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Japan military set up 147 'comfort stations' in Okinawa during WWII; women's fates unknown
NAHA -- As wartime Japan fully deployed its troops in Okinawa Prefecture in March 1944, about a year before the ground battle against U.S. forces began, the Japanese military built airbases throughout the prefecture, including on remote islands. At the same time, it set up "comfort stations" for soldiers in the surrounding areas.
At least 147 such stations are known to have existed in the southern island prefecture, where women -- mostly from Korea and Okinawa -- were used for sex by soldiers.
After World War II, however, hardly any of these comfort women opened up about their experiences, and little is known of their fates in the fierce ground battle or how survivors coped after the war.
In October 1991, a woman was found to have died of illness at an apartment building in Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture. She was identified as Pae Pong-gi, then 77, who was originally from the Korean Peninsula and formerly a comfort woman for Japanese troops.
The late nonfiction author Fumiko Kawata chronicled half of Pae's life in her 1987 book "Akagawara no ie" (The House with a Red Tile Roof) based on her interviews with Pae and others.
According to the book, Pae was taken from Korea to Okinawa in 1944 by way of the city of Moji (present-day Kitakyushu) and Kagoshima, and was sent to a comfort station on Tokashiki Island, west of Okinawa's main island. There were six other women from the Korean Peninsula at the station, and they were forced to engage in sexual acts with Japanese soldiers there.
When the U.S. military landed on Tokashiki Island on March 27, 1945, Pae fled into the mountains and hid herself alongside members of a Japanese military unit.
She eventually surrendered to U.S. forces in late August that year, and was sent to a detention facility on Okinawa Island. One of the other comfort women she had been with apparently died in the U.S. attacks, while another was staying in the same facility. Pae didn't know what happened to the other women.
After the war, Pae moved from one place to another on Okinawa Island when the prefecture was under U.S. control, and worked in restaurant districts at night.
In 1975, three years after Okinawa was returned to Japan, local newspapers and other media broke the news about Pae, and the Justice Ministry granted her a special residency permit. While she had no foreign resident registration and was subject to deportation, it took into consideration how and why she had come to Japan. Yet Pae remained publicly silent about her past experiences even after that.
In September 1992, 17 years after Pae's residency permission was reported, a women's group in Okinawa released a "comfort station map" showing the sites of 121 such wartime facilities in the prefecture that had been located by that time through surveys.
In August of the previous year, Kim Hak-sun, a South Korean woman, revealed under her real name that she had been a comfort woman for Japanese troops at battlefields in China, which made huge headlines.
Shigeko Urasaki, 78, who was involved in the group's surveys in Okinawa, reflected, "It made us realize that we had neglected to confirm the wartime sexual violence that had occurred in Okinawa."
Urasaki, a resident of Nishihara, Okinawa Prefecture, closely examined Japanese military documents and testimonies published in municipal historical records in Okinawa and searched for residents who had memories of those comfort stations. But by that time Pae had already passed away.
Urasaki said regretfully. "Some of my fellow members remembered the news reports back in 1975, but Okinawa had just been returned to Japan at the time and we were preoccupied with broader issues. I felt deeply ashamed that we lacked an attitude to listen to Pae."
So why did the Japanese military establish nearly 150 comfort stations across Okinawa?
The Okinawa prefectural historical records cite several reasons: to prevent sexual violence against female members of the public; to prevent sexually transmitted diseases that could lead to the decline of war potential; and to relieve the stress of soldiers.
According to military records, a garrison commander of the Japanese military on Ie Island in Okinawa instructed that soldiers "refrain from sexual intercourse other than with the military's special comfort women" because "rapes will alienate people's minds away from us."
Most of the comfort stations were set up by confiscating private houses, and were therefore close to local residents' everyday lives.
Okinawa University associate professor Hong Yunshin, who has researched comfort stations in Okinawa, speculates that the presence of those stations contributed to the mass suicides of residents across the prefecture following the U.S. military's landing on Okinawa.
As the Japanese military had instilled the idea among residents that if they were captured by the U.S. military, they would be "humiliated and killed," Hong noted, "The fears that they might be forced to become comfort women for U.S. troops and get raped is thought to have led to mass suicides and other tragedies."
Municipal historical records in Okinawa Prefecture cite residents' memories such as the sight of Japanese soldiers queueing up in front of comfort stations and children playing with contraceptives they picked up and turning them into balloons.
However, the exact fate of the comfort women in Okinawa after the U.S. landing remains unknown, with only fragmentary records available.
Those who experienced the war firsthand and others have passed away one after the other in recent years, including Pae, Kawata and a Korean woman in Okinawa who had for many years supported Pae.
(Japanese original by Shinnosuke Kyan, Kyushu Photo and Video Department)
