Issues raised by the victims of the Japanese military in China - Many people recall the image of an innocent girl who was forcibly taken away by the Japanese military and brutally assaulted. China, at that time a battlefield, was one of the places where such damaging incidents frequently occurred. The Japanese military continuously used brutal violence against Chinese women during the war. They openly took away women to commit sexual abuse across the battlegrounds, occupied areas, as well as urban and rural areas.

Issues raised by the victims of the Japanese military in China - Many people recall the image of an innocent girl who was forcibly taken away by the Japanese military and brutally assaulted. China, at that time a battlefield, was one of the places where such damaging incidents frequently occurred. The Japanese military continuously used brutal violence against Chinese women during the war. They openly took away women to commit sexual abuse across the battlegrounds, occupied areas, as well as urban and rural areas.

The “Comfort Women” system was not only a violation of women’s rights, but also a grave infringement of children’s rights. In this article, Professor Ñusta Carranza Ko examines how imperial Japanese authorities systematically violated the rights of underage girls, in direct contravention of international conventions of the time, reframing the issue as a case of child rights violations.

Testimony and publishing activities concerning wartime sexual violence and “Comfort Women” carried out by the Association of Returnees from China (Chukiren), which atoned for their perpetrators’ actions in postwar Japanese society.

she said, with tears streaming down her cheeks, when a Japanese journalist suggested they go back and visit her old home together. Away for so long from her hometown in South Chungcheong Province – a place which she could now only dream about.

While warfare continues inflicting damage and suffering in today’s world, and rape of women is still used as an instrument of armed conflicts, it is critical to bring the narratives of the “Comfort Women” into public memory.

A report on the “Comfort Women” survivors rescued by the Allied Forces, as featured in the Chinese magazine “Da Zhan Hua Ji,” published just beforethe end of World War Ⅱ.

Japan’s state-level responsibility for the “comfort women” issue in the context of the country’s history of licensed prostitution system

Written by Choi Jae-in (The translator of 『Fifty Years of Silence』 by Jan Ruff O'Herne)

Historian Harrison C. Kim traces how discourse on “Comfort Women” in North Korea has evolved—at times in dialogue with the outside world—while developing distinct advocacy practices and perspectives.