Transnational and Japanese Activism on Behalf of Indonesian and Dutch Victims of Enforced Military Prostitution During World War II
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Volume 14 | Issue 16 | Number 7 | Article ID 4945 | Aug 15, 2016 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Transnational and Japanese Activism on Behalf of Indonesian and Dutch Victims of Enforced Military Prostitution During World War II Katharine McGregor Article Summary Tokyo opened a temporary exhibition on Indonesian and Dutch survivors of enforced This article considers the experiences of Dutch military prostitution by the Japanese military and Indonesian women in enforced prostitution during World War Two. The exhibition detailed for the Japanese military during World War how during the Japanese occupation of the Two and the activism of prominent survivors former Dutch colony of the Netherlands East and their supporters from the 1990s. ItIndies (1942-1945) the Japanese military highlights how and why Japanese activists have forcibly detained Indonesian and Dutch women continued to support these women and why to serve in military brothels. It presented Dutch and Indonesian women have rarely accounts of the war-time experiences and engaged in joint activism. It analyses how activism of the most famous survivor activists Dutch and Indonesian women’s stories are from each country. Although there has been presented together in a 2015-2016 exhibition at some scholarly attention to Dutch activism, the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace there is very little research to date on in Tokyo and how women’s and soldiers’ Indonesian activism. Furthermore these two testimonies are used to advocate further cases have not yet been considered together redress from the Japanese government and to despite the fact that Dutch and Indonesian challenge military sexual violence against women were victimised in the same colony.1 women. The article assesses how a sustained focus in transnational activism on Japanese This paper examines the relationship between responsibility and the Japanese imperialthe Dutch and Indonesian cases and the role of context potentially leads to overlooking how Japanese activists in supporting related localised forms of patriarchy and the specific activism. Firstly I examine what we know about context of this former Dutch colony affected the system of enforced military in the women’s experiences and their post war Netherlands East Indies based on historical treatment. records and the testimonial accounts of prominent survivor activists of Indonesian and Keywords Dutch background. Secondly I trace how activism on behalf of both groups of women ‘comfort women’, activism, Women’s Active developed with Japanese support and how Museum of War and Peace, Indonesia, Netherlands, Japan war responsibility,these women are differently positioned as a Japanese occupation of the Netherlands East result of the former colonial relationship Indies. between Indonesia and the Netherlands. I also assess why Dutch and Indonesian women have Length: 9,900 words rarely come together in activism. Finally I analyse the content of the recent Japanese In July 2015 the Women’s Active Museum in exhibition on Indonesian and Dutch survivors: 1 14 | 16 | 7 APJ | JF how the women are presented and how called ‘comfort women’ system worked in the women’s testimonies are used alongsideNetherlands Indies.7 Replicating patterns soldier’s testimonies in the exhibition. elsewhere and carrying over from traditions in the local prostitution industry, ‘comfort The Context of the system in thefacilities’ were diverse, including ‘movie Netherlands East Indies theatres, bars, restaurants, hotels and comfort stations’ across army and navy controlled The system of Japanese enforced military 8 areas. The Japanese initially ‘recruited’ from prostitution is rooted in the history of Japanese among Indonesian sex workers with imperialism and state endorsed prostitution. encouragement from the nationalist leader Long before the creation of Japan’s formal and Sukarno.9 Indonesian women were also tricked informal empire, Japanese entrepreneurs into forced prostitution with promises of established brothels throughout Asia in which becoming performers, getting an education or Japanese women worked.2 The Japanese training as nurses in distant locations. Some government established a licensed prostitution were sent to far-off islands or even to other system in Japan in the late nineteenth century, countries based on these promises, only to find and this system was replicated in its colonies themselves working in brothels. following, for example, the annexation of Korea 3 in 1910. As in the case of Korea there is evidence that local officials and families were sometimes The Japanese army institutionalised the so- complicit in providing women for the system.10 called ‘comfort women’ system during the In his 2001 study based on the testimonies of fifteen year war in China.4 The system, which Javanese women re-located to the remote was extended throughout the empire, was island of Buru, Indonesia’s famous novelist based in part on the belief that the provision of Pramoedya Anata Toer highlighted this women was necessary to satisfy the ‘sexual complicity.11 needs’ of soldiers. This was underpinned by the myth that men, and particularly soldiers, as Figures on the total number of ‘comfort archetypal men have ‘an uncontrollable sex women’ are imprecise due to the fact that many drive’.5 Military brothels were also established women died or were killed at the conclusion of to guard against sexually transmitted diseases the war, but estimates range from 20,000 to that might weaken soldiers by means of the 200,000 women, the majority of whom are provision of condoms and regular health checks believed to have been Korean.12 Figures for the of women detained within them. number of Indonesian women are also Prior to the Japanese occupation, there was a imprecise. The Ex-Heiho Forum, an longstanding practice in the colony of Dutch organisation of former auxiliary military forces men forming relationships with local women as for the Japanese in Indonesia that also tried to concubines until the number of European advocate on behalf of all war victims, claimed women increased in the late nineteenthto have documented 22,454 cases of women century. Concubines had no rights within these who experienced sexual violence at the hands 13 relationships and no claim to children from of the Japanese military and civilians. these unions. Both local and Dutch women Meanwhile, in 1994, the Dutch government engaged in various forms of sex work catering estimated in an official report that 200–300 to both local and Dutch men. Unfree labour was Dutch and Indonesian women were ‘recruited’ 14 also widespread.6 into the system. There were thus a great many more Indonesian than Dutch women There have been several studies of how the so affected. 2 14 | 16 | 7 APJ | JF In Dutch colonial society, being Dutch was camps to serve in brothels in Semarang in determined by whether or not a person had a central Java. These cases are well documented Dutch father and was born of a legal union.15 because they were investigated in post-war The legal category ‘European’ thus included trials organised by the Netherlands. With the children of mixed descent, who were known as exception of two trials in which crimes against Indos. Within the context of colonial society Indonesian women were investigated, the Dutch women generally enjoyed a moreDutch prioritised the investigation of the forced privileged status than local women, including enslavement of Dutch women. Tanaka argues greater prosperity and access to education.16 that this, combined with the fact that Following Japan’s December 8, 1941 invasion Indonesian women survivors of the system of the Dutch East Indies, Dutch women were were also interviewed primarily regarding selected from women in Japanese runcrimes against Dutch women, reveals Dutch internment camps and put to work in brothels colonial attitudes about Indonesian women as in Java, Sumatra, Celebes, Ambon, Flores and less worthy of justice than Dutch women.19 The Timor. Some of these women had been sex emphasis on crimes against Dutch women is workers before the war.17 Tanaka notes that the curious given that around half the post war Japanese army exercised far more caution in trials of Japanese were for crimes against the recruitment of Dutch women requiring Indonesians.20 It may be that the sense of these women to, for example, sign contracts outrage amongst Dutch prosecutors was confirming they were ‘volunteers’ in order not stronger for cases of rape of Dutch women. to contravene the Geneva convention on Whatever the reasons, despite occurring in the trafficking in women. Some Dutch women were same occupied territory, Indonesian women’s released and replaced by Indonesian women experiences of rape during the war were long when superior commanders fearedneglected from world attention. consequences from the Dutch government.18 Commemoration of Dutch female victims during the Japanese occupation at Internment camp in Batavia, c. 1945 memorial in former palace of Bronbeek (Netherlands), 1985. The most detailed records from the Netherlands East Indies are those concerning Dutch and Indonesian Survivor Activists Dutch women who were taken from internment and Responses to Their Activism 3 14 | 16 | 7 APJ | JF The existence of the system of military prostitution was common knowledge in affected societies, but it was not a topic of public debate or controversy until the 1990s when, as historian Carol Gluck puts it, the so-called ‘comfort women’ issue ‘came into memory’.21 One reason for this was that rape had