Comfort: Japanese Army’s Prerogative
by The purpose of establishing comfort stations was threefold. First, and the most obvious, is to provide comfort to soldiers who were away from their families, not knowing if they could return home alive (Hicks 502). At the time, prostitution in Japan was legal and the military may have seen it logical to bring the practice in their colonies, given the sheer number of men employed for the mission.
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The purpose of establishing comfort stations was threefold. First, and the most obvious, is to provide comfort to soldiers who were away from their families, not knowing if they could return home alive (Hicks 502). At the time, prostitution in Japan was legal and the military may have seen it logical to bring the practice in their colonies, given the sheer number of men employed for the mission. Second is to prevent the spread of venereal diseases, and the soldiers from randomly raping women in occupied territories – an act that might aggravate resistance against them. Third, as revealed by the Japanese historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi, is to appease dissatisfied front line soldiers and prevent military uprising (100).. Yoshimi explains that the soldiers’ discomfort arise as they fought in the war with their future being uncertain.
One Korean survivor, whose name was not disclosed, claims of being forced to service men and being beaten when she refuses oblige (qtd. in Nozaki, “The Horrible History,” par 10). “It was a subhuman life,” she said. She further alleges the Japanese soldiers of forcing women at the comfort stations to carry out menial jobs such as “doing laundry of [their] clothes, cleaning the barracks, and some heavy labor such as carrying ammunition. ”
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