What is happening?
Three months ago, the last of Taiwan’s “comfort women” died at the age of 92. Now, Taiwan is calling for justice.
The term “comfort women” (慰安婦) is a term used to refer to women from East Asia, primarily from Korea, China, Taiwan and the Philippines, who were forced to work in brothels and sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces during World War II, supposedly to “keep the soldiers from misbehaving”. Between 80,000 to 200,000 women are estimated to have been coerced into this type of sexual slavery, including about 2,000 Taiwanese women.
What is the broader picture?
With the passing of the last known comfort woman from Taiwan (who maintained anonymity), activists from The Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation are asking for the commemoration of the victims to be included in the national curriculum. In 2016, the foundation, whose mission is to address issues concerning victims of human trafficking and victims of domestic violence, opened a museum in Taipei dedicated to comfort women. Taking its name from the Taiwanese word for “grandma,” the museum, which is currently set to be reopen in different premises, was called the Ama Museum.
At the conference held on Wednesday August 14, the foundation asked for the issue of comfort women and other human rights victims to be included in history textbooks, as well as national archives from which such historical events are still missing. “Students have the right to know the truth of the situation, and to be educated about women’s rights” said Tu Ying-chiu (杜瑛秋), CEO of The Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation. She further highlighted the issue of underreporting on women’s suffering in war times.
Taiwan is not the only country trying to come to terms with this chapter of their history. South Korea has been striving for a formal apology from Japan for decades. The original – and many other discussions, for that matter – suggest that no apology has ever been made. In 2015, an expression of regret did eventually come from Japan in the form of a ¥1billion (US$7.2 million) deal to compensate forced World War II sex slaves. The South Korean government accepted this, but it was viewed as insufficient by the surviving victims. During a 2015 bilateral agreement on the issue, former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, apologized for the “grave affront to the honor and dignity of large numbers of women.“
Three weeks later, this statement was contradicted by then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the Japanese National Diet. “There was no document found that the ‘comfort women’ were forcibly taken away,” Abe said. To make matters worse, a South Korean court ruling in 2021 dismissed claims for damages against the Japanese government.
Why does it matter?
Discussions of a sexual nature — a particularly regarding women — can be a taboo in conservative Asian societies. This is magnified in cases involving abuse, which in turn explains why victims of these crimes only came forward nearly half a century later.
Today, Japan faces ongoing pressure from several countries to apologize for the war crimes committed on women during WWII and pay reparations. The most successful in their endeavors seems to be South Korea, where the government and people observe a Memorial Day on August 14 for Korean women who were forced into sex slavery in Japan’s military brothels during the war.
In other countries such as the Philippines the remaining victims and their families are still fighting for recognition as an international human rights issue and to refute claims of sex slavery being a consensual or a lucrative job offer.
