Amazon.com Review
One of the ravages of war has always been rape, but in the 1930s and '40s the Imperial Japanese Forces made it systematic, forcing thousands of women into sexual slavery for their soldiers at highly organized "comfort stations." Drawn mostly from Korea (which was then ruled by Japan), the "comfort women" who tell their horrific stories in this book were shipped to the front lines and all over the war zones, often arriving in the same shipments with munitions and food. Like those staples, their sexual services were intended to keep an army working and alive; a common superstition among the troops was the belief that sex before battle could magically ward off injury. This searing, painful chapter in history was uncovered in part by a Japanese journalist, who came across photos of the women in classified documents.
--Francesca Coltrera
From Publishers Weekly
Most categories of atrocity committed by Japanese troops during WWII were prosecuted at the 1946 Tokyo war-crimes trials. One major category was ignored, however: the thousands of women, mostly Korean, who were coerced into sexual slavery for the pleasure of the Imperial Army. Hicks (Hong Kong Countdown) begins his stark report with a historical survey of wartime sexual exploitation of women, then narrows the focus to the "comfort women" system developed by the Japanese. The copious testimony of victims is shockingly graphic. The author reviews the progress of a class-action suit brought by surviving comfort women in Tokyo District Court in 1991: the Japanese government has admitted complicity, but no apology or compensation has been tendered. This significant addition to "the poor record of mankind to womankind, especially in war," properly approaches the subject as a human-rights issue tied to the rise of feminism in Asia. Photos.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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