Japan's Comfort Women (42 page)

74
JIS
, Document No. 92, pp. 413–416.

75 Keith Howard ed., op. cit., p. 36.

76 Ibid., p. 62.

77 Kawada Fumiko, “Gun Ianjo ni okeru Seikatsu Jittai” in Yoshimi Yoshiaki and Hayashi Hirofumi eds., op. cit., Chapter 6, pp. 163–164. The widespread use of drugs by comfort women was also testified to by a former Japanese soldier, Suzuki Yoshio. See Suzuki Yoshio, op. cit., p. 119.

78 Kawada Fumiko, op. cit., pp. 164 –166. Some former comfort women talked about their colleagues who had committed suicide. See, for example, Yi Yongnyo’s testimony, in
Notes

189

which she refers to a few such cases, including one who committed suicide by taking
sake
mixed with opium, in Keith Howard ed., op. cit., pp. 143–150.

79 A Japanese film-maker, Yamatani Tetsuo, recorded several interviews with Pe Pongi, conducted between 1977 and 1979, and produced a documentary film entitled
Okinawa
no Harumoni.
The full transcript of these interviews is included in the book which Yamatani edited under the same title,
Okinawa no Harumoni
(Bans
b
-sha, Tokyo, 1979).

80 Ibid., pp. 92–121.

81 Keith Howard ed., op. cit., p. 140.

82 Ibid., p. 92.

83 There are anecdotes that, in some remote places such as Sakhalin and the Solomon Islands, Japanese troops killed all the remaining comfort women shortly after the surrender was announced. However, to date I have not obtained any concrete evidence or reliable testimony to confirm such claims.

84 Keith Howard ed., op. cit., p. 86.

85 From 1994, the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Service by Japan, a Korean organization led by Professor Yun Jeongok, started investigating former Korean comfort women who stayed on in China after the war. They have so far located 10 such women who are still alive in China, mainly in Hankou and its neighboring regions. The testimonies of these 10 women are now available in Korean and Japanese. The Japanese edition is: Kankoku Teishintai Mondai Taisaku Ky
d
gi-kai, T
b
shintai Kenky
e
-kai ed.,
ChEgoku ni RenkD sareta ChDsenjin Ianfu
(Sanichi Shob
d
, Tokyo, 1996). In 1997, a Korean woman living in Kampuchea named Hun came forward and stated that she was a comfort woman.

86 With regard to comfort women and comfort stations in Southeast Asia, see the following work by Hayashi Hirofumi, “Mar
b
Hant
d
no Nippongun Ianjo” in
Sekai
, No. 579, 1993, pp. 272–279; “Ajia Taiheiy
d
Senka no Ianjo no Tenkai” in Yoshimi Yoshiaki and Hayashi Hirofumi eds., op. cit., Chapter 5, in particular pp. 99–114; “Shingap
d
ru no Nippongun Ianjo” in
Kikan SensD Sekinin KenkyE
, No. 4, 1994, pp. 34– 43; “Shiry
d
Sh
d
kai: Biruma Mand
a
re no Nippongun Inajo Kit
b
” in
Kikan SensD Sekinin
KenkyE
, No. 6, 1994, pp. 74–79.

Chapter 3: Comfort Women in the Dutch East Indies
1 Harada Katsumasa ed.,
ShDwa: Niman Nichi no Zen Kiroku, Vol. 6, TaiheiyD SensD
(K
d
dansha, Tokyo, 1990), pp. 142–143.

2 For details of the Japanese military occupation of the Dutch East Indies, see Sat
d
Shigeru,
War, Nationalism and Peasants: Java Under the Japanese Occupation, 1942–1945
(M.

E. Sharpe, New York, 1994), in particular, Part I “The Military Administration for Total Mobilization.”

3 The International Military Tribunal for the Far East ( Tokyo, 1946; hereafter
IMTFE
) p. 13,639.

4 Ibid., pp. 13,639–13,642.

5 Ibid., p. 13,638.

6
Report of a Study of Dutch Government Documents on the Forced Prostitution of Dutch Women in the
Dutch East Indies during the Japanese Occupation
(Amsterdam, 1994; hereafter
The Dutch
Government Report
) p. 4.

7 Ibid., p. 4.

8 Ajia Minsh
e
H
d
tei Jumbi-kai ed., Nippon no Shinryaku (
i
tsuki Shoten, Tokyo, 1992) pp. 228–229.

9 See note 6 this chapter. This report was presented to the Lower House of the Dutch Parliament by the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs on January 24, 1994. The report contains basic errors in reference to Japanese history. It claims, for example, that prostitution was illegal in pre-war Japan. On the contrary, Japan had a long history of regulated prostitution before World War II. In addition, the 7th Army of the Japanese 190

Notes

Imperial forces at Singapore was not directly under the command of the Headquarters in Tokyo as stated here but under the control of the South Army.

10
The Dutch Government Report
, p. 2.

11 This extract from Nakamura Hachir
d
’s memoirs in his book
Aru Rikugun Yobishikan no
Shuki
(Gendaishi Suppan-kai, Tokyo, 1978) was reproduced in Takasaki Ry
e
ji ed.,
Hyakusatsu ga Kataru Ianjo: Otoko no Honne
(Nashinoki-sha, Tokyo, 1994) pp. 74–75.

12 An extract from Kuroda Toshihiko,
Gunsei
(Gakufu Shoin, Tokyo, 1952) appeared in Takasaki Ry
e
ji ed., op. cit., pp. 72–73.

13 An extract from Got
d
Motoharu,
Kaigun HDdD Senki
(Shin Jimbutsu
i
rai-sha, Tokyo, 1975) appeared in Takasaki Ry
e
ji ed., op. cit., pp. 73–74.

14 John Ingleson, “Prostitution in Colonial Java” in D. P. Chadler and M. C. Ricklefs eds.,
Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Indonesia: Essays in Honour of Professor J. D. Legge
(Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, 1986) pp. 126 and 134. For details of the history and the contemporary situation of the prostitution industry in Indonesia, see also G. W. Jones, E. Sulistyaningsih and T. H. Hull,
Prostitution in
Indonesia
, Working Papers in Demography No. 52 ( Research School of Social Sci-ences, the Australian National University, Canberra, 1995).

15 J. Ingleson, op. cit., p. 137.

16 Tio Biauw Sing,
De Syphilis in het Regentschap Bandoeng
, p. 51, cited by J. Ingleson, op. cit., p. 136.

17 J. Ingleson, op. cit., p. 138.

18 For details of the worsening living conditions in the internment camps, see Nell van den Graaff,
We Survived: A Mother’s Story of Japanese Captivity
(University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1989), in particular, Chapters 4–10. At the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo, a British officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Nicholas Read-Collins, testified to the appalling physical and mental conditions of the Dutch female internees whom he met and interviewed during his trip to Java shortly after the war. His testimony appears in
IMTFE
, pp. 13,528–13,553. He stated, for example, in Batavia, “the main diseases were malnutrition, edema from beriberi, dysentery and a variety assortment of nervous disorders.” He also claimed that “practically every women bore the marks of tropical ulcers and some still had an extreme wasting of various parts of the body, of the arms and of the legs, and in one instance I saw a woman whose legs had been eaten away to the bone by a tropical ulcer.” See,
IMTFE
, p. 13,541.

19
IMTFE
, pp. 13,487–13,488.

20 For details of the changes in Japanese policies concerning the internment of Dutch civilians during the war, see Utsumi Aiko, “Sumaran Ianjo Jiken” in
Indonesia
, Nos. 5/

6, 1995, pp. 5–6.

21 Ibid., p. 7;
The Dutch Government Report
, p. 12.

22 The Dutch National Archives (Algemeen Rijksarchief ) Collection, Algemene Secretarie 5200 ( hereafter AS 5200). A Japanese freelance journalist, Kajimura Taichir
d
, who resides in Berlin, translated this document into Japanese in 1992, with assistance from Koen Mathot. I obtained a copy of the Japanese translation through a Japanese Publishing House,
i
tsuki Shoten, to which the translation manuscript was submitted for consideration for publication. Unfortunately, the Japanese translation of this document has not yet been published. The document contains interrogation texts of the Japanese suspects in war crimes committed against Dutch women, those of some victims of Japanese sexual violence, as well as of camp leaders and other internees of several camps in Java. It also contains court proceedings of War Crimes Tribunals on comfort women cases conducted by the Dutch military forces in Batavia. The page numbers of the Japanese translation are believed to differ from those of the original documents, and therefore I do not specify page numbers when referring to this document in footnotes.

23 Chaen Yoshio ed.,
Horyo ni kansuru Sho-hDki RuishE
( Fuji Shuppan, Tokyo, 1988) pp.

85–90.

Notes

191

24 Utsumi Aiko, op. cit., p. 6.

25 AS5200.

26 AS5200 and
The Dutch Government Report
, pp. 13–14. There are some discrepancies in the details of the account of this event among testimonies given by some camp leaders and internees of the Muntilan Internment Camp. I reconstructed the whole event by relying upon a few camp leaders’ testimonies which seem to be the most reliable information collected by the Dutch military authorities after the war.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29
The Dutch Government Report
, pp. 19–20.

30 Ibid., pp. 20–21.

31 Utsumi Aiko, op. cit., p. 9.

32 AS5200.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid.

35 Testimony of E. van der Plog, the Japanese translation of which was published in
Kikan SensD Sekinin KenkyE
, No. 6, 1994, pp. 69–71.

36 AS5200; Jan Ruff-O’Herne,
50 Years of Silence
( Edition Tom Thompson, Sydney, 1994) pp. 64–72.

37 AS5200.

38 Ibid. According to Jan Ruff-O’Herne, who was taken to a comfort station directly from Ambarawa No. 6 camp, the paper that they were ordered to sign was written only in Japanese, and a Japanese army interpreter orally translated the gist of its content into English for the Dutch women. This information was given to me by Ruff-O’Herne in her letter addressed to me in August 1997. However, several other Dutch victims, who were interrogated by the Dutch military authorities after the war, testified that the paper was written both in Indonesian and Japanese. Incidentally, Ruff O’Herne and some others from the same internment camp refused to sign the paper.

39 AS5200; Jan Ruff-O’Herne was also raped by this doctor at each medical inspection.

See J. O’Herne, op. cit., pp. 94 –96.

40 AS5200; J. Ruff-O’Herne, op. cit., pp. 93–94, 102–103.

41 J. Ruff-O’Herne, op. cit., pp. 82– 89.

42 An extract from the testimony of J. Ruff-O’Herne, published in
The Age
, December 11, 1992.

43 Testimony of E. van der Plog. See footnote 35 to this chapter.

44 AS5200; Utsumi, op. cit., pp. 11–12.

45 J. Ruff-O’Herne, op. cit., p. 108.

46 AS5200; Utsumi, op. cit., p. 14. The Japanese translation of the results of this Dutch War Crimes Tribunal was published in
Kikan SensD Sekinin KenkyE
, No. 3, 1994, pp.

44–50.

47 AS5200.

48 Ibid. Initially the Japanese treated the Eurasians in the same way as the Indonesians rather than the Dutch, and thus they were not put into the internment camps. However, as anti-Japanese sentiment became stronger among the Indonesians, the Japanese suspicion of the Eurasians’ loyalty to Japan also grew stronger. As a consequence they took harsh attitudes towards them from early 1943, although the Eurasians were still free to move around. See H. J. Benda, J. K. Irikura and K. Kishi eds.,
Japanese
Military Administration in Indonesia: Selected Documents
(Southeast Asian Studies, Yale University, 1965) p. 72.

49 AS5200.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid.

192

Notes

53 Ibid.

54 Utsumi, op. cit., p. 2.

55 This fact is stated by Nakasone himself in his memoir “Nij
e
-san sai de Sanzen-nin no S
d
-shikikan,” in Matsuura Takanori ed.,
Owari-naki Kaigun
(Bunka H
d
s
d
Kaihatsu Sent
a
Shuppanbu, 1978) p. 98.

56 For details of this tribunal, see the Japanese National Diet (i.e. parliament) Library (hereafter JNDL) Collection, Microfilm Document No. 5594. For details of the murder of 1,500 civilians in Pontianak, see Izeki Tsuneo,
Nishi Boruneo Gyakusatsu Jiken:
KenshD “Ponteana Jiken”
(Fuji Shuppan, Tokyo, 1987); and Got
d
Kenichi, “Ponchanakku Jiken no Shiteki K
d
satsu’, in Tanaka Hiroshi ed.,
Nippon Gunsei to Ajia no Minzoku UndD

(Ajia Keizai Kenky
e
sho, Tokyo, 1983) pp. 21–40.

57 Pramoeda Ananta Tur, “Mencari Jejak Para Perawan Yang Digondol Jepang: 1942– 1945” (unpublished paper). A small proportion of this Indonesian manuscript was translated into Japanese and published in
Kikan SensD Sekinin KenykE
, No. 16, 1997. For details of Sti Fatima’s testimony, see the Japanese translation, pp. 62–65.

58 Ibid., p. 59.

59 Ibid., p. 60.

60 Ibid., p. 61.

61 Ibid., pp. 58–59.

62 Interview with Doug Davey, conducted by the author in August 1992.

63 The Australian War Memorial holds several photos of these Javanese comfort women who were found in Timor when the Australian Forces landed at Kupan (Negative Numbers: 120082–120087). However, apart from short captions for each photo, there is no other information available on these women.