Korean “Comfort Women” of Wwii Essay

â€Å"†¦Use curiosity to ask challenging questions about what appear as normal, everyday banalities in order to try and understand make visible’ the hidden gendering of the practice and theorizing of international relations† –Cynthia Enloe In times of armed conflict, women are most susceptible to violence and silencing through the sexualization, dehumanization, and stigmatization of their identities. Janie Leatherman highlights this point when stating â€Å"gender based violence often intensifies and becomes more extreme in a crisis, even escalating into a tool of war â€Å" (4). This is inevitable in a patriarchal society where hegemonic masculine values construct gender norms and gender expectations. Sexual violence during armed conflict does not develop in isolation from the society’s preexisting socioeconomic and culturally shaped gender relationships. Furthermore, the patriarchal nature of a society does not work alone in creating injustices, such as sexual violence, against women during and after armed conflict; there must be a â€Å"framework that embraces the realities, contradictions, and intersections of various global relations of power† (Kempadoo, 29). These intersections include the relationships between gender, race, class, cultural, and societal ideologies. In my paper, I take on Cynthia Enloe’s challenge of using an enquiring, gendered lens to explore the silencing of women during and after war by examining the case of the Korean ‘comfort women’ of World War II. I will analyze how the intersection of prevailing social determinants and ideologies have regulated and perpetuated the rationale and, thus, the invisibility of the Korean comfort women during and in the aftermath of World War II. Literature Review & Research Methodology Yoshiaki Yoshimi’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II, Margaret Stetz’s Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II, as well as Toshiyuki Tanaka’s Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II were mainly used throughout my research to gather the testimonies of surviving Korean comfort women. All three books give a comprehensive look into the phenomenon of the Japanese military comfort women system with historical background and an abundance of testimonies and documentation of the Korean comfort women. Because my research focuses on the silencing of Korean comfort women during and in the aftermath of World War II, these oral histories provide crucial supporting evidence throughout my paper. Besides two testimonies by one Japanese soldier and one Japanese military doctor, testimonies by other Japanese soldiers and government officials that have acknowledged the existence of the comfort women stations were difficult t o find. Therefore, throughout these testimonies, I specifically looked for patterns that revealed evidence of Japanese gender hierarchies through the diction and accounts that imply any dehumanization and objectification imparted by Japanese soldiers. To investigate the determinants that had cultivated the Japanese comfort station system and, more importantly, the targeting of Korean women for the system, I specifically used Cynthia Enloe’s Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives as well as Janie Leatherman’s Sexual Violence and Armed Conflict. Both authors give insights and analyses of the causes and consequences of sexual violence during armed conflict. They both emphasize the interplay of patriarchal systems, gender constructions/norms, and political/economic/cultural structures as large contributors. In addition to these specific determinants, I incorporate Sara Ahmed’s analysis to sexual violence by considering the â€Å"cultural intersections between gender, race, and colonialism† in my analytical approach (138). By applying and intertwining the critical approaches of Enloe, Leatherman, and Ahmed, I am able to isolate the multifaceted, yet intersecting institutions and ideologies that had fabricated the invisibility of and the rationale for the Korean comfort women. Background of the Japanese Comfort Stations The euphemism ‘comfort women’ was the name assigned to thousands of women –mainly Korean but also Burmese, Chinese, Dutch, Eurasians, Indians, Indonesian, Filipina, and Taiwanese –who were forced into the Japanese comfort station system (Japan’s military controlled whore houses or brothels) throughout World War II (Yoshimi). These so called ‘comfort stations’ were far from comforting. The conditions of the physical spaces have been described as â€Å"barrack-like facilities, rudimentary tents, [or] shacks† (Yoshimi, 25). One Japanese military doctor has testified that the women were treated like â€Å"female ammunition† and that their dehumanized bodies were reduced to the likes of â€Å"public toilets† (Wantabe, 20). The testimony of Hwang Kum-Ju, one of the first Korean comfort women to testify in public, only reveals a glimpse of the sufferings she and fellow comfort women had to endure: â€Å"There were so many soldiers. Sometimes, we had to do it with twenty to thirty soldiers a day. I think ours was the only comfort station in that area, and soldiers and officers came whenever they had some spare moments. Higher-ups came freely, and at night we usually slept with officers. Women who contracted venereal diseases were simply left to die or shot. Anyone resisting the advances was beaten† (Kim, 97). Comfort women were subjected to daily rapes, sexual diseases, torture, murder, and other forms of mental, physical, and sexual violence. The comfort stations were created during World War II as a solution to the aftermath of the Japanese military committing mass murders and rapes as they moved across mainland Asia. The catalyst for the creation of the comfort system was the most infamous massacre known as the â€Å"The Rape of Nanking† in which the whole village of Nanking was murdered after the Japanese soldiers raped approximately 20,000 village women. Because this particular massacre caused such an outcry in the international press, Emperor Hirohito of Japan ordered the creation and systematic expansion of the comfort stations. However, the purpose for which these comfort stations were created was not out of concern for the safety of local women of in the territories in which the Japanese soldiers were stationed. Naoai Murata, the Defense Agency Director of the Secretariat in 1992, claimed that they were created in order to ‘†¦maintain order [and] to ease the anti-Japanese feeling aroused by the Japanese soldier’s deeds’ (Schmidt, 88). This would restore the image of the Imperial Army by confining and concealing rape and sexual violence to military controlled facilities. Additionally, as the war progressed, these comfort stations transformed into spaces that provided opportunities for the Japanese soldiers to have sex as a means of relaxation and comfort, a boost for morale, a space to assert their masculinity, to relieve the stress and fear of combat, and an outlet from strict military discipline (Yoshimi, 53). The following interview of one Japanese soldier highlights the psychological influence and importance of the comfort women to the Japanese soldiers: â€Å"Even though we had just returned from lengthy military operations at the front, the thought of having sex made us leave immediately for the [comfort women]. When we arrived at where the women were, soldiers took their place in line and mulled over life and death while waiting for their turn. There was nothing else like the supreme feeling of completeness that the soldiers experienced when engaging in sex with the women. This was the only way for them to whole-heartedly escape from their abnormal existence† (Yoshimi, 54-55). The advocacy and rationale for the comfort women system reveal the dependency of the military on women. The comfort women system was considered an important element for the war efforts, even if only temporary. Why Korean Comfort Women? Approximately 80% of the 100,000 to 200,000 comfort women were Korean with ages ranging from 13 to mid-20’s (Yoshimi, 67). The question that can be elucidated from this statistic is simple: ‘why were the majority of the comfort women Korean?’ The answer to this question can be answered with: â€Å"†¦the military usually does not need – or want- all women to provide all these militarized services. Rather, government officials have needed women of some classes and some races and some ages to serve some of these functions†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Enloe 2000, 44). Furthermore, in order to further pinpoint the determinants to why this marginalized group was targeted, there needs to be â€Å"an engagement with the interplay of global relations of power around gender, race, nationality, and the economy (Kempadoo, 29). These underlying intertwining ideologies and institutions that have contributed to the explicit targeting of Korean women for the Japanese comfort stat ions need to be explored. Racial Ideologies: Racism The excessive usage of Korean women for the Japanese comfort system is directly linked to the elements of racism. This phenomenon can be analyzed by the intertwined relationship between colonialism, race, socially constructed gender ideologies. As Sara Ahmed emphasizes, â€Å" a consideration of cultural intersections between gender, race, and colonialism is important for two main reasons. First it demands that feminism reject any approach, which isolates the production of gender from race and colonialism. As a result, it requires us to consider how certain feminisms may themselves function as part of the colonialist culture† (138). With this framework in mind, it can be elucidated that the targeting of Korean women stems from the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 from which Korea became a protectorate of Japan and later officially colonized in 1910. Despite the fact that Korea had become a colony under Japan’s rule, the Japanese government and society’s sentiment â€Å"dictated that the [Korean] population was still considered to be racially inferior† (Tanaka, 96). While exploiting and objectifying Korean women, the Japanese military did not see it appropriate to exploit their own women to the same extent: â€Å"[Japanese] officials believed [international] laws were not applicable to Japan’s colonies, and this, combined with the belief in the superiority of Japanese women and the suitability of women of other races for prostitution, cemented to use [Korean] women from the colonies as comfort women† (Tanaka, 97) The Korean comfort women were positioned and identified as ‘uncivilized,’ inferior, subjugated, and promiscuous by the Japanese masculine colonial mindset. Derogatory and sexualized words, accompanied by violence, were used against the Korean comfort women at the comfort stations as racially discriminatory identifiers of the superior and the inferior groups. These words included ‘Ppagayor! Senpino kuseni!’ which translates to ‘Idiot! Nothing but a Korean cunt!’ (Yoshimi, 113). Enloe explains that objectifying foreign women makes it easier for military officials to marginalize them: â€Å"it was far easier for commanders to send women if they could be portrayed as rootless, promiscuous, parasitic, and generally a drag on the military’s discipline and battle readiness† (2000, 40). The images inscribed on the inferior, ‘colonized’ Korean comfort women rose from the colonialist, racial, and masculine institutions. The importance of the intersection of these institutions is emphasized by Kempadoo â€Å"a large number of women upon whose bodies and labor such constructions of masculinity depend are of nations, races, and ethnicities other than those of men is a reality that cannot be neglected or ignore† (31). These constructions of the Korean comfort women’s identities fabricated a justification that only naturalized the Japanese nation’s domination over Korean through the Korean comfort women. Gender Ideologies: Sexualized Femininity/Militarized Masculinity During World War II, the prominently patriarchal nature of the Japanese society reestablished the preexisting gendered, dichotomous construction of sexuality for both men and women in which the degree of masculinity of soldiers was greatly dependent on the comfort women. Cynthia Enloe highlights this notion by recognizing that â€Å"the women were one of the strengths, which maintained the military organization† (Enloe 1988, 187). Enloe draws attention to this dependency by stating ‘the military needs women as the gender ‘women’ to provide men with masculinity –reinforcing incentives to endure all the hardships of soldiering (Enloe 1988, 214). During World War II, within the Japanese military, there were socially constructed forms of masculinity and femininity that were reinforced by the onset of war and the military. The service of and dependency on the objectified women’s body s tems from what Carole Vance explains to be social constructions of gender and sexuality, not as â€Å"natural† and â€Å"unchanging† biologically determined notions of gender and sexuality. Socially constructed gender roles have shaped â€Å"sexuality as a form of power† (Mackinnon, 2). Catherine Mackinnon further describes these powerful gender roles: â€Å"the social beings we know as man and woman are bound by social requirements of heterosexuality, which institutionalizes male sexual domination and female sexual submission† The woman’s identity becomes inexplicably attached to her sexuality, becoming â€Å"that which is most of her own, yet is most taken away† (Tong, 111). Sexuality becomes distorted into an ideal of sexuality that reduces women to sexual objects while placing men as the dominating, sexual subject. The highly hierarchical gender system of Japan during World War II fostered an inequality between men and women in which â€Å"men create the demand and women are the supply† (Hughes, 11). The objectification of the Korean women was necessary for the militarization of men. (Enloe 2000). During times of war, the ideologies of masculinity that â€Å"their love and respect can only be met by being masculine, powerful, and ult imately violent† are fuelled (Kokopeli, 233). This is because the military as a social institution is constructed by ideals of male sexuality. The sexualization of the female body aids the military in the marginalization of women as it depicts women as objects and tools for the soldier’s sexual satisfaction. Vance states that all â€Å"social construction approaches adopt the view that physically identical sexual acts may have varying social significance and subjective meaning depends on how they are defined and understood in different cultures and historical periods† (29). Militarized masculinities are sexualized in violent forms, which was clearly the case among the Japanese soldiers. The socially constructed feminine identity at the time was one of which sexuality was merely designed to service individual men and male defined institutions. This explanation creates a foundation for the upheld rigid distinctions between masculine and feminine ideals in the Japanese society during World War II. For the Japanese male soldiers, the militarized masculine model of sexuality embodied notions of dominance, destructi on, aggression, and sexual conquest. On the other hand, the Korean comfort women subjected to this patriarchal society were merely reduced to submissive, obedient, and sexual tools. Enloe also argues that wartime sexual violence provides ‘masculinity-reinforcing incentives to endure all the hardships of soldiering’ (1988, 214). The practice of going to the comfort stations to have sex with the comfort women became a routine for the Japanese soldiers; the women were seen as a â€Å"necessary evil† (Tanaka, 67). Whereas on the battlefield, the Japanese soldiers had little control, having sex with women against their will gave the men the masculine power of dominance and self-assertion. In battle, Japanese soldiers were merely seen as military ammunition for combat, but they were able to reinforce their own masculine subjectivity and agency through the sexual objectification of Korean comfort women. This can be comprehended through the account of one Korean comfort woman, Yi Sunok: â€Å"There were many times when I was almost killed. If I refused to do what one man asked, he would come back drunk and threaten me with his sword. Others simply arrived drunk, and had intercourse with their swords stuck in the tatami. This left the tatami scarred, but this sort of behavior was more of a threat to make me accede to their desires and give them satisfaction† (Tanaka, 56). The Korean comfort women provided an environment where the men could reinforce militarized masculine at the expense of the women’s dehumanization as well as their mental and physical health. The Korean comfort women not only suffered enforced sex, but sex routinely accompanied by routine violence and torture. Although the comfort women station system was blatant throughout World War II, it was rationalized by socially constructed, yet biologically justified, notions of male sexuality. Vance would call this justification as â€Å"biological determinism,† which is the belief that biology determines fundamentally all behavior and actions. The belief that the comfort women were needed because of the male Japanese soldiers’ biologically determined, uncontrollable sexual needs can be perceived in the secret report by a psychiatrist of the Konodai army hospital in 1939: â€Å"The army authorities established comfort stations†¦because they assumed that it was impossible to suppress the sexual urge of soldiers. The main purposes of setting up comfort facilities were to relieve soldiers of daily stresses by giving them a sense of sexual satisfaction and to prevent rapes which would damage the reputation of the Imperial army from happening† (Yoshimi, 1992, 228). This understanding of male sexuality inadvertently reduces the rationale for the comfort station system to a biological one. It justifies the creation of the comfort women system as unavoidable and inevitable as though there was no other solution. The biological determinism argument is a legitimizing tool for it positions this constructed masculinity as outside of human control. The trope of ‘uncontrollable military male sexuality’ rooted in the ‘nature’ rationale only suspends moral and legal restrains on the comfort women system while perpetuating and justifying the women’s objectified, subordinate position. Socioeconomic Status The majority of the Korean women that were targeted in the comfort station system were from a low socioeconomic class. Hughes reiterates this point by pointing out that recruiters of areas in the sex industry â€Å"take advantage of poverty, unemployment and a desire to emigrate to recruit and traffic women into the sex industry† (11). Hughes also includes a report from the Women’s NGO which states, â€Å"†¦economic hard times has lead to a depression of women’s psychological state with a loss of self esteem and hope for the future. Women accept unlikely offers of employment in unskilled jobs at high salaries with the resignation that ‘it cannot be worse’ than their present lives. Recruiters for the sex industry target the most economically depresses areas† (12). The Korean women of low economic status and class were vulnerable to the deceitful recruitment methods of the Japanese. For example, the Korean population in the Japanese colonized territories was very poor during World War II because Japan had taken any available means of production of food and clothes for the war effort (Argibay, 378). This left most of the young Korean women and girls living in poverty and starting menial labor at a very early age in order to support their families. ‘Recruiters’ would encourage compliance by convincing the women that they would obtain high paid jobs as seamstresses and nurses or working in a hospital or a factory (Stetz, 10). One comfort women named Suntok Kim recalls that when she was being ‘recruited,’ the prospects of being a ‘comfort woman’ for the Japanese seemed promising because she came from a poor family and had no education. Working in a factory was far better than her current working and living conditions (Stetz, 10). Furthermore, the U.S. Office of War Interrogation Report No. 49 reports that when being recruited â€Å"Korean women assumed that comfort service consisted of visiting wounded soldiers and generally making the soldiers happy, and that many Korean women enlisted on the basis of these misrepresentations† (Arigbay , 378) Another means of recruitment that targeted Koreans of low socioeconomic class was through the method of debt bondage, indenturing the Korean comfort women to the Japanese military. Economically destitute rural families were deceived into thinking that they had a choice of whether or not to sell their daughters to the Japanese military; however, in reality, they were being coerced with violence and had no agency in this matter. Many reports have indicated that families who refused to sell their daughters were killed and girls taken to the Japanese military bases after. The Japanese would also threaten to destroy â€Å"the whole village, kill the elders and children and commit other violent measures† (Arigbay, 278). Many Korean comfort women did not have the agency, autonomy, or the economic option to oppose Japanese forces. Offering a payment was simply a customary ruse by the Japanese military to justify their methods in taking these powerless Korean women. Continuum of Injustice & Invisibility in the Aftermath Stigmatization: Cultural & Social Institutions In the aftermath of World War II, the experiences of the comfort women were silenced for approximately 50 years. This silence was finally broken in the early 1990s when the issue was brought to light as former comfort women began to release their testimonies to the public. When this issue began to gain public attention, the Japanese government immediately declared that the comfort women system did not exist in the Japanese military and thus â€Å"there could be no question of any apology, memorial, or disclosures by the Japanese government† (Uncomfortable Truths). To this day, comfort women are still waiting for an apology for the violation of their human rights and for the objectification of their bodies and identities from the Japanese government. Many grassroots organizations and feminist groups have been created since the early 1990s to draw attention to issue of the comfort women. These include the Korean Research Institute for Chongsindae and the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Sexual Slavery by Japan. Since the early 1990s over one hundred women in South Korea have registered with the Korean government as former comfort women (Kim, 74). However, despite these efforts, the stark question of ‘why’ the surviving Korean comfort women were silenced for so long still remains. The surviving women have not only suffered from mental and physical injuries, but also had to suffer from additional social injuries. Many of the surviving Korean comfort women have had to live a stigmatized and isolated life as they tried to assimilate back into the communities. They were â€Å"condemned to live out their lives as social, pariahs, shunned by their families, tortured by injury and illness, some sent mad by their ordeal†¦some committed suicide, others became insane† (Askin, 13). This stigmatization can be attributed to the Confucian societies in Korea for the Korean comfort women were products of this culture. The Confucian definition of the traditional feminine identity highlights docility and emphasizes chastity as a woman’s most important virtue (Stetz, 13). As Iris Chang reiterates: â€Å"Asian Confucianism-particularly Korean Confucianism- upheld female purity as a virtue greater than life and perpetuated the belief that any woman who could live through such a degrading experience and not commit suicide was herself an affront to society] This cultural ideology demanded that unmarried women must be virgins and blamed the women for not being able to prevent any forms of sexual violation (53). With high moral value attached to chastity and purity, the comfort women â€Å"invariably emerged from their wartime experiences defiled, yet unable to accuse their abusers† (Askin, 25). The fear of isolation and stigma from their defilement only silenced them, leaving these sexual atrocities in the dark for 50 years. The internalization of this feminine identity caused Korean comfort women to lose self-respect, to live in shame, and ultimately perpetuate their own stigmatization. Furthermore, the social stigma and shame attached to rape and sex were fostered by Korean society and the Korean comfort women’s own families. Patty Kelly explains this stigma as â€Å"a blemish of individual character that [the] women cannot escape†¦the stigmatized person is perceived as possessing weak will, unnatural passions, and treacherous beliefs† (192). The stigma of rape and sex embody has implications on community, family, and responsibility. Kelly asserts that stigma associated with sex work â€Å"circumscribes one’s social relations†¦causes fear and shame†¦creates inauthenticity in daily life† (194). Keith Howard describes the lives that the surviving Korean comfort women had to endure in their communities: â€Å"When they returned to Korea†¦they were neither faithful nor chaste. They were not exemplary women. The families of the comfort women feared the ostracism they would suffer if the shameful past were discovered; the women became an extra burden, and there was little chance to marry them off† (7). This social stigma and discrimination oppressed the surviving Korean comfort women. As Kelly points out, social relations with the family were tainted. Some of the Korean comfort women were seen as a disgrace to their family by their own family and by the rest of society. One Korean comfort woman by the name of Tokchin Kim has revealed that the honor of her family and the relationship with her family hindered her from publicizing her experience, which only allowed the comfort station system to remain invisible. Tokchin Kim had tried to register at the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan as a former comfort woman. However, her nephew expressed â€Å"You will only bring trouble on your family and your children will be traumatized† (Yoshimi, 4 9). Because of the stigmatization, humiliation, and disgrace that inevitably arose from their past as comfort women, the Korean comfort women’s experiences had unjustly remained hidden for an inordinate amount of time. Conclusion The Japanese comfort stations during World War II completely disregarded comfort women’s rights and silenced their past as a product of the rationale for the system. Leatherman explicates that the silences and justifications â€Å"undergird[ed] the economic, social, cultural, and political power structures of patriarchy. Patriarchy is a hierarchal social order centered on dominant or hegemonic forms of masculinity† (4). The justifications and invisibility stem from the intersection of socially constructed gender, cultural, racial, and socioeconomic institutions. Comfort women have had to unjustly bear the â€Å"shame, ostracism, and dishonor that should be imputed to the perpetrator of sexual violence† (Askin, 31). There has been a continuum of this disregard into the present day as the Japanese government has failed to give an official apology for their wartime atrocities after 50 years of ignoring the existence of comfort women. This untiring neglect reproduces injustice and invisibility of the comfort women to this day. As of right now, there are only 63 registered Korean comfort women in South Korea waiting out their last years to be fully recognized as comfort women by the Japanese government. In order for there to be any strides in this movement, it is imperative that the social and gender hierarchies encumbering Japanese and Korean societies be deconstructed and reevaluated. Additionally, the vast gap between the value of the female and male’s experience and rights in the patriarchal nature of Japan’s society needs to be closed. Bibliography Ahmed, Sara. â€Å"Construction of Women And/in the Orient.† Women, Power, and Resistance: An Introduction to Women’s Studies. 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