"Comfort Women" Still Await Japanese Apology

by Suvendrini Kakuchi

(IPS) TOKYO -- For a decade now, Song Shin Do, 84, the only Korean former comfort woman who lives in Japan, has refused monetary compensation but fought bitterly for an apology from the Japanese government, taking every defeat in the courts with a poignant stoicism that has won her grudging admiration.

But today, Song, a small wizened woman with a sharp tongue, says she is ready to call it quits, exhausted by drawn-out lawsuits that have failed to satisfy her need for repentance or give reassurance that what happened to her will never happen again.

Song said she was duped into becoming a sex slave when she was 16 years old to serve the Japanese Imperial army that colonized the Korean peninsula and most of Asia in the early 20th century.

"I was raped repeatedly by Japanese soldiers daily and was told I was serving the country. No woman should experience such a life again," she told a public gathering late last month.

Activists supporting hundreds of aging sex slaves like Song say their wish for a sincere apology from the Japanese government is part of their struggle to pressure militaries to respect the rights of women and protect them from violence during wars and conflicts.

"Song and other former comfort women are a powerful symbol of how women have been butchered by militarism in the past and which continues today in conflicts across the globe," said Mina Watanabe, curator of the newly-opened Women's Active Museum on War and Peace.

The museum is a heroic effort undertaken by women's groups and international pacifists to leave a record of the cruel comfort women system and other human rights violations committed in post world war conflicts around the world.

Watanabe explained that the museum has a wide collection of testimonies of former sex slaves and is a crucial landmark in highlighting the vulnerability of women in armed conflicts and current sexual trafficking. It provides evidence to support the urgent need for better laws to punish acts of violence against women and develop a system where victims can be cared for by governments.

She pointed out that the young Asian women lured to comfort stations were poor and uneducated and were thus the most vulnerable among women and who still need protection.

For example, Song continued to suffer after her release at the end of World War II after the Japanese defeat.

At the age of 23, Song, who had abandoned two babies in China where she was stationed, arrived in Japan with a Japanese soldier knowing she could not return to her conservative home where she would be harshly treated for being a sex slave.

But she was abandoned in Japan. Penniless, she tried to commit suicide but was rescued by another Korean man who helped her eke out a living. Today she lives on welfare.

"While Japanese soldiers are paid a handsome pension for serving their country, I have to live on welfare even though I was taken away for the same purpose. The discrimination against women is too unfair," she said.

Yang Chinja, a second-generation Korean in Japan and supporter of Song, says there is a need to find out and publicly acknowledge who is responsible for starting the military sexual slave system, the first step to a sincere apology and to prevent further abuse.

"Only such an apology can be taken as a sincere effort to repent by the state and will signal Japan`s commitment to protect women's rights in other conflicts," she pointed out.

The urgent need to protect women's rights in conflicts will be brought up at the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) conference in New York in September and the issue of an apology from the Japanese government for devising the comfort women system highlighted as an important step in this direction, Watanabe said.

Japan formally acknowledged setting up of comfort stations only in 1993 and offered compensation and support allowances to the old and sick women a few years later.

But new history text books have dropped reference to the comfort women system and conservative researchers have reported that Korean and other Asian sex slaves were in fact prostitutes or knowingly went to work with local male traffickers.

And this has angered not only Koreans but other Asian countries colonized by imperial Japan -- particularly China which has used past atrocities as a stick to beat Japan with and thwart that country's plans to claim a seat in the United Nations Security Council.

For their part, rights activists are not prepared to let the issue slide and are planning new campaigns. Several demonstrations will be staged on Aug. 15 in front of Japanese embassies to keep the world's attention focused on the issue.