Transnational Redress Movement for the Victims of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery

This book examines the redress movement for the victims of Japanese military sexual slavery in South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. comprehensively. The Japanese military forcefully mobilized about 80,000-200,000 Asian women to Japanese military brothels and forced them into sexual slavery during the Asian-Pacific War (1932-1945). Korean "comfort women" are believed to have been the largest group because of Korea’s colonial status. The redress movement for the victims started in South Korea in the late 1980s. The emergence of Korean "comfort women" to society to tell the truth beginning in 1991 and the discovery of Japanese historical documents, proving the responsibility of the Japanese military for establishing and operating military brothels by a Japanese historian in 1992 accelerated the redress movement for the victims. The movement has received strong support from UN human rights bodies, the U.S. and other Western countries. It has also greatly contributed to raising people’s consciousness of sexual violence against women at war. However, the Japanese government has not made a sincere apology and compensation to the victims to bring justice to the victims.

"This collection of essays is a landmark in the redress movement for victims and survivors of Japan’s wartime system of militarized sexual slavery. As a whole, it brings an international depth of study and analysis and combines with a truly transnational approach to issues and challenges all involved in this history and its legacies face. The volume’s authors introduce a wide range of new materials and also collectively go to great efforts to transcend simplistic "blame games," keeping focus on restoring dignity to those ensnared in this horrendous system and considering how best to keep truthful accounting of its history alive." Professor Alexis Dudden, Department of History, University of Connecticut

"This book is a highly significant work by several authors committed to documenting the coercion of South Korean women into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during the 1930s and 1940s. While this is a specific case study of violence in the context of Korean and Japanese history and politics, it is also a larger example of the institutionalizationof patriarchal force that can emanate ‘top down’ from gender-based power relations steeped in dominance and subordination. In other words, the contribution of Min et al. is to specifically document the too often overlooked crimes committed against Korean ‘comfort women’ while adding to our knowledge of how sexism interacts with nation, ethnic and class-based conflicts broadly speaking. The volume, and its moving contributions,succeeds at both these particular and general levels; it will be required reading for anyone concerned about not forgetting crimes against women that should never happen again." Professor Lynn S. Chancer, Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York