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.

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.

Until 2022, when the book The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory was published, it was widely thought in Singapore that there were no Singaporean "Comfort Women" who were sexually enslaved by the Japanese military.

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.

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

The irony is that Germany, which is often hailed as a “model” country for past liquidation by providing compensation to victims of wartime forced labor through government-industry collaboration, did not even include women forced into sexual slavery in the category of victims entitled to such compensation and still does not recognize their legal victim status.

The role and function of “comfort stations” as revealed in numerous memoirs written by Japanese soldiers

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.