JAPANESE “COMFORT WOMEN” IN THE POST-SURRENDER PERIOD

Abstract

This study aims to explore the work of the so-called “comfort women” after the Japanese surrender in 1945. The “comfort women” issue has always been controversial for years after Kim Hak Sun, a former Korean “comfort woman,” decided to bring the matter to light and attracted worldwide attention. However, there has been little research on Japanese “comfort women” after 1945. This study, first, seeks to answer whether post-surrender “comfort women” were enslaved or not. And secondly, whether was the “comfort women” system a form of slavery. The goal, first, is to assist with a value judgment as to the condition of “comfort women” based on law and facts, to make people aware of what had happened in the past to post-surrender “comfort women” during the most challenging time in Japanese history. So far, little study related to post Japanese surrender “comfort women” has been done because they were predominantly recruited from among civilian women in the Japanese homeland. People may think that there have been fewer chances of fraud in Japanese home islands after surrender than in the occupied territories before surrender. The second goal is to contribute to the debate concerning the nature of “comfort women” that has not been solved for years, as to who organized this system; its purposes while comparing and contrasting pre-surrender and post-surrender practices. Finally, this study applies the four tests of involuntary servitude which Nathan B. Oman have identified among the pre-thirteenth amendment U.S. common law to findings from reliable secondary sources on the post-surrender “comfort women” to ascertain (1) whether or not they were enslaved, (2) what light the findings in the post-surrender period would cast on the broader debate concerning the “comfort women.”