The decades-long struggle of sex slaves

Derita Paksa Perempuan (Suffering of Women); By A. Budi Hartono and Dadang Juliantoro; Pustaka Sinar Harapan, Jakarta in cooperation with Ford Foundation, September 1997; xx + 230 pp; Rp 14,400

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Every time we speak of war, pictures of arms, violence, blood and victims come to mind. Likewise the mentioning of the historical fact of jugun ianfu (comfort women) during World War II. For Indonesia, the problem of jugun ianfu is a dark page in history which has rarely received serious attention.

The books that indirectly treat the problem of jugun ianfu are Aiko Kurasawa's Mobilisasi dan Kontrol (Mobilization and Control, Gramedia, Jakarta, 1993), Anton E. Lukas' Pengalaman Wanita Selama Jaman Pendudukan dan Revolusi, 1942-1950 (Women's Experiences During Colonization and the Revolution, LP3ES, Jakarta, 1996) and Budi Hartono's Ianfu dan Romusha Dai Nippon Jepang and Problematikanya (Comfort Women and Forced Workers of the Dai Nippon Japan and Their Problems, unpublished paper).

The book Derita Paksa Perempuan may be among the first here focusing on comfort women. Apart from its presentation of the bitter experiences of jugun ianfu during Japanese occupation, this book contains data of the jugun ianfu in Indonesia, especially in Yogyakarta and in Central Java, and a description of efforts to submit demands by the Yogyakarta Legal Aid Institute to the Japanese government.

The authors write that the sexual violence against the jugun ianfu was organized by the Japanese to meet the sexual needs of their troops in the war. The women were mobilized from villages and remote areas with the help of village heads. They were housed in ianjo (brothels) set up by the Japanese army in nearly every military command area.

The stories of the former jugun ianfu are exemplified by Mardiyem of Yogyakarta, who presented her story to the Japanese public with her lawyer in 1996. Mardiyem, who was given the Japanese name Momoye by her captors, says that after people learned she was a comfort woman, her catering business went bankrupt when her clients deserted her one by one.

Mardiyem was 13 when she was made a comfort woman.

Her story, which has also appeared in the local media, tells of how she eventually married out of the need for love, but she said she could not love her husband; an experience apparently linked with her life as a woman who had to endure the lust and abuse by the soldiers in Telawang, Banjarmasin.

Eventually up to 250 former comfort women, with the help of the Yogyakarta Legal Aid Institute, have demanded an apology and compensation from the Japanese government. Such demands have been made not only in Indonesia, but also in the Philippines and Korea. On an international level, the demands of the Indonesian jugun ianfu and the Yogyakarta Legal Aid Institute are supported by the Citizens Fund for Redress World War II Victims in Asia and the Pacific and a number of non-governmental organizations in Japan.

The Japanese government only said it had already established the Asian Women's Fund that collects funds from the Japanese community. The comfort women rejected this.

Finally on July 18, 1995 the then Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama officially apologized for the sex enslavement practiced by the Japanese army. Murayama even said that the acts of violence committed by the Japanese at that time were unforgivable. The Japanese government also admitted that it had caused interminable physical and mental suffering to the women. However, the apology was never directly addressed to Indonesian women.

Regarding the jugun ianfu in Indonesia, the Japanese Foreign Office insisted that the matter was solved through the San Francisco Peace Agreement in 1951 and the Trade Agreement between Japan and Indonesia. Japan was willing to pay compensation of Rp 9 billion to the Indonesian jugun ianfu through the Asian Women's Fund.

This compensation has given rise to a new problem for the jugun ianfu, because apart from the fact that the compensation has not touched on the essence of an apology, the money was to be used by the Ministry of Social Welfare to build homes for the elderly in 50 locations. Most of the jugun ianfu were reluctant to enter those homes. The struggle of the jugun ianfu seems still long and complicated.

In this respect the Indonesian government seems to lag behind that of Korea, China and the Philippines, where the comfort women are more assisted in their struggle.

This book is the fifth in a series called Reproductive Health, Culture and Society. It is an important documentation of the struggle of the women in the hopes that such organized sexual slavery, which hurt these women all their lives, should never happen again.

-- Ferry T. Indratno

The reviewer is a researcher at the Institute for Javanese Studies and the Institute of Study on Human Interests, Yogyakarta.