations¡± (McDougall 137). The Japanese government had denied involvement in the crime but finally admitted, with reluctance, that the ¡°comfort stations¡± were operated by the Japanese imperial military only when official documents were discovered in 1993. Upon numerous requests for an official apology, the Japanese government only provided a few officers¡¯ regrets. Their words were private, not official, and ambiguous. The Washington Post describes Japanese Prime Minister Murayama¡¯s announcement in 1995 as "a near apology" (Chronology).
The Japanese government is long overdue in issuing an official apology for this inhumane crime and providing reparations to the victims. Dealing with physical and mental damage of the trauma, most of the former ¡°comfort women¡± lived difficult lives. The majority of them couldn¡¯t marry because they were devaluated ¡°in a society dominated by patriarchal views of chastity and morality¡± (Hicks 165). Many of them couldn¡¯t bear babies due to physical damage even when they got married. They were not able to adapt themselves into the society. Social discrimination against the ¡°comfort women¡± caused them much despair. They chose not to tell the truth because they were afraid to be, in words of one former comfort woman, ¡°beaten to death¡± (qtd. in Hicks 196). When the truth was exposed, they were despised as if they were ¡°something filthy¡± (qtd. in Hicks 196). In addition, not many of them have survived. Among 223 registered former ¡°comfort women¡± in Korea, 104 women have died including 15 in 2005. In China, ¡°only about 60 of them ¡¦ are still alive today¡± as of 2001 (Zongwei).
What the Japanese imperial government did to over 100,000 women was an explicit crime against humanity as defined by the Roman Statute of the International Criminal Court. They organized and systematically maintained the ¡°comfort women¡± system whose victims were repeatedly raped over a period of years. The Japanese government should stop trying to evade their liability using deceptive private funds and ambiguous apologies from individual officers. They should immediately take full responsibility and officially apologize to the victims with all sincerity. The Japanese government should also provide appropriate reparations for any surviving former ¡°comfort women.¡± Only in doing this, can the Japanese government show to the world that they are sincerely sorry for what they did. A former ¡°comfort woman¡± Ms. K¡¯s request in the following message summarizes what they did and what should be done:
I was forced to have sex with 20 to 40 soldiers a day. I worked from eight in the morning till ten at night, but there were many nights I had to sleep overnight with an officer.¡¦ We all ended up having venereal diseases. Some girls died from these and other illnesses. Some girls became hysterical and crazy.¡¦
If I were to speak to the Japanese government, there is only one question I would ask: Is it right to ignore me like this as if they did nothing to me? Are they justified after trampling an innocent and fragile teenage girl and maker her suffer for the rest of her life? How would you feel if your own daughter met the same fate as mine?
This should never happen again in this world. I hope that Japanese people will also join mankind¡¯s march for justice and peace (Schellstede 103-105).
