[Great_Satyr]

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/229441765.pdf

[Between Angela's Legs]

https://www.pdfdrive.com/japans-comfort-women-sexual-slavery-and-prostitution-during-world-war-ii-and-the-us-occupation-e196764828.html  Japan's comfort women : sexual slavery and prostitution during World War II and the US occupation

Thanks for posting this! Recently I found myself thinking again about the comfort women after seeing this summer's huge blockbuster movie Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer, the movie, is not really about sexual assault. However I saw a comment about the movie on another website--I've forgotten the link--that suggested the use of the atomic bomb against Japan was partly justified by Japan's behavior against the comfort women. The posting hinted that Japan was deemed a threat to use rape as a weapon not just against Chinese women--as in the Rape of Nanking--but also against white women. The hint was that whether Truman's reaction was racist or not, the rape of white women by the Japanese was a consideration in the decision to use the Bomb.

I hadn't previously realized that Japan had used white women as comfort women--mainly I had thought this was done against the Chinese against whom the Japanese seemed to bear a deep grudge. However the book above does note the use of white Dutch women in the then-Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) as comfort women. The author, Yuki Tanaka, although himself Japanese does seem to consider it worth noting that these comfort women were white, drawing attention to it several times. Another irony possibly connecting this to the decision to use the Bomb is that Tanaka is a professor at Hiroshima University.

[vile8r]

Many Korean women were also used as comfort women.

I read a book a couple of years ago about Canadian and British POWS held by the Japanese during WW2. They were captured in the fall of Hong Kong. The guards at their POW camp would regularly taunt the prisoners that Japan was going to invade Canada one day and all the men would be enslaved, and "we will rape your wives and daughters."

Rape culture was very pervasive in the Japanese military and their code of "Bushido." Vanquished enemies had no honor, and their women were considered property of the victors to be used as they pleased.

[Between Angela's Legs]

Many Korean women were also used as comfort women.

True. Because Korea had been under Japanese control for 1-2 generations prior to the war, I tend not to think of Korea when I think of Japanese military aggression during the war itself. From a rape and sexual slavery context, of course, the Korean women were just as much victims as anyone else. Indeed, it was probably easier for the Japanese to implement a "comfort women" system in Korea than a lot of other places since they'd already had effective control of the country for many decades.

I read a book a couple of years ago about Canadian and British POWS held by the Japanese during WW2. They were captured in the fall of Hong Kong. The guards at their POW camp would regularly taunt the prisoners that Japan was going to invade Canada one day and all the men would be enslaved, and "we will rape your wives and daughters."

Of course, this type of threat is a form of psychological rape itself. The threat would have been somewhat stronger since Japan had already made good on this threat in multiple countries, even if they lacked the military resources to successfully invade all the countries they might have wanted to.