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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-07-15 Daily Xml
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MATTERS OF INTEREST

COMFORT WOMEN

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (15:28): Today, I wish to speak of the heartbreaking story of the so-called 'comfort women' of World War II, as 15 August marks the day for global action on the issue of comfort women.

Women—often very young women—were sent to brothels throughout Japanese occupied areas and systematically raped by the Japanese military. The numbers vary, but Amnesty International believes that more than 200,000 women were subjected to this horror—200,000 women subjected to terror we can only imagine, 200,000 women who were abused and who often moved on with their life after the war pretending that nothing had happened to them, and 200,000 women trafficked with the full knowledge of the Japanese government.

We should make no mistake about it: there is ample evidence to suggest that these were not rogue soldiers acting on their own; to the contrary, there is plenty of information to suggest that the trafficking of women was coordinated by the Japanese military. Since 1993, the Japanese parliament has acknowledged that the Imperial Army was responsible for these so-called 'comfort stations', but it has never apologised to the women abused in these facilities nor sought to provide them with restitution.

Following a US congressional resolution calling on the Japanese government to formally acknowledge and apologise for these atrocities in 2007, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso said in his then role as foreign minister that the US resolution was not based on fact. In fact, then prime minister Mr Shinzo Abe stated that he thought that the women who were abused in so-called 'comfort stations' were so abused of their own volition.

Then there are some in Japan who claim it was not their government that played a role in this shameful history: it was the Japanese empire. We have held the German government accountable for the actions of the Nazis, and we must take a similar stand with the Japanese government. We must not make the mistake of thinking that awful events that occur during wartime are in any way mitigated by the events that surround them.

The first comfort stations of the Japanese date back to 1932, when the military found it was unable to find enough women to voluntarily act as prostitutes in its brothels. Then began a long and horrific trend, with women tricked into prostitution believing they were applying for other jobs, women abducted and trafficked into brothels and women taken from concentration camps to be used as sexual slaves for the Japanese military.

As the Japanese military gained more and more land, the network of comfort stations expanded through the Japanese occupied territories. It has been estimated that as few as 25 per cent of all those who were comfort women survived the war, and many who did so were so badly injured by their treatment that they were left unable to have children. We cannot begin to put any sort of statistic on the degree of psychological trauma that those who survived experienced.

Living in Adelaide today is one of the most vocal and visible of the comfort women, Ms Jan Ruff-O'Herne. Before I conclude my contribution today I will briefly touch on Jan's story to remind people of exactly why it is so important that this issue is not left to be buried by history. Jan was born in 1923 and grew up in the Netherlands East Indies, now called Indonesia. An idyllic childhood was shattered by the invasion of the Japanese in 1942. The horrors of being interned in a concentration camp could in no way prepare the young Jan for what was to follow.

In 1944, Jan was taken with six other young women from the camp to the House of the Seven Seas, a military brothel in which all the young women were subjected to repeated rapes and beatings. Their photos were displayed in the reception area of Seven Seas so the visiting Japanese soldiers could select which woman they wished to buy. This went on for four months before the girls were moved back to an internment camp with their families.

For 50 years Jan kept her silence, ashamed of what had happened and unable to find the words to tell the people who loved her what she had endured, but in 1992 a series of events occurred that prompted Jan to tell her story: the ongoing rape of women in war that was happening in Bosnia; Korean comfort women coming forward to tell their stories; and a request that Jan tell her story to an international public hearing in Tokyo. Since 1992, Jan has taken a more prominent role in seeking justice for the comfort women. Her story is told in her autobiography, 50 Years of Silence.

Japan's ongoing reticence on this issue is wholly unacceptable. If Japan is ever to reconcile itself to the atrocities carried out by its government and troops during wartime, it must acknowledge and atone for these crimes. Until it does, Japan will never be free of the shame of this wartime atrocity and the stain on its national soul.

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