Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military : Includes New United Nations Human Rights Report (Science and Human Rights Series, 1) [Hardcover]

Sangmie Choi Schellstede (Editor), Soon Mi Yu (Photographer)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0841914133 | ISBN-13: 978-0841914131 | Publication Date: September 2000 | Edition: 1st

During World War II, an estimated 200,000 girls and young women were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese imperial military - which was authorised by the highest levels of Japan's wartime government. The system resulted in the largest and most methodical mass rape of women in recorded history. Japan's Kem pei tai political police tricked or abducted females as young as eleven years old and imprisoned them in military rape camps known as comfort stations situated throughout Asia. These comfort women were forced to service as many as 50 Japanese soldiers a day. They were beaten, starved, made to endure abortions or injections with sterilizing drugs. Only a few women survived and those that did suffered permanent physical and emotional damage. Little was known about the true scope of this crime against humanity until 1991, when after almost fifty years of silence, seventy-four year old Kim Hak-Soon told the world about her experiences as a comfort woman. Her testimony gave others the strength to come forward. The Washington Coalition for Comfort Women (WCCW) carefully transcribed and translated the stories of nineteen survivors and these are now presented in this book. This not simply a history book. Comfort Women Speak documents the lives of nineteen courageous women who continue to fight to bring to account one of the most powerful governments in the world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From about 1933 until the end of WWII, the Japanese military conscripted an estimated 200,000 women to work in "Comfort Stations" or brothels where Japanese soldiers could receive sex on demand. Frequently lured from their homes with promises of high-paying factory work, these women, most of whom came from countries like Korea and the Philippines (which were under Japanese rule at the time), were imprisoned in the comfort stations for as long as eight years, received no money for their services and suffered torture or even death if they refused to comply with the soldiers' demands. Because those who survived were too traumatized and ashamed to speak of their experience, the history of the comfort women remained largely unknown until 1991, when one survivor spoke out and brought the attention of human rights activists to the women's plight. Here the Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues has compiled an oral history comprised of interviews with 19 surviving comfort women, who describe their ordeals in harrowing detail. They were routinely underfed and forced to service up to 50 soldiers a day. While their responses to their experience range from anger to resignation, all feel that their lives were permanently blighted as a result. As the first volume in a series on science and human rights issues, these testimonies make a powerful case for the apologies and reparations that the Japanese government has yet to grant. Readers dedicated to human rights, and women's rights in particular, as well as Korean-Americans will form a solid if modest market for this moving document, whose text is complemented by articulate photographs by Soon Mi Yu.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Failure to address crimes of a sexual nature committed during the war has added to the level of impunity with which similar crimes are committed today - UN Special Rapporteur GJ McDougall

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 168 pages
• Publisher: Holmes & Meier Pub; 1st edition (September 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0841914133
• ISBN-13: 978-0841914131
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 8.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,620,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars remembering the past is the only way to redemption, February 8, 2004

By 

G. Livingston (san francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military : Includes New United Nations Human Rights Report (Science and Human Rights Series, 1) (Hardcover)

This is a painful book to read. Everytime I heard the victims' voice I trembled. But the review from Hiromo is THE MOST shockingly inhumane voice/action since the end of the war - which according to her didn't kill millions, nor did it raped tens of thousands, angered a whole Asia and its people for the past half century. The more denial of the unthinkable crime, the longer it takes to forgive. I am the third generation of Japanese war victim and I am shooting a film about comfort woman, or the denial of it, right this moment. I don't want my grandchild to fight for the same justice 50 years later, and you may not want your grandchild to defend it as you did on all major Amazon Japanese war crime books, which by the way, thanks to you, now I know what books to get for my film research.

Shame for those of you who found all the denial reviews "useful", while considered all the praise ones "Not helpful". The other day at my library in San Francisco one of you people stole all my comfort women topic books but left the rest untouched. COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK is one of them. So for serious reader, definitely read this book and see what the "patriotic Japanese" are defending for/or scared of.

Another book to help you understand the issue in depth is YUKI TANAKA's Japan's Comfort Women. It tackles the US occupation and their own use of the "comfort station" system. Again, just like to deny that Atomic Bombing in Hiroshima ever happened, Japanese women never raped by Allies soldiers or the ordinary Japanese don't deserve peace, dignity and fairness would be unthinkable, to deny the value of voices from the last victims of the War is to deprieve the right to redemption of young Japanese generations to come.

This

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A shameful episode, January 15, 2004

By 

Philip Huang "omeros" (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military : Includes New United Nations Human Rights Report (Science and Human Rights Series, 1) (Hardcover)

Stark and moving. The sheer numbers of women dragged into sex slavery, the extreme youth of many, and the brutality of their experience... That a handful of courageous women were allowed to tell their story is the first step to justice for the comfort women. It demands our attention.

I'm curious, what in Japanese society prompted them to establish such an "institution"? Even today, Japanese sex culture is problematic, to say the least, with its manga and Lolita fetish.

The sad thing is the American government has opposed the suit against Japan brought by some comfort women in the California courts, based on what it claims is the settlement of all claims in the 1951 treaty. I'll bet no Koreans and Filipinos were represented there.

The reviewer below should be ashamed at his atrocity denial. Elsewhere on Amazon he denies the Nanking incident. Civilized people would not tolerate such unreconstructed behavior from a German, and the same standard should apply to Japanese.

Contrary to Hiromi's assertions, the Japanese government apologized not to save Korean face, but its own. Imagine the national shame if this controversy kept appearing in the headlines, and Japan had to pay reparations. Ishihara is hardly a bleeding-heart liberal, if he was party to such concessions the truth must have been damning.

"They had picnic, sports-day, fun evening and diner [sic] party with Japanese soldiers"? This lame attempt at justification makes me ill. He doesn't refute the kidnapping, the 11-year-old sex slaves, nor the frequency of debasement these women faced.

"...there are unbelievable amount of propaganda spreaded by so-called anti-Japanese Japanese out there." So if a person questions the actions of his government, past or present, we should not believe him? I can see Hiromi would have made a good life during the fascist era. False patriotism - the last refuge of a scoundrel.

4.0 out of 5 stars A very important book, October 27, 2011

By 

spark5 - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military : Includes New United Nations Human Rights Report (Science and Human Rights Series, 1) (Hardcover)

Comfort Women is one of the most heinous crimes committed by Imperial Japan, and yet it does not receive the international scrutiny and condemnation that it rightly deserves. This book goes a long way toward exposing the horrific nature of Imperial Japan's crimes through chilling personal accounts.

My only reservation with this book is that I also have read the Korean version of the testimonies by many of these women, and the English versions appear to be heavily abridged. I am not sure why that was done.