Japan's Crimes Against Women

[Peter H]

Chris

Its obvious that some are trying to entangle the US into this mess.i.e a similar Japanese system was running postwar,most likely with some of the same girls,endorsed by US occupation authorities,Comfort women saga Part II etc.

The reader can reach his own conclusions on how legitimate these claims are,if even relevant.My personal view is that some lefty feminists regard all men as devious,exploiters of women,and will spin things when they can.I see no link between the system of postwar working girls in Japan with that of the comfort women amateurs.

[ChristopherPerrien]

Chris

Its obvious that some are trying to entangle the US into this mess.i.e a similar Japanese system was running postwar,most likely with some of the same girls,endorsed by US occupation authorities,Comfort women saga Part II etc.

The reader can reach his own conclusions on how legitimate these claims are,if even relevant.My personal view is that some lefty feminists regard all men as devious,exploiters of women,and will spin things when they can.I see no link between the system of postwar working girls in Japan with that of the comfort women amateurs.

Thanks Peter for your timely and time-specific reply. I fully agree with your explanation..

Regards,
Chris

[Razorback]

I have made a study of the "comfort women" issue for my upcoming novel, HOLD BACK THE SUN. Anyone who thinks these women volunteered is deluding themselves or succumbing to Japanese propaganda. Jan Ruff-Oherne poignantly relates the story of some of the Dutch teen-agers (the Japanese prefered their women young) who were raped daily for months in her memoir, FIFTY YEARS OF SILENCE. George Hick's THE COMFORT WOMEN and Keith Howard's TRUE STORIES OF THE KOREAN COMFORT WOMEN are other good references.

[michael mills]

We here in Australia are quite familiar with Ruff-O'Hearne's story.

We note how her account grew steadily more lurid and sensational over the years with each successive retelling of it.

One of the more credible elements in her account is her description of how she and her fellow sex-workers were scorned and rejected by the majority of the female civilian internees in the netherlands East Indies who had not agreed to provide sexual services to their Japanese captors. She describes how those women regarded her and her fellow sex-workers as turncoats who had bought better conditions and more food for themselves by selling their bodies.

That possibly inadvertent throw-away line reveals the truth about the female internees who became sex-workers. The Japanese captors offered better conditions, more food and comfortable living quarters to European or Eurasian internees who agreed to become "entertainers" in the officers' clubs. The majority of the internees declined the offer, and endured the harsh conditions in the civilian internment camps.

The same sort of offer was reported by British and Australian women who became prisoners of the Japanese. They also reported that the female internees who agreed to become sex-workers enjoyed much better conditions than those who did not, and became the object of intense resentment on the part of the rest of the internees.

What the accounts of female internees show is that they did have a choice; they could choose to buy better conditions of life for themselves by accepting the offer to perform sex-work, or they could decline the offer and endure the conditions in the internment camps that grew steadily worse.

I recall one of the lurid tales told by Ruff-O'Hearne more recently in an interview. She recounted how a Japanese doctor came regularly to examine the sex-workers for venereal disease. She claimed that when she made a complaint to him about something, he raped her, and then proceeded to rape all the women he was examining; thereafter, whenever he made his visit he raped her and all the other women. That sort of sexual athleticism is redolent of pornographic fiction, and is scarcely credible.

The problem with all the stories about the "comfort woman" is that, like everything to do with sexual activity, their experience lends itself to the most imaginative pornographic fiction.

[michael mills]

Here is an interesting account by another young Dutch woman who was held in an internment camp in the Japanese-occupied Netherlands East Indies:

http://www.pows-of-japan.net/booksetc/K ... Willie.pdf

She recounts how she was kept in the same internment camp as Jan Ruff. Unlike Ruff, she was not given the option of becoming a sex-worker, but had to endure the harsh conditions of the camp.

This woman recounts how, after the Japanese surrender and the flight of the camp guards, the camp was invaded by Indonesians who began to kill the European internees.

It seems that the European internees were in a lot more danger from the local natives than from their Japanese captors.

[waldzee]

[quote="michael mills"]We here in Australia are quite familiar with Ruff-O'Hearne's story.

We note how her account grew steadily more lurid and sensational over the years with each successive retelling of it.

One of the more credible elements in her account is her description of how she and her fellow sex-workers were scorned and rejected by the majority of the female civilian internees in the netherlands East Indies who had not agreed to provide sexual services to their Japanese captors. She describes how those women regarded her and her fellow sex-workers as turncoats who had bought better conditions and more food for themselves by selling their bodies.

That possibly inadvertent throw-away line reveals the truth about the female internees who became sex-workers. The Japanese captors offered better conditions, more food and comfortable living quarters to European or Eurasian internees who agreed to become "entertainers" in the officers' clubs. The majority of the internees declined the offer, and endured the harsh conditions in the civilian internment camps.


What the accounts of female internees show is that they did have a choice; they could choose to buy better conditions of life for themselves by accepting the offer to perform sex-work, or they could decline the offer and endure the conditions in the internment camps that grew steadily worse.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
this is the 'classic Giffin good hypothesis', Michael- but it is hardly free market choice. the choice between

"be a comfort girl & risk VD, but get the short term goodies, or face ber-beri, typhus,& starvation in the camps & gambel on rescue in time"
excludes the possiblity of being , say, nurse, or file clerk...+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I recall one of the lurid tales told by Ruff-O'Hearne more recently in an interview. She recounted how a Japanese doctor came regularly to examine the sex-workers for venereal disease. She claimed that when she made a complaint to him about something, he raped her, and then proceeded to rape all the women he was examining; thereafter, whenever he made his visit he raped her and all the other women. That sort of sexual athleticism is redolent of pornographic fiction, and is scarcely credible.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
She apparently waited 50 years to tell her story..? .
ITALICS- WALDSEE

[Godson]

....I suspect that the whole story of the Asian "comfort women" is similar to that of the European internees. They probably volunteered to be "comfort women" in order to escape a life of grinding poverty in Korea or Taiwan, and then, after the war, invented stories of having been forced into it in order to escape the contempt they were held in by their own communities (and perhaps also to screw a bit of money out of the Japanese Government).

For the benefit of yourself and White Phosphorous and any ardent Japanophiles who happen to read this page, I remember seeing a TV interview with a Japanese veteran who recounted how they would drive into a Korean village with a few trucks, grab the women who they saw that they liked the look of, whether they had their children with them or not, and drag them screaming and kicking onto the trucks, to be taken away for enslavement. I'm sorry, I didn't note down his name or the dates or locations. He was somewhat remorseful in his old age apparently. There's always a few odd ones like that.