Japan's Comfort Women (18 page)

Comfort women in the Dutch East Indies
Sunday she was sent out to a soldiers’ comfort station and was forced to serve a large number of Japanese on that day.43

On April 1, 1944, all the women and girls forcibly taken out of the camps and put into comfort stations in Semarang were suddenly transferred to the Bogor Women’s Camp. Shortly before this, Colonel Odajima Kaoru, a senior officer in the POW Management Bureau in the Ministry of Army, had visited Java from Tokyo to inspect the internment camps in the Dutch East Indies. During his inspection tour of Java, he had been informed about these Dutch women and girls by one of the camp leaders of the Ambarawa No. 9 Camp. Odajima promptly sent letters to the Headquarters of the 16th Army in Batavia, the Headquarters of the Southern Army in Singapore, as well as to the Ministry of the Army, urging that they close down the comfort stations in Semarang. Having received a letter from Odajima, the Headquarters of the 16th Army immediately issued an order to close down all four newly established comfort stations in Semarang.44

As soon as these women and girls arrived at the Bogor Camp, they were ordered never to tell anyone of what had happened to them. They were threatened that if they did, they and their families would be killed. Shortly after their arrival at Bogor, their mothers and siblings were also transferred to the same camp to be reunited.45

This case of enforced prostitution of Dutch women in Semarang was investigated by the Dutch military forces after the war. As a result, in February 1948, 12 Japanese were tried at the War Crimes Tribunal conducted by the Dutch Forces in Batavia. Colonel
i
kubo committed suicide in 1947, before the court hearing actually started. Colonel Ikeda was indicted on crimes carrying the death penalty. However, during the court hearing he feigned psychosis, and his trial was delayed. Eventually he was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment instead of execution.

Major Okada was sentenced to death, and another officer received a sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment. Two medical officers were sentenced to 16 and 7

years in prison respectively. Captain Ishida received a sentence of two years’

imprisonment. Four comfort station managers were sentenced to between 5 and 20 years’ imprisonment. One Japanese Army NCO and one civilian officer of the military government were found not guilty.46

For some unknown reason, the trial of Lieutenant-General Nozaki Seiji, head of the cadet school, who was most responsible for the entire matter, was conducted separately in February 1949, a year after the trial of his juniors. The prosecutors requested the death sentence, but the verdict was 12 years’ imprisonment. It is interesting to find the following statement by Nozaki in the interrogation report prepared by the Dutch military prosecutors. He said: I must admit that such an undesirable situation arose as the result of neglecting my own duty to properly supervise junior officers. When I received an order to close down the comfort stations I was truly ashamed of myself. I went to see the commander of the Southern Army and sincerely apologized for bringing disgrace on the army cadet school.47

Comfort women in the Dutch East Indies
77

For Nozaki, the most serious crime was to disgrace the army’s reputation. The violation of human rights of the Dutch internees did not concern him at all.

The Dutch military authorities’ indifference towards

Indonesian comfort women

During the investigation of the above-mentioned war crime committed by the Japanese in Semarang, the Dutch military authorities interrogated a number of Eurasian women who were also forced into prostitution by the Japanese.

According to these interrogations, on April 14, 1944, two weeks after the closure of the comfort stations in Semarang, about 100 local young women, including 20 or 30 Eurasians and a few Chinese women, were ordered to report to the Semarang Police Headquarters on April 16. According to one of the testimonies, some of these women were randomly picked up by the police while working at restaurants or walking in the street.48

At the police station, a Japanese officer told the women through an interpreter that, because many Japanese soldiers were now suffering from diseases, VD

inspections would be conducted on the women. The women were told that, if they were found to be carriers of VD, medical treatment would be provided. If they were not carriers, the women would be allowed to return home.

They were then taken by car to the Hotel Splendid (the site of one of the comfort stations, the Semalang Club). There they were ordered to go into an inspection room one by one where, in front of a Japanese medical doctor and a few Japanese soldiers, each woman was told to take off her underwear and lie on the bed, with her legs apart. If she refused, the soldiers forced the woman to comply. When the doctor roughly inserted a metal instrument into the vagina, many women screamed and cried, scaring the other women waiting for their turn outside the inspection room. It seems that the purpose of this inspection was not a VD check but to find out whether these women were virgins.49

In the end, 20 women were told to remain, and the rest were allowed to leave.

Eight of these selected women were Eurasians, one was Chinese, and the rest were Indonesians. That night they were forced to stay in four different rooms in the Hotel Splendid, and each was given 50 guilders. Some women realized what the Japanese were going to do with them and refused to accept the money.

However, they were beaten and forced to take the money. Some tried to escape that night, but the building was guarded by Japanese soldiers.

It is interesting to note that the Japanese never produced any contracts for these women to sign, while they insisted that the Dutch internees enter a formal contract. It is obvious that the Japanese were not bothered about any legal problems as far as the “recruitment” of Asian women was concerned, whereas they clearly knew that enforced prostitution would be a violation of the Geneva Convention when they demanded signatures from the Dutch women.50

The following day these women were taken by three Japanese soldiers to Surabaya by train. They were detained in a house in Surabaya where the Japanese soldiers kept a continuous watch on them. A Japanese man, who was 78

Comfort women in the Dutch East Indies
believed to be a brothel manager, lived in the house. They were waiting to be transferred to Flores Island. The boat sailed from Surabaya, but had to return twice, before successfully reaching Flores. The first time the boat was attacked by Allied airplanes and the second time it was followed by an Allied submarine. All in all they stayed in Surabaya for more than a month. During this time, two women managed to escape, and one became ill. Eventually, 17 women were taken to Flores.51

They were put into a comfort station in Flores, and forced to serve the Japanese from morning till midnight every day until the war ended in August 1945.

In the morning, rank-and-file soldiers visited them; in the evening NCOs turned up; and at night officers came. On average, each woman was forced to serve 20

soldiers, two NCOs, and one officer every day. The comfort station manager received 1.5 guilders from each soldier, 2 guilders from an NCO, and the officers’ rate was between 3 and 8 guilders, depending on the time he spent with the woman. On payment, each man was given a ticket which had to be handed to a comfort woman. Each comfort woman was expected to collect at least 100

tickets a week. Those who failed were physically punished by the manager. Each man was given a condom along with the ticket, and was instructed to use it without fail. But many would not use condoms and some beat into submission those women who refused service without a prophylactic. It seems the women rarely received payment, although sufficient food was provided every day. A medical officer visited the station once a week and conducted a VD inspection.52

Undoubtedly their situation was very similar to that experienced by most Korean comfort women, as seen in the previous chapter.

According to the testimony of one of these women, a group of Eurasians at another comfort station was brought from Bandung. One of them, a 16-year-old girl, told her that they were soon to be taken to Timor.53

Despite the fact that sufficient evidence about enforced prostitution was collected through the interrogations of these women, there is no evidence that the Dutch military authorities charged the Japanese for the violation of the human rights of these Indo-Dutch, Indonesian, and Chinese women. It is believed that these interrogations were conducted in order to gather relevant information useful in the criminal cases of the Dutch victims. As much as the Japanese were unconcerned about the exploitation of non-Europeans, the Dutch were equally indifferent to victims who were not white and Dutch.

However, there were at least two exceptional cases brought by the Dutch military authorities to the War Crimes Tribunal, which addressed enforced prostitution involving non-Dutch comfort women. One of them is the case of a comfort station in Balikpapan. A Japanese man called Ishibashi Nakazabur
d
, the manager of the comfort station, was charged with kidnapping several Indonesian women and forcing them to render sexual services to the Japanese. However, three Indonesian “victims” who appeared in court as witnesses, actually testified against the Dutch prosecutors, claiming that, thanks to Ishibashi, they had a good life during the war. Thus, Ishibashi was found “not-guilty.”54 Incidentally, comfort stations in Balikpapan were set up by Nakasone Yasuhiro, later Japan’s
Comfort women in the Dutch East Indies
79

Prime Minister, who was then a young paymaster of the Japanese Navy troops stationed in Balikpapan.55

The other case was the rape and enforced prostitution of five Indonesian women by the Japanese troops in Pontianak. Between October 1943 and June 1944, about 1,500 civilians – Indonesians, Chinese, and Indians – were arrested as suspects in an underground resistance movement, and the vast majority were eventually tortured and killed. During this period, some wives of the suspects were raped by members of the Japanese Naval Special Police Force, and then were forced to work at a navy comfort station for the following eight months.

For this crime, Captain Okajima Toshiharu and 12 other members of the Naval Special Police Forces were found guilty. Okajima and two others received death sentences. The sentence was made in conjunction with verdicts on counts of torture and murder of 1,500 civilians, not just for rape and enforcement of prostitution.56

The Dutch military authorities made very little effort to seriously investigate the sexual crimes that the Japanese men committed against Indonesian women.

However, testimonies by Indonesians themselves strongly support the specula-tion that, from 1943, at about the same time that Dutch women internees were taken out of the camps as comfort women, many young Indonesian women were also procured as comfort women.

According to a Javanese woman, Siti Fatimah, a daughter of Singadikarto, the Subdistrict head of Subang in west Java, she was told that she would be sent to Japan to study in Tokyo. In 1943, when she was 16 years old, she and four other girls from her home subdistrict were put on a ship at Tanjung Priok. They joined a few hundred Indonesian girls who had been deceived by the Japanese and believed that they were going to Tokyo. The ship went instead to Flores Island. As soon as they arrived, the Japanese attitude towards the girls suddenly changed. They were put into a camp and were forced to render sexual services to the Japanese soldiers. Each girl had to serve at least two soldiers every day.

Three months later they were transported to the north of Buru Island, where they were put into a military compound. Here too, they were sexually abused every day until the end of the war.

In both Flores and Buru, many girls died as the result of maltreatment by the Japanese. Others suffered psychological trauma as the result of sexual abuse.

Soon after August 15, 1945, Fatimah and some other girls asked the Japanese to return them to their homes. Their request was refused. Together with a few other girls, she ran away from the compound and sought help from the local Buton fishermen. She later married one of the fishermen and never returned to Java.57

Sukarno Martodiharjo, a seaman for a Japanese shipping company in Batavia during the war, recalled an incident in which about 200 Indonesian girls were loaded onto boats one night in March 1945. The girls, who looked to be school-girls aged between 15 and 19, were on five different cargo ships, part of a convoy at the port of Tanjung Priok. This convoy was to sail to Singapore and Bangkok.

Sukarno was on board one of the vessels and, despite orders not to speak to the 80

Comfort women in the Dutch East Indies
girls, managed to talk to a few of them during the voyage. He learned that they had been selected to go to Tokyo to study Japanese and to be trained as nurses or midwives. During the first few days of the voyage, they were very cheerful and full of hope about going to Japan. They sang Japanese school and military songs.

One of the girls to whom Sukarno was able to talk was Sumiyati, a 17-year-old daughter of the head of one of the subdistricts in Kediri.58

A few days after they left Java, some girls started crying. One of them even tried to commit suicide for a reason that Sukarno did not know at that time.

Sumiyati told him that they had been deceived by the Japanese. They had found out that what the Japanese had told them was a lie and just propaganda. At Singapore, the girls on two of the other ships disembarked. The convoy continued to sail on to Bangkok. When the ships arrived at Bangkok, all the other girls from Java were met by a group of Japanese and taken away. This was the only instance that Sukarno saw of the transportation of Indonesian girls from Java to other places in Southeast Asia, but he heard from a colleague seaman that similar transportation was carried out by a different convoy at another time.59

After the war, Sukarno continued to work as a seaman. In September 1947 he traveled from Singapore to Bangkok for sightseeing while his ship was harbored at Singapore. In Bangkok, he unexpectedly met Sumiyati on a city street. Sumiyati told him that she and her fellow Indonesian girls were taken to a comfort station somewhere near Bangkok and forced to serve the Japanese soldiers day after day until the end of the war. At the comfort station, 50 Javanese girls were strictly supervised by a Japanese woman. After the war, they wanted to go back to Java, but they had no money to do so. They were not paid by the Japanese except for a small amount of money that they were given on days when they were allowed to go into the city for leisure. They were all ashamed of being forced to work as “prostitutes” and could not face their parents even if they had been able to return home. When Sukarno met Sumiyati in Bangkok, she was married to a Thai who was a poor factory worker. At that time she told him that about 15 fellow Indonesians were living in Bangkok. She also told him that, when the war ended, some of the girls at the same comfort station were taken away by the Japanese.60