Comfort Women', the Japanese Military and Allied Forces in the Asia- Pacific War

Volume 13 | Issue 31 | Number 1 | Article ID 4352 | Aug 03, 2015 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus You Don't Want to Know About the Girls? The 'Comfort Women', the Japanese Military and Allied Forces in the Asia- Pacific War Tessa Morris-Suzuki The Unasked Questions interviewer evidently did not “want to know about the girls”, and briskly moved the Angus McDougall, an Australian serviceman, conversation on to other topics. The pattern is was captured by the Japanese in the early repeated again and again in the oral history stages of the Asia-Pacific War and sent to record of the Asia-Pacific War. From the 1980s Changi prisoner of war camp. From there he, to the first decade of the twenty-first century, like over 40,000 others, was transported by rail historians undertook a massive task of to Banpong in Thailand on his way to work on recording many thousands of interviews with the Thai-Burma Railway. The journey was former allied service people and civilians who gruelling. POWs were packed 28 or more to a participated in one way or another in the war. truck in goods wagons. The trucks were far too These interviews provide an astonishingly rich small to carry such a number, the heat was record of many long-neglected aspects of mid- intense, and food and water were scarce. twentieth century history. But the references to Interviewed about his experiences many Asian “comfort women” which from time to decades later, McDougall echoes other time emerge in this record are very rarely survivors in describing the journey as “hell”.1 followed up. Fleeting descriptions of But, as you can hear if you listen to his encounters with Japanese, Korean, Chinese, recorded interview on the website of the Indonesian and other women recruited into Australian War Memorial, McDougall then goes Japanese military brothels all over Asia are left on to make a remark that catches hisfrustratingly hanging in silence, a thousand interviewer unprepared: “You don’t want to questions unasked and unanswered. know about the girls and everything in the The silences reflect the widespread attitudes of truck?” he asks. “Girls in the truck?” echoes his allied service people during wartime. The interviewer in surprise. McDougall responds by explaining that alongside the POWs, their train ubiquitous presence of Japanese military also transported 25 to 30 “comfort girls”, as he brothels in China and Southeast Asia was calls them: “one carriage of them, with guards, regarded sometimes as a subject for criticism, same as we had, like the guards with us”. more often as a curiosity. But in either case, it These girls, McDougall recalls, were not was seen as an issue of relatively little Japanese, but a multiethnic group made up (he importance compared to other all-consuming thinks) of “Malays, Indians, Chinese and concerns of war. Frederick Arblaster, an others”. Transported like prisoners, in the same Australian translator who had learnt Japanese hellish conditions on the same military train, and was sent to the Dutch East Indies to assist the young women were on their way to with post-surrender interrogations, recalls Japanese army brothels in Thailand or Burma.2 encountering a group of women who were with newly-surrendered Japanese forces. A Japanese But McDougall’s assumption was right. His officer, asked about the women, insisted that 1 13 | 31 | 1 APJ | JF they were Red Cross and hospital nurses, but Despite this lack of interest, the traces – Arblaster noticed their clothes and powdered passing mentions, sketchy anecdotes, tersely faces and observed “they’re the funniest labeled photographs – remain on the record, looking Red Cross and hospital staff that ever I and provide glimpses of important but saw in my life”. He asked his commanding neglected facets of the “comfort women” issue. officer for permission to question them, but the These traces remind us that many non-Japanese brusque reply was “don’t waste your time, witnesses observed the presence of Japanese sergeant. Let’s go”. Some time later Arblaster “comfort women” throughout wartime Asia, realised that they must have been “comfort and some were able to bear testimony to the women”, and regretted having failed to talk to conditions in which women were transported or them: kept in brothels. At the same time, this testimony, and the context in which it was given, makes it necessary to confront difficult I’m sure that if they [his questions about the sexual abuse of women not commanding officers] had only by Japanese troops but also by other accepted my view that there was armed forces in Asia. Historian Hank Nelson something wrong there, then we made powerful use of the testimony of allied could have spent some time… Once soldiers to explore the history of the women I’d spoken to these women, I’d transported to brothels in New Guinea by have found out, and arrangements Japanese forces during the war.5 Here, drawing could have been made to look after particularly on the wealth of records in the them. But any way… I can still see Imperial War Museum and the Australian War them. It was so incongruous to see Memorial, I retrieve other traces from the 3 these women in the jungle. spoken, written and visual records left by allied troops and civilians in Asia, and consider what Until quite recently at least, British, American they add to our knowledge of this troubling and and Australian war historians seldom showed contentious issue. The material presented here more interest in the stories of such women than is, I think, just the tip of an iceberg of third Arblaster’s commanding officer. When oral party testimony to the history of the “comfort history interviewees mention encounters with women”. Much has surely been lost, or soon “comfort women” in China, Southeast Asia or will be, as the generation with personal even in India, the interviewers rarely pursue memories of the war disappears. But there is the matter. British missionary Norah Inge, who certainly more to be found, and I hope that this had been in charge of a section of the civilian essay will contribute to the gradual process of internment camp for Japanese in Deoli, India, bringing evidence together, deepening our volunteered the information that in the latter understanding of that history and of its stages of the war some Japanese “comfort implications for the present and future. women” found by British troops in various parts of Southeast Asia were transported to Deoli, where they were held in their own separate compound.4 But in several hours of fascinating recording, her interviewer does not pose a single follow-up question about the story or about fate of these women, instead immediately steering the conversation back onto more familiar territory. 2 13 | 31 | 1 APJ | JF have been unearthed by historian Yoshimi Yoshiaki and others. These include several sets of regulations for “comfort stations” which deny women freedom to leave military brothels.6 Other official documents show that recruiters selected by the military police were dispatched (for example) to Taiwan to collect specified numbers of “native women” for military brothels in Borneo.7 The rhetoric of denial dismisses the oral testimony of women who speak from personal experience, arguing that this testimony is unreliable or fabricated – despite the fact that some of the personal accounts have been tested Kupang, Timor, A group including twenty-six Javanese women who were liberated from Japanese in Japanese and other courts of law and found brothels, 2 October 1945. Photographer K. B. Davis; to be credible.8 Events like those in Mapanique, AWM 120082 the Philippines – where women kidnapped by Japanese troops after the massacre of the village’s male population were held in a house Sources of Contention where they were repeatedly raped – are The question of historical sources lies at the ignored, even though judicial rulings have heart of the bitter contemporary disputes about acknowledged the sufferings of the victims. the “comfort women”. Those who deny that the Despite rejecting a claim for compensation on Japanese military forcibly recruited women to technical legal grounds, in 2014 a panel of brothels, or who dismiss the issue out of hand, presiding judges in the Philippines expressed commonly draw a sharp distinction between great sympathy with the cause of the surviving official documents and oral testimony,Mapanique women, commenting: “we cannot discounting the latter or focusing theirbegin to comprehend the unimaginable horror energies on parsing specific pieces of testimony they underwent at the hands of the Japanese 9 in order to undermine their credibility. But soldiers”. Denialists also either reject or ignore both written and oral historical sourcematerials like the Dutch parliamentary report materials are created by human individuals of 1994, which found, not only that some with human strengths and weaknesses. Why European civilian internees had been forcibly should we privilege one over the other? The taken to Japanese military brothels, but also bureaucrats who compose an official document (for example) that in West New Guinea, Papuan are neither more nor less likely to present a full women whose husbands had been killed for and accurate picture of the truth than elderly anti-Japanese activities were among those women who tell the stories of their past. required to serve as "comfort women”.10 The “denialists” claim that there are no official To understand history, we need to place documents proving the involvement of the multiple records side by side in ways that allow Japanese military in the forced recruitment or them to illuminate, confirm, refute or enrich incarceration of “comfort women”. These each other; and we need to think carefully claims play down the fact that many official about the processes through which all military documents detailing the establishment, historical records – written, spoken or visual – running and regulation of “comfort stations” are created and destroyed.

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