List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Map of East Asia and the Pacific …
One The Comfort Women Issue “Explodes”…
Two Japan’s Licensed Prostitution System …
Three In Manchuria and on the Battlefields of China…
Four Along the Pacific Front …
Five “Battle Zone Sex” Around the World …
Six Personal Stories of the Comfort Women …
Seven The Confabulations of Yoshida Seiji …
Eight From the Kono Statement to the Coomaraswamy Report …
Nine Spread of Misconceptions about Comfort Women to the
International Community …
Ten Merits and Demerits of the Asian Women’s Fund …
Eleven Five Points of Contention: Q&A …
Twelve Comfort Women in the Battle Over History …
Thirteen Three-point Suite: The Facts About South Korea’s Comfort
Women, 1945-2015 …
Afterword
by Hata Ikuhiko
Appendixes
1. Statement by Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono Yohei, August 4, 1993
…
2. United States Department of War, Report APO 689 …
3. Requesting Correction of Factual Errors in McGraw-Hill Textbook
…
Bibliography
Books and Journals
Unpublished Governmental Sources
About the Author
About the Translator
Index
Hata Ikuhiko, professor emeritus of Nihon University, is a leading Japanese historian who has extensively researched Japan’s modern history, including the second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. He has authored numerous books, including Hirohito: The Showa Emperor in War and Peace and Nanking jiken (Nanking atrocity). Hata’s awards include the Kikuchi Kan Prize (1993), the Mainichi Publishing Cultural Award (2014) and the Seiron Award (2015).
This is a must-read for anyone curious to know how the
transnational feminist topic of “comfort women,” sex workers for
the WWII Japanese military, transformed into a focus of
anti-Japanese nationalism in Korea today. Hata reveals the
unearthing of Korean former “comfort women” by Japanese and South
Korean activists in the 1990s and their creation of the master
narrative that Japanese authorities forcibly abducted young Korean
women and used them as sex slaves in battle zones. Countering this
globally-disseminated half-truth, Hata places the “comfort women”
in the universal problem of sex in the military and clarifies the
link between “comfort stations” and prewar Japanese licensed
prostitution. Hata’s exhaustive research points to the
uncomfortable truth that profiteering Korean and Japanese handlers
lured destitute young women with false job offers and victimized
them as “comfort women.”
*Chizuko T. Allen, University of Hawai’i at Manoa*
For decades, Ikuhiko Hata has enjoyed a well-earned reputation as
the leading authority in the world on the history of Japan’s role
in World War II. Now, Jason Morgan’s excellent translation of
Hata’s 1999 book Comfort Women and Sex in the Battle Zone, which
the author has revised and updated to cover recent debates on the
issue, makes this extraordinary historian’s work available to the
broader international community. This work by a careful, thoughtful
historian who follows primary documents meticulously to build his
conclusions should be the definitive study on the highly
controversial Comfort Women issue that, up to now, sadly has
generated more heat than light. An essential work for historians,
policy analysts, political scientists, politicians and anyone who
wants to truly understand a sad chapter in modern history
*Kevin M Doak, Georgetown University*
Questions over the wartime “comfort women” issue have marred
Japan-South Korea relations for many years. How many women were
involved? Were they mainly Koreans? Were they forcibly abducted?
Are their testimonials reliable? Who ran the “comfort stations”?
Was life there harsh? What other armies had “comfort women”? Should
Japan go on apologizing for its transgression? In this book, Hata
Ikuhiko, the leading military historian of Japan, tackles these
difficult questions by thoroughly examining official and private
sources in Japan, Korea, and other places under Japanese control
during WWII. His findings shed new light on this controversial
issue, ultimately showing that war produces the ugliest crimes, in
this case against helpless young women.
*Ben-Ami Shillony, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem*
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