The rape of `Jugun Ianfu': A debt of honor for Japan

The rape of `Jugun Ianfu': A debt of honor for Japan

By Marianne Katoppo

JAKARTA (JP): The international debt crisis is being discussed
extensively these days. Sixty of the so-called poorer countries
are burdened by hundreds of billion debt, and urge for a 70
percent reduction.

There is an old Indonesian proverb which says, `Hutang masih
dapat diganti, hutang budi dibawa mati' - meaning, "A debt of gold
can be paid, a debt of honor will be carried to the grave."

One of the "debts" which has never been paid or even
acknowledged after the end of World War II is the debt which
Japan owes to the approximately 200,000 Asian women (including
some European women held in Japanese concentration camps) who
were forced to become jugun ianfu, commonly translated as
"volunteer army comfort women".

According to the Kokugo Daijiten, the Japanese language
dictionary comparable to Webster, the term ian really means
"comfort" in the sense of "solace, rest, peace". The ianfu (fu
means "woman") were precisely intended to provide all this to the
Japanese soldier exposed to the vicissitudes of war. As stated in
one of the most extensive and most popular memoirs of the time,
"For the frontline army private who was permanently surrounded by
the sound of gunfire and smoke reeking of death, not knowing when
death would seize himself, a visit to the comfort centers was the
only opportunity to flee from harsh reality. He could feel human
again..."(I.M.Kim, Tenno no Guntai to Chosenjin Ianfu, The
Imperial Army and Korean Comfort Women, as quoted by George
Hicks).

The largest number of women forcibly recruited to make the
harassed Japanese invader "feel human" again was from Korea, then
a colony of Japan. As Yayori Matsui, the renowned woman
journalist, stated to the International Interdisciplinary
Conference of Women in New York 1990, "When the Japanese Imperial
Army invaded China and Southeast Asia between 1930 and 1945,
Japanese soldiers not only raped the women in their path of
conquest, but carried away many thousands of young Korean women
as Chongshindae or battlefield prostitutes. Korea was a colony of
Japan at the time and the plight of these abused women was
inexpressible. They were forced to sexually serve 30 to 40
soldiers each day. As Japan was forced to withdraw its troops
nearing the end of the war, these women were abandoned in the
jungles and on other battlefields and some were even killed."

Allied reports also confirm that many comfort women, such as
in Myanmar and Micronesia, were forced to join in the collective
suicide of beleaguered Japanese forces.

Japan was in fact a signatory to the three International
Conventions of 1904, 1910 and 1921, which prohibited the traffic
in women and minors with a view to prostitution. However, these
conventions had a special clause which was immediately seized
upon by Japan when making arrangements for the provision of
comfort women to their invading army. The clause stated that an
exception could be made for the colonies of the signatory
countries, if this was stated in advance.

Japan did state its intention in advance, and therefore felt
free to carry away as many Korean or Taiwanese women as it
pleased. If no outright force was used, the ploy was to promise
these women scholarships or jobs. A United States Office of War
Information Report of 1 Oct. 1944 records the testimonies of
twenty Korean comfort women liberated by the U.S. Army in
Myanmar. The women stated that they had been promised employment
as nurses in army hospitals.

In fact, these tactics were used all over the occupied
territories, including Indonesia. One of the causes of the PETA
uprising in February 1944 was the fact that many young Javanese
girls were taken away with the promise of scholarships only to
end up in Surabaya army brothels.

The fate of one such young woman is very movingly described in
a novel, Kadarwati, wanita dengan lima nama (Kadarwati, the woman
with five names) by Pandir Kelana, the pseudonym of retired Maj.
Gen. R.M. Slamet Danusudirdjo. Perhaps one needs to be an army
general to have the courage and the clout to expose these
atrocities. It is a fact that for nearly half a century the
Japanese government has denied any responsibility for the plight
of the jugun ianfu. It was only after a Japanese professor,
Yoshiaki Yoshimi, unearthed some official documents in the
archives in 1992 and made them public, that the involvement of
the Japanese Imperial Army with the forcible prostitution became
proven beyond any doubt.

One of the most important was the "Official document of 1938
from the Japanese Ministry of War about the recruitment of women
for the comfort centers". What makes this document even more
remarkable is that it was signed by Gen. Inamura Hitoshi, who
would lead the invasion of Indonesia in 1942 and help to set up
the military government in Java.

As Yoshimi points out, "The reluctance of the present
Japanese government to admit the truth about the involvement of
their predecessors is also the reason that attempts to do
historical research about the forcible prostitution in Southeast
Asia in the thirties and during World War II are being frustrated
repeatedly."

This can be confirmed by this writer. Much of the source
material for this article was kindly supplied by other embassies;
the Japanese Embassy, though contacted many times, always was too
busy to reply to queries.

At the commemoration of the dropping of the atom bomb on
Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi
Murayama did say that war victims in Indonesia must be
compensated. The government was just deliberating in what form
this compensation should be made. This is commendable, but
history shows that a previous prime minister, Miyazawa, during
his visit to South Korea in 1991 already made a public apology
for the distress suffered by many Korean women; and then in
August 1993, the next prime minister, Hosokawa, also admitted
that Japan had conducted a very aggressive war and was
considering a substantial all encompassing apology. Maybe such
statements of Prime Ministers would be more credible when
followed by concrete action instead of so much consideration and
deliberation.

Apart from the approximately 10,000 Indonesian women forced to
become jugun ianfu, the Japanese Sixteenth Army also took young
Dutch women from four concentration camps in Central Java. There
is fully documented evidence of 35 women, most of them young
girls, being forcibly taken to Japanese army brothels in Semarang
when there happened to be a shortage of available prostitutes
early in 1944. There was a high incidence of venereal disease
among the professional prostitutes, and the Japanese Army wished
to minimize the risk of their good men being infected.

In 1947, the responsible officers were duly tried during the
Batavia Process, "for war crimes of the B and C categories", i.e.
abuse of martial law and crimes against humanity. Of the 13 held
culpable, one had already returned to Japan and committed suicide
there. One was sentenced to death and the rest sentenced to
imprisonment ranging from two to 20 years. However, in 1956 the
last of these war criminals was already released from Sugamo
prison.

It is remarkable, as Yoshimi doesn't fail to point out, that
the International Military Tribunal of the Far East in Tokyo, and
also the Batavia Process, were mainly concerned with crimes
against American or European citizens. Asian victims of war, and
certainly the Asian jugun ianfu, were ignored.

In discussions about war reparations, comfort women were also
neglected. In the 1965 treaty between Japan and South Korea there
is no mention at all about the jugun ianfu. On the whole, theirs
was a miserable lot. If they had managed to survive at all, and
had the good fortune to marry and lead a more or less normal
life, many were so ravaged that they were never able to have
children.

Also, they were burdened by shame.

Like in the case of many rape victims, they interiorized their
terrible experiences and were unable to talk about it.

Also, the situation in Asia being what it is, it was just
impossible for jugun ianfu in Korea, Taiwan, China and countries
of Southeast Asia to come forward and expose "their shameful
past" to bring their tormentors to justice.

Even Dutch women coping with less severe cultural constraints
found it impossible to speak out. As Jeanne Ruff O'Herne, a Dutch
woman now settled in Australia, says, "It took me 50 years to
break the silence. What the Japanese did to me is not something
about which one can talk easily. For 50 years I have wanted to
scream it out, but I just was not able to."

She had been one of the young girls forcibly taken from the
Ambarawa camp in Central Java in 1944. One of her most bitter
memories is of a Japanese military physician who appeared in the
brothel one day. Jeanne naively assumed that, being a physician,
he would have some compassion. She told him of their plight and
reminded him that this was in flagrant breach of the Geneva
Convention. His response was to chase her all over the house and
rape her.

The Dutch Stichting voor Japanse Ereschulden (Foundation for
Japanese Debts of Honor) last month filed for compensation at
US$20,000 per person for former Japanese concentration camp
inmates -- including the jugun ianfu. The Dutch government having
signed the San Francisco Treaty with Japan cannot make any more
official claims; however, it can and it does give moral support
to the victims and is also willing to inform the Japanese
government about this.

The Dutch action -- for an estimated 65 women -- got the
world's attention. Other countries are noticeably reluctant to
speak up for their women.

In Indonesia, 1994 is the Year for Women Youth and
Development. In the case of the young women who were so brutally
abused as jugun ianfu, there is still much that could be done.
The Legal Aid Society and other groups or individuals have
already made some efforts. There is still material in the
archives and also in the recollections of certain people which
have never been adequately tapped.

On Aug. 19, the United Nations Human Rights Commission found
that the forcible prostitution of approximately 200,000 Asian
women by the Japanese Imperial Army had indeed been "a flagrant
transgression of human rights." Japan has now promised to pay
this debt of honor.

For many of the jugun ianfu it is too late, many have died.
Besides, in the early 1960's Indonesia made a claim of US$17
billion in war reparations. Japan paid $800 million: $200 million
remission of debts, $200 million in the form of scholarships for
Indonesian students, and the rest in capital goods. Now that the
yen is somewhat stronger than in the 1960's, perhaps we may look
forward to the outstanding $ 16.2 billion?

The writer is an observer of social issues based in Jakarta.

Window: The forcible prostitution of approximately 200,000 Asian women
by the Japanese Imperial Army had indeed been "a flagrant
transgression of human rights."