The University of the Philippines Visayas Main Building , also sometimes referred to as the Old Iloilo City Hall , is a historic building in Iloilo City which currently serves as the primary building of the Iloilo City campus of the University of the Philippines (UP) Visayas . It was previously used as the official seat of government of the City of Iloilo.
118-716: Construction of the building began in February 1931 and it was used to host the Iloilo City Hall as early as 1935. It was inaugurated in December 1936. The building stands in a 10,000 m (110,000 sq ft) lot which was donated to the local government of Iloilo City. During the Japanese occupation of the Philippines during World War II , Japanese soldiers occupied the building in 1942 and made it their garrison. The Japanese occupied
236-455: A 1991 interview about how she was drafted into the "comfort women corps" in 1941: "When I was 17 years old, the Japanese soldiers came along in a truck, beat us [her and a friend], and then dragged us into the back. I was told if I were drafted, I could earn lots of money in a textile factory ... The first day I was raped and the rapes never stopped ... I was born a woman but never lived as
354-852: A Japanese army compound, and the conditions of the Korean comfort women. Documents were discovered verifying the Japanese Army as the funding agency for purchasing some comfort women. Su Zhiliang, a professor at Shanghai Normal University , examined the Japanese Kwantung Army's records in Manchuria (now Northeast China), which are housed at the Jilin Archives in China. The operations of the Japanese Military Police, who were in charge of overseeing
472-402: A United States analysis released years after the war, US casualties were 10,380 dead and 36,550 wounded; Japanese dead were 255,795. Filipino deaths during the occupations, on the other hand, are estimated to be more be around 527,000 (27,000 military dead, 141,000 massacred, 22,500 forced labor deaths and 336,500 deaths due war related famine). The Philippine population decreased continuously for
590-569: A comfort women by the Japanese after she was tricked into becoming a comfort woman. She was lied to and told she was being taken to Tokyo to study there and instead sent to a Japanese military brothel in Flores to be raped. Over 20,000 Indonesian women reported they were raped by Japanese soldiers since 1993 after the Indonesian government asked Indonesian women to report if they were victims of Japanese rape. Each Javanese Indonesian comfort woman trafficked to
708-559: A cut. Your genitals swell and bruise. Damage to the womb and other internal organs can also be tremendous ... [B]eing used as a public dumping ground by those men left me with deep shame that I still feel in the pit of my stomach – it's like a hard, heavy, sick feeling that never entirely goes away. They saw not just my completely helpless, naked body, but they heard me beg, and cry. They reduced me to something low and disgusting that suffered miserably in front of them ... Even years later, it has taken tremendous courage for me to put these words on
826-530: A force of 700 vessels and 174,000 men. The initial Leyte landing was followed by landings on Mindoro, Luzon and Mindanao. During the campaign, the Imperial Japanese Army conducted a suicidal defense of the islands. Cities such as Manila were reduced to rubble. Around 500,000 Filipinos died during the occupation. Japan launched an attack on the Philippines on 8 December 1941, just ten hours after their attack on Pearl Harbor . Initial aerial bombardment
944-533: A historical play drama called "Hayatie's life (Hayat Hayatie) when she was raped by the Japanese in Singapore. Another play called Wild Rice was also based on another Malay comfort woman who didn't tell her family in the 1980s how she was raped by the Japanese in the 1940s and sought to hide her humiliation from them. On 16-17 October 1992, in Nepal, Kathmandu, the "Conference of International Investigation Committee on
1062-472: A last-ditch resistance. The Philippine Commonwealth troops and the recognized guerrilla fighter units rose up everywhere for the final offensive. Filipino guerrillas also played a large role during the liberation. One guerrilla unit came to substitute for a regularly constituted American division, and other guerrilla forces of battalion and regimental size supplemented the efforts of the US Army units. Moreover,
1180-525: A letter for her. However, her long suffering was left unremedied . The Malay woman thought that the UMNO party would demand the Japanese government apologize and pay reparations since she was a member of the UMNO but the UMNOF leadership refused to press the case. The Japanese forced ethnic Malay Muslim girls into becoming comfort women to be raped by Japanese soldiers. One of these Malay girls had her experience made into
1298-611: A lieutenant is quoted as confessing to having organized a brothel and having used it himself. Another source refers to Tokkeitai members having arrested women on the streets and putting them in brothels after enforced medical examinations. On May 12, 2007, journalist Taichiro Kajimura announced the discovery of 30 Dutch government documents submitted to the Tokyo tribunal as evidence of a forced mass prostitution incident in 1944 in Magelang . The South Korean government designated Bae Jeong-ja as
SECTION 10
#17328510077181416-496: A major issue was that no historian had examined whether the soldiers of the Indian National Army used comfort women, since there had been no investigation for it. Lebra wrote "None of those who have written on Bose's Indian national army has investigated whether, while they were trained by the Japanese army, they were permitted to share in the 'comfort' provided by thousands of kidnapped Korean young women held as sex slaves by
1534-550: A paper on comfort women in Malaysia who were forced to serve the Japanese military. She wrote that the Japanese targeted their comfort women recruitment form all ethnic groups and not just one in the occupied regions. The Malay Mustapha Yaakub, who was Youth International Bureau secretary for the UMNO called for Malaaysians who were victimized by Japanese soldiers such as comfort women to go out in public and talk about what happened in 1993. He received multiple letters including one known by
1652-529: A pro-Japanese collaborator ( chinilpa ) in September 2007 for recruiting comfort women. In 2014, China produced almost 90 documents from the archives of the Kwantung Army on the issue. According to China, the documents provide ironclad proof that the Japanese military forced Asian women to work in front-line brothels before and during World War II. In June 2014, more official documents were made public from
1770-492: A rapid rate, making her estimates of 200,000-400,000 comfort women plausible, with the majority being Chinese women. Ikuhiko Hata , a professor of Nihon University , estimated the number of women working in the licensed pleasure quarter was fewer than 20,000 and that they were 40% Japanese, 20% Koreans, 10% Chinese, with others making up the remaining 30%. According to Hata, the total number of government-regulated prostitutes in Japan
1888-427: A return to the Philippines. Quezon's political rival, former president Aguinaldo , sided with the Japanese invaders as a collaborator. In exchange, Japan initially was going to appoint Aguinaldo as President of a Japanese puppet-state in the Philippines, but later gave him the position of National Distribution Corporation head, placing him in charge of rationing prime commodities for the Japanese war effort. Most of
2006-532: A station in Flores was raped by 23 Japanese men daily, 1 officer, 2 NCOS and 20 soldiers. They were expected to be raped by 100 men each week and received a ticket showing it from every one of them. The mass rapes committed by the Japanese against indigenous Javanese Indonesian Muslim women largely went unpunished since the Allied powers like the Dutch and Australians showed no interest in investigation or pressing charges against
2124-474: A substantial minority of the contractors in Korea were Japanese, the majority were Korean. In the Philippines during the Japanese occupation, around 1,000 Filipino women were made into comfort women. The victims were as young as 12 years old at the time of their enslavement. As many of the survivors recall, the garrisons or comfort stations/brothels were spread all over the Philippines. The garrisons were located from
2242-640: A total number of 400 Dutch girls were taken from the camps to become comfort women. Besides Dutch women, many Javanese were also recruited from Indonesia as comfort women, including around 1000 East Timorese women and girls who also used as sexual slaves. Most were adolescent girls aged 14–19 who had completed some education and were deceived through promises of higher education in Tokyo or Singapore. Common destinations of comfort women from Java included Burma, Thailand, and Eastern Indonesia. Interviews conducted with former comfort women also suggest that some women came from
2360-404: A victim of the incident, in 1990, Jan Ruff-O'Herne testified to a U.S. House of Representatives committee: Many stories have been told about the horrors, brutalities, suffering and starvation of Dutch women in Japanese prison camps. But one story was never told, the most shameful story of the worst human rights abuse committed by the Japanese during World War II: The story of the "Comfort Women",
2478-438: A woman ... I feel sick when I come close to a man. Not just Japanese men, but all men-even my own husband who saved me from the brothel. I shiver whenever I see a Japanese flag ... Why should I feel ashamed? I don't have to feel ashamed." Kim stated that she was raped 30–40 times a day, every day of the year during her time as a "comfort woman". Reflecting their dehumanized status, Army and Navy records where referring to
SECTION 20
#17328510077182596-577: A worsening of anti-Japanese sentiment, to reduce venereal diseases among Japanese troops, and to prevent leakage of military secrets by civilians who were in contact with Japanese officers. Carmen Argibay , a former member of the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice, states that the Japanese government aimed to prevent atrocities like the Rape of Nanking by confining rape and sexual abuse to military-controlled facilities, or stop incidents from leaking to
2714-511: Is a translation of the Japanese ianfu ( 慰安婦 ) , a euphemism that literally means "comforting, consoling woman". During World War II, Japanese troops forced hundreds of thousands of women from Australia , Burma , China , the Netherlands , the Philippines , Japan , Korea , Indonesia , East Timor , New Guinea and other countries into sexual enslavement for Japanese troops; however,
2832-663: Is also known as the Lozano Hall. The building briefly served as the Iloilo City Hall and later a garrison of soldiers of Imperial Japan during the World War II era. As of 2019, the building hosts the office of the Center for West Visayan Studies as well as an art gallery. Japanese occupation of the Philippines Events/Artifacts (north to south) Events/Artifacts Artifacts The Japanese occupation of
2950-589: The Battle of Saipan comfort women were among those who committed suicide by jumping off the cliffs of Saipan. In Burma, there were cases of Korean comfort women committing suicide by swallowing cyanide pills or being killed by having a hand grenade tossed into their dug-outs. During the Battle of Manila , when Japanese sailors ran amok and simply killed everyone, there were cases of comfort women being killed, though there does not seem to have been any systematic policy of killing comfort women. The Japanese government had told
3068-747: The International Commission of Jurists quotes "estimates of historians of 100,000 to 200,000 women." Most of the women were from occupied countries, including Korea , China , and the Philippines . Women who were used for military "comfort stations" also came from Burma , Thailand , French Indochina , Malaya , Manchukuo , Taiwan (then a Japanese dependency), the Dutch East Indies , Portuguese Timor , Papua New Guinea (including some mixed race Japanese-Papuans ) and other Japanese-occupied territories. Stations were located in Japan , China ,
3186-566: The Tianjin Municipal Archives from the archival files of the Japanese government and the Japanese police during the periods of the occupation in World War II. Municipal archives from Shanghai and Nanjing were also examined. One conclusion reached was that the relevant archives in Korea are distorted. A conclusion of the study was that the Japanese Imperial government and the colonial government in Korea tried to avoid recording
3304-465: The "comfort stations" in various parts of China and Java, were the subject of these records. Su concluded that the sources revealed that comfort women stations were ordered, supported, and managed by the Japanese military authorities. Documents were found in Shanghai that showed details of how the Japanese Army went about opening comfort stations for Japanese troops in occupied Shanghai. Documents included
3422-516: The "comfort women corps" were almost always virgins, it was felt that this was the best way to limit the spread of venereal diseases that would otherwise incapacitate soldiers and sailors. Ten Dutch women were taken by force from prison camps in Java by officers of the Imperial Japanese Army to become forced sex slaves in February 1944. They were systematically beaten and raped day and night. As
3540-463: The 80,000 prisoners of war captured by the Japanese at Bataan were forced to undertake the " Bataan Death March " to Camp O'Donnell prison camp in Capas, Tarlac 105 kilometers to the north of Mariveles Bataan. Thousands of men, weakened by disease and malnutrition and treated harshly by their captors, died before reaching their destination. More men died from Japanese mistreatment in the first four months in
3658-695: The American and Filipino officers refused to surrender, since they reasoned that Wainwright, now a prisoner who could be considered under duress, had no authority to issue orders to Sharp. For several reasons it was unknown how many did not surrender, although probably around 100 to 200 Americans ended up with Fertig's guerrillas. The names of new Filipino recruits were purposefully left off the lists of men to be surrendered. In other cases, documents were fabricated to report fewer men than were actually under Sharp. Other troops died for various reasons after getting away and others left Mindanao entirely. One resistance group in
Old Iloilo City Hall - Misplaced Pages Continue
3776-576: The Central Luzon area was known as the Hukbalahap (Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon), or the People's Anti-Japanese Army, organized in early 1942 under the leadership of Luis Taruc , a communist party member since 1939. The Huks armed some 30,000 people and extended their control over portions of Luzon . However, guerrilla activities on Luzon were hampered due to the heavy Japanese presence and infighting between
3894-537: The Chinese civilians." To staff the establishments, Japanese prostitutes were imported from Japan. Japanese women were the first victims to be enslaved in military brothels and trafficked across Japan, Okinawa, Japan's colonies and occupied territories, and overseas battlegrounds. According to Yoshiaki Yoshimi, comfort stations were established to avoid criticism from China, the United States of America and Europe following
4012-763: The Commission for the reparations and apologies. 3,500 Malaysians sent letters to Mustapha Yaakub in the span of 4 months. The victims thought the UMNO Malaysian government was going to demand reparations and an apology from Japan so they had turned up en masse since a UMNO official was behind the push. Their hopes were dashed when the UMNO heads led by Najiz Razak forced Mustapha Yaakub to back down so Japan did not apologize or pay reparations to Malay rape vicitms. Indigenous Indonesian Muslim Javanese girls and women were taken as comfort women by Japanese soldiers and raped. One Indonesian seaman named Sukarno Martodiharjo (unrelated to
4130-573: The Crimes of War of Japan" took place with members attending from Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Japan, Algeria and France. The UMNO (United Malays National Organization) Youth secretary Musapha Yakuub was a Malay delegate at the meeting and comfort women were one of the topics there. Mustapha then started his own investigation and documentation of all Japanese crimes committed from 1942-1945 when they occupied Malaysia against its people. Mustapha urged all victims to report to him
4248-416: The Imperial Japanese Army at its camps. This might have provided them with some insight into the nature of Japanese, as opposed to British, colonial rule, as well what might be in store for their sisters and daughters." Under the strain of the war effort, the military became unable to provide enough supplies to Japanese units; in response, the units made up the difference by demanding or looting supplies from
4366-758: The Indonesian President Sukarno) witnessed Indonesian Muslim Javanese girls trafficked as comfort women by Japanese soldiers. Indonesian writer Pramudya Ananta Tur wrote about how Javanese Muslim Indonesian girls were taken as sex slaves by the Japanese and the fact that they were from high class prominent families and their fathers were tricked into sending them into prostitution since the Japanese lied to them and told them their daughters would study in Japan. These Javanese men were collaborations public servants, school headmasters, policemen, villages heads, subdistrict heads and other local chiefs. A Javanese Indonesian Muslim girl, Siti Fatimah recalled being raped as
4484-732: The Japanese colonists on Saipan that the Americans were cannibals, and so the Japanese population preferred suicide to falling into the hands of the Americans. It is possible that many of the Asian comfort women may also have believed this. British soldiers fighting in Burma often reported that the Korean comfort women whom they captured were astonished to learn that the British were not going to eat them. Ironically, given this claim, there were cases of starving Japanese troops cut off on remote Pacific islands or trapped in
4602-406: The Japanese for raping Indonesian women since the Dutch themselves had sexual abused and raped indigenous Javanese Indonesian women for centuries including using them as military prostitutes for Dutch soldiers so the Dutch did not view what the Japanese did to Indonesians as a crime but rather as a norm. The Japanese also destroyed tons of records related to Indonesian comfort women as they were losing
4720-535: The Japanese military executed Korean comfort women when they fled from losing battles with the Allied Forces. During the last stand of Japanese forces in 1944–45, comfort women were often forced to commit suicide or were killed. During World war II, at Chuuk Lagoon, 70 comfort women were killed prior to the expected American assault as the Navy mistook the American air raid as the prelude to an American landing while during
4838-512: The Japanese military used comfort women to satisfy disgruntled soldiers during World War II and prevent military revolt. He said that, despite the goal of reducing rape and venereal disease, the comfort stations did the opposite—aggravating rape and increasing the spread of venereal disease. Comfort women stations were so prevalent that the Imperial Army offered accountancy classes on how to manage comfort stations, which included how to determine
Old Iloilo City Hall - Misplaced Pages Continue
4956-467: The Japanese on 2 January 1942. The Philippine defense continued until the final surrender of US-Philippine forces on the Bataan Peninsula on April 10, 1942, and on Corregidor on May 6, 1942. Quezon and Osmeña had accompanied the troops to Corregidor and later left for the United States, where they set up a government-in-exile . MacArthur was ordered to Australia, where he started to plan for
5074-456: The Japanese soldiers took her, "soldiers began to skin her father alive." This maltreatment left physical and emotional scars. Military doctors and medical workers frequently raped the women during medical examinations. One Japanese Army doctor, Asō Tetsuo, testified that the comfort women were seen as "female ammunition" and as "public toilets"—as literally just things to be used and abused—with some comfort women being forced to donate blood for
5192-439: The Japanese warned the inmates that if anyone told what had happened to them, they and their family members would be killed. Several months later the O'Hernes were transferred to a camp at Batavia, which was liberated on August 15, 1945. Suki Falconberg, a comfort women survivor, shared her experiences: Serial penetration by many men is not a mild form of torture. Just the tears at the vaginal opening feel like fire applied to
5310-612: The Japanese-organized KALIBAPI . During the occupation, most Filipinos remained loyal to the United States, and war crimes committed by forces of the Japanese Empire against surrendered Allied forces and civilians were documented. Throughout the Philippines more than a thousand Filipinos, composed of mothers, girls, and gay men, some as young as 10, were imprisoned, forcibly taken as "comfort women", and kept in sexual slavery for Japanese military personnel during
5428-414: The Japanese. Others were combined units of Americans, military and civilian, who had never surrendered or had escaped after surrendering, and Filipinos, Christians and Moros , who had initially formed their own small units. Colonel Wendell Fertig organized such a group on Mindanao that not only effectively resisted the Japanese, but formed a complete government that often operated in the open throughout
5546-500: The Philippine elite, with a few notable exceptions, served under the Japanese. The puppet republic was headed by President José P. Laurel . Philippine collaboration in the puppet government began under Jorge B. Vargas , who was originally appointed by Quezon as the mayor of the City of Greater Manila before Quezon departed Manila. The only political party allowed during the occupation was
5664-609: The Philippines ( Filipino : Pananakop ng mga Hapones sa Pilipinas ; Japanese : 日本のフィリピン占領 , romanized : Nihon no Firipin Senryō ) occurred between 1941 and 1944, when the Japanese Empire occupied the Commonwealth of the Philippines during World War II . The invasion of the Philippines started on 8 December 1941, ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor . As at Pearl Harbor, American aircraft were severely damaged in
5782-425: The Philippines their final line of defense, and to stop the American advance towards Japan. They sent every available soldier, airplane and naval vessel to the defense of the Philippines. The kamikaze corps was created specifically to defend the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. The Battle of Leyte Gulf ended in disaster for the Japanese and was the biggest naval battle of World War II. The campaign to liberate
5900-577: The Philippines was opposed by active and successful underground and guerrilla activity that increased over the years and eventually covered a large portion of the country. Opposing these guerrillas were a Japanese-formed Bureau of Constabulary (later taking the name of the old Constabulary during the Second Republic ), Kempeitai , and the Makapili . Postwar investigations showed that about 260,000 people were in guerrilla organizations and that members of
6018-465: The Philippines was the bloodiest campaign of the Pacific War. Intelligence information gathered by the guerrillas averted a disaster—they revealed the plans of Japanese General Yamashita to trap MacArthur's army, and they led the liberating soldiers to the Japanese fortifications. MacArthur's Allied forces landed on the island of Leyte on 20 October 1944, accompanied by Osmeña , who had succeeded to
SECTION 50
#17328510077186136-420: The Philippines, Indonesia, Malaya, Thailand, Burma, New Guinea, Hong Kong , Macau , and French Indochina. A smaller number of women of European origin were also involved, mostly from the Netherlands and Australia with an estimated 200–400 Dutch women alone, with an unknown number of other European women. According to State University of New York at Buffalo professor Yoshiko Nozaki and other sources,
6254-420: The United States, partly because of the American guarantee of independence, because of the Japanese mistreatment of Filipinos after the surrender, and because the Japanese had pressed large numbers of Filipinos into work details and put young Filipino women into brothels . General MacArthur kept his promise to return to the Philippines on 20 October 1944. The landings on the island of Leyte were accompanied by
6372-571: The actuarial "durability or perishability of the women procured." In the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, Japan's military closely regulated privately operated brothels in Manchuria. Comfort houses were first established in Shanghai after the Shanghai incident in 1932 as a response to wholesale rape of Chinese women by Japanese soldiers. Yasuji Okamura , the chief of staff in Shanghai, ordered
6490-613: The administration of then-Iloilo City Mayor Fernando Lopez and it was repaired in 1950 through the efforts of the Philippine War Damage Commission. In the 2010s, the building underwent a renovation after the National Historical Commission of the Philippines provided a grant of ₱54 million in 2017 following the lobbying of Senator Franklin Drilon and Antique Representative Loren Legarda . The building
6608-458: The anti-Japanese underground were even more numerous. Such was their effectiveness that by the end of the war, Japan controlled only twelve of the forty-eight provinces. The Philippine guerrilla movement continued to grow, in spite of Japanese campaigns against them. Throughout Luzon and the southern islands, Filipinos joined various groups and vowed to fight the Japanese. The commanders of these groups made contact with one another, argued about who
6726-519: The atrocities that the Japanese had done in Malaysia and wanted to force the Japanese government to pay reparations and apologize by bringing up comfort women and forced labor which he called "Cruel deeds" at the UN Human Rights Commission. Mustapha wanted to attend the May 1993 Austria, Vienna UN World Human Rights Conference and submit his report so that countries attacked by Japan could testify to
6844-627: The building until 1945. In 1945, while the war was still ongoing Iloilo City Council passed Resolution No. 485 which concerns the establishment of a junior college for the University of the Philippines Iloilo . The city council approved Resolution No. 461 after the war, donating the old city hall to the UP Iloilo College which opened in July 1947. It was transferred to the educational institute under
6962-436: The camps than had died in the four months of battle previously. The Japanese military authorities immediately began organizing a new government structure in the Philippines. Although the Japanese had promised independence for the islands after occupation, they initially organized a Council of State through which they directed civil affairs until October 1943, when they declared the Philippines an independent republic. Most of
7080-421: The case of massive rapes between battles in Shanghai and Nanjing. As Japan continued military expansion, the military found itself short of Japanese volunteers, and turned to local populations—abducting and coercing women into serving as sex slaves in the comfort stations. Many women responded to calls to work as factory workers or nurses, and did not know that they were being pressed into sexual slavery . In
7198-419: The center of Japanese occupation, had 38,000 guerrillas who were eventually consolidated under the command of American civil engineer Colonel Wendell Fertig . Fertig's guerrillas included many American and Filipino troops who had been part of the force on Mindanao under Major General William F. Sharp . When Wainwright had ordered Sharp's forces to surrender, Sharp considered compelled to obey this order. Many of
SECTION 60
#17328510077187316-463: The commonwealth presidency upon the death of Quezon on 1 August 1944. Landings then followed on the island of Mindoro and around Lingayen Gulf on the west side of Luzon , and the push toward Manila was initiated. The Commonwealth of the Philippines was restored. Fighting was fierce, particularly in the mountains of northern Luzon , where Japanese troops had retreated, and in Manila, where they put up
7434-486: The construction of comfort houses to prevent further rape. After the rapes of many Chinese women by Japanese troops during the Nanjing Massacre in 1937, the Japanese forces adopted the general policy of creating comfort stations in various places in Japanese occupied Chinese territory, "not because of their concern for the Chinese victims of rape by Japanese soldiers but because of their fear of creating antagonism among
7552-561: The cooperative Filipino population eased the problems of supply, construction and civil administration and furthermore eased the task of Allied forces in recapturing the country. Fighting continued until Japan's formal surrender on 2 September 1945. The Philippines had suffered great loss of life and tremendous physical destruction by the time the war was over. An estimated 527,000 Filipinos, both military and civilians, had been killed from all causes; of these between 131,000 and 164,000 were killed in seventy-two war crime events. According to
7670-442: The crimes they committed during the war. After the war, then General Douglas MacArthur hid facts about Japan's human experimentation from the war crimes tribunal. His actions pardoned those who committed the human experimentations. The United States afterwards received human experimentation data from Japan, as exchange for MacArthur's actions which protected Japanese war criminals from legal persecution. Japanese occupation of
7788-525: The daughters of the gentry and the bureaucracy were spared from being sent into the "comfort women corps" unless they or their families showed signs of pro-independence tendencies, and the overwhelming majority of the Korean girls taken into the "comfort women corps" came from the poor. The Army and Navy often subcontracted the work of taking girls into the "comfort women corps" in Korea to contractors, who were usually associated in some way with organized crime groups that were paid for girls they presented. Though
7906-510: The day and being sexually abused at night was also recounted by another Filipino Survivor Fedencia David, who was kidnapped by Japanese soldiers at age 14, who also remembered being forced to wash clothes and cook for the Japanese soldiers. At night, she was raped by as many as 5 to 10 Japanese soldiers. Along with being raped multiple times a day the women were subjected to separation from their families, often watching their families being murdered by Japanese soldiers. One survivor recounts that when
8024-568: The discovery of seven official documents in the archives of the Tokyo Trials, suggesting that Imperial military forces – such as the Tokkeitai (Naval military police) – forced women whose fathers attacked the Kenpeitai (Japanese Army military police) to work in front-line brothels in China, Indochina, and Indonesia. These documents were initially made public at the war crimes trial. In one of these,
8142-508: The early stages of World War II, Japanese authorities recruited prostitutes through conventional means. In urban areas, conventional advertising through middlemen was used alongside kidnapping. Middlemen advertised in newspapers circulating in Japan and in the Japanese colonies of Korea , Taiwan, Manchukuo , and China. These sources soon dried up, especially in metropolitan Japan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs resisted further issuance of travel visas for Japanese prostitutes, feeling it tarnished
8260-400: The existence of comfort women. Estimates vary as to how many women were involved, with most historians settling somewhere in the range of 50,000–200,000; the exact numbers are still being researched and debated. Originally, the brothels were established to provide soldiers with a sexual outlet, to reduce wartime rape and the spread of venereal diseases. The comfort stations, however, had
8378-406: The general makeup of the total comfort women population, Korean women made up 51.8 percent, Chinese 36 percent and Japanese 12.2 percent. In 1997, Bruce Cumings , a historian of Korea, wrote that Japan had forced quotas to supply the comfort women program and that Korean men helped recruit the victims. Cumings stated that between 100,000 and 200,000 Korean girls and women were recruited. In Korea,
8496-643: The government of Japan's archives, documenting sexual violence and women forced into sexual slavery, committed by Imperial Japanese soldiers in French Indochina and Indonesia. A 2015 study examined archival data which was previously difficult to access, partly due to the China-Japan Joint Communiqué of 1972 in which the Chinese government agreed not to seek any restitution for wartime crimes and incidents. New documents discovered in China shed light on facilities inside comfort stations operated within
8614-498: The homes of Japanese officers to serve one man as a sex slave rather than many men in a brothel. One such European woman, K'tut Tantri , of Scottish ancestry, wrote a book describing her ordeal. A Dutch government study described the methods used by the Japanese military to seize the women by force. It concluded that among the 200 to 300 European women found in the Japanese military brothels, "some sixty five were most certainly forced into prostitution". Others, faced with starvation in
8732-401: The illegal mobilization of comfort women. It was concluded that they burned most of the records immediately before the surrender; however, the study confirmed that some documents and records survived. Professor Su Jiliang concludes that during the seven-year period from 1938 to 1945, comfort women in the territory occupied by the Japanese numbered 360,000 to 410,000, among whom the Chinese were
8850-503: The image of the Japanese Empire. The military turned to acquiring comfort women outside mainland Japan, mostly from Korea and from occupied China. An existing system of licensed prostitution within Korea made it easy for Japan to recruit women in large numbers. Many women were tricked or defrauded into joining the military brothels. Based on false characterizations and payments—by Japanese or by local recruitment agents—which could help relieve family debts, many Korean girls enlisted to take
8968-499: The infamous Bataan Death March on which 7,000–10,000 died or were murdered. The 13,000 survivors on Corregidor surrendered on 6 May. Japan occupied the Philippines for over three years, until the surrender of Japan . A highly effective guerrilla campaign by Philippine resistance forces controlled sixty percent of the islands, mostly forested and mountainous areas. MacArthur supplied them by submarine and sent reinforcements and officers. The Filipino population remained generally loyal to
9086-515: The initial Japanese attack. Lacking air cover, the American Asiatic Fleet in the Philippines withdrew to Java on 12 December 1941. General Douglas MacArthur was ordered out, leaving his men at Corregidor on the night of 11 March 1942 for Australia, 4,000 km away. The 76,000 starving and sick American and Filipino defenders in Bataan surrendered on 9 April 1942, and were forced to endure
9204-589: The international press should they occur. She also states that the government wanted to minimize medical expenses on treating venereal diseases that the soldiers acquired from frequent and widespread rape, which hindered Japan's military capacity. Comfort women lived in sordid conditions, and were called "public toilets" by the Japanese. Yuki Tanaka states that local brothels outside of the military's reach had issues of security, since there were possibilities of spies disguised as workers of such private facilities. Japanese historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi further states that
9322-868: The island of Flores . After the war, many Javanese comfort women who survived stayed in the locations where they had been trafficked to and became integrated into local populations. Melanesian women from New Guinea were also used as comfort women. Local women were recruited from Rabaul as comfort women, along with some number of mixed Japanese-Papuan women born to Japanese fathers and Papuan mothers. One Australian Captain, David Hutchinson-Smith, also mentioned of some mixed-race, young Japanese-Papuan girls who were also conscripted as comfort women. A Papuan activist from Western New Guinea claimed an estimated 16,161 Papuan New Guinean comfort women were used by Japanese male soldiers during their occupation of New Guinea. In 1985, Japanese comfort woman survivor Shirota Suzuko (1921–1993) released her autobiography, detailing
9440-410: The island. Some guerrilla units would later be assisted by American submarines which delivered supplies, evacuate refugees and the injured, as well as inserted individuals and whole units, such as the 5217th Reconnaissance Battalion, and Alamo Scouts . By the end of the war, some 277 separate guerrilla units, made up of some 260,715 individuals, fought in the resistance movement. Select units of
9558-773: The job. Furthermore, the South East Asia Translation and Interrogation Center (SEATIC) Psychological Warfare Interrogation Bulletin No.2 states that a Japanese facility-manager purchased Korean women for 300 to 1000 yen depending on their physical characteristics, who then became his property and were not released even after completing the servitude terms specified in the contract. In northern Hebei province of China, Hui Muslim girls were recruited to "Huimin Girls' school" to be trained as entertainers, but then forced to serve as sex slaves. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote that
9676-492: The jugun ianfu, and how these women were forcibly seized against their will, to provide sexual services for the Japanese Imperial Army. In the "comfort station" I was systematically beaten and raped day and night. Even the Japanese doctor raped me each time he visited the brothel to examine us for venereal disease. In their first morning at the brothel, photographs of Ruff-O'Herne and the others were taken and placed on
9794-500: The jungles of Burma turning towards cannibalism, and there were at least several cases where comfort women in Burma and on Pacific islands were killed to provide food for the Imperial Japanese Army. According to an account by a survivor, she was beaten when she attempted to resist being raped. The women who were not prostitutes prior to joining the "comfort women corps", especially those taken in by force, were normally "broken in" by being raped. One Korean woman, Kim Hak-sun , stated in
9912-437: The largest group, about 200,000. Lack of official documentation has made estimating the total number of comfort women difficult. Vast amounts of material pertaining to war crimes, and the responsibility of the nation's highest leaders, were either destroyed or concealed on the orders of the Japanese government at the end of the war. Historians have arrived at various estimates by looking at surviving documentation, which indicates
10030-462: The locals. The military often directly demanded that local leaders procure women for the brothels along the front lines, especially in the countryside where middlemen were rare. When the locals were considered hostile in China, Japanese soldiers carried out the "Three Alls Policy" ("kill all, burn all, loot all") which included indiscriminately kidnapping and raping local civilians. On April 17, 2007, Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Hirofumi Hayashi announced
10148-540: The majority of the women were from Korea and China . Chuo University professor and historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi discovered an abundance of documentation and testimony proving the existence of 2,000 comfort women stations where approximately 200,000 Korean, Filipina, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Burmese, Dutch, Australian, and Japanese women, many of whom were teenagers, were confined and forced to perform sexual activities with Japanese troops. According to Qiu Peipei of Vassar College , comfort women were replaced with other women at
10266-590: The majority of the women were from Korea. Many women died due to brutal mistreatment and sustained physical and emotional distress. After the war, Japan denied the existence of comfort women, refusing to provide an apology or appropriate restitution, which damaged Japan's reputation in Asia for decades. Only in the 1990s did the Japanese government begin to officially apologize and offer compensation. However, apologies from Japanese officials have been criticized as insincere, and Japanese government officials have continued to deny
10384-402: The movement of comfort women always used the term "units of war supplies". In the Philippines according to the recounts of Filipino survivors Narcisa Claveria, who was enslaved for 18 months at the age of 13, during the day the women were forced to cook, clean, and do laundry. At night the Japanese soldiers raped and abused the women. The story of the comfort women doing household chores during
10502-510: The naval forces were ordered to leave; and because of the circumstances in the Pacific region, reinforcement and resupply of his ground forces were impossible. Under the pressure of superior numbers, the defending forces withdrew to the Bataan Peninsula and to the island of Corregidor at the entrance to Manila Bay . Manila, declared an open city to prevent its destruction, was occupied by
10620-546: The next five years due to the spread of diseases and the lack of basic needs, far from the Filipino lifestyle before the war when the country had been the second richest in Asia after Japan. Comfort women Comfort women were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II . The term comfort women
10738-475: The northern region of Cagayan Valley to the Davao region in the south. During the initial invasion of Dutch East Indies , Japanese soldiers raped many Indonesian and European women and girls. The Kenpeitai established the comfort women program to control the problem. The Kenpeitai forced and coerced many interned women to serve as prostitutes, including several hundred European women. A few of these chose to live in
10856-443: The occupation, the Japanese were also known to have killed Filipino infants as an act of entertainment and stress-reliever. The Japanese also sent "doctors" and "surgeons" to the Philippines, who performed human experimentation of native Filipinos. Some of these experiments included amputations, dissections, and suturing blood vessels of live humans. Surgeons gruesomely performed vivisections on Filipinos. Before such experiments,
10974-512: The occupation. Each of the Japanese military installations in the Philippines during the occupation had a location where the women were held, which they called a "comfort station". One such place where these women were imprisoned was Bahay na Pula . The Filipinos that were forced to sexual slavery by the Japanese were kidnapped from the population and were routinely gang-raped, tortured, and humiliated. Many of them had their breasts cut off or received damaging wounds whenever they fought back against
11092-461: The promises of equity and sponsorship for higher education. A significant percentage of comfort women were minors. Given that prostitution in Japan was pervasive and organized, it was logical to find military prostitution in the Japanese armed forces. Military correspondence within the Imperial Japanese Army shows that the aims for facilitating comfort stations were: to reduce or prevent rape crimes by Japanese army personnel in an effort to prevent
11210-558: The pseydonym P who was interviewed by Nakahara. However, Najib Tun Razak , the head of UMNOF Youth and Defence Minister banned Mustapha Yaakub from talking about the Malay rape victims at the 1993 Austria United Nations Human Rights Conference. Nakahara wrote about an ethnic Malay comfort woman who was raped and forced into sex slavery at a comfort woman station by Japanese soldiers. The Malay rape victim said " I worked like an animal, they did to me just as they liked. I had to obey their orders until
11328-544: The ratio of soldiers in a particular area to the number of women and replacement rates of the women. Most academic researchers and media typically point to Yoshiaki's estimate as the most probable range of the numbers of women involved. This figure contrasts with the inscriptions on monuments in the United States such as those in New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and California, which state the number of comfort women as "more than 200,000". The BBC quotes "200,000 to 300,000", and
11446-841: The rear. Various guerrilla forces formed throughout the archipelago, ranging from groups of US Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) forces who refused to surrender to local militia initially organized to combat banditry brought about by disorder caused by the invasion. Several islands in the Visayas region had guerrilla forces led by Filipino officers, such as Colonel Macario Peralta in Panay , Major Ismael Ingeniero in Bohol , and Captain Salvador Abcede in Negros . The island of Mindanao , being farthest from
11564-411: The refugee camps, agreed to offers of food and payment for work, the nature of which was not completely revealed to them. Some of the women also volunteered in hopes protecting the younger ones. The women forced into prostitution may therefore be much higher than the Dutch record have previously indicated. The number of Dutch women that were sexually assaulted or molested were also largely ignored. It
11682-504: The resistance would go on to be reorganized and equipped as units of the Philippine Army and Constabulary. When General MacArthur returned to the Philippines with his army in late 1944, he was well-supplied with information; it is said that by the time MacArthur returned, he knew what every Japanese lieutenant ate for breakfast and where he had his haircut. But the return was not easy. The Japanese Imperial General Staff decided to make
11800-512: The reverse effect of what was intended—it increased the amount of rapes and increased the spread of venereal diseases. The first victims were Japanese women, some who were recruited by conventional means, and some who were recruited through deception or kidnapping. The military later turned to women in Japanese colonies, due to lack of Japanese volunteers and the need to protect Japan's image. In many cases, women were lured by false job openings for nurses and factory workers. Others were also lured by
11918-525: The soldier's sexual advancements. Many were also murdered and disposed like animals. Decades after the war, victims of Japan's colonial sex slave system initiated for their documented slavery to be inscribed to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register; however, Japan's government blocked the inscription to defend itself from its own war crimes by using its monetary contributions to threaten UNESCO. During
12036-423: The sufferings she and other women endured as comfort women. More than 2,000 Taiwanese women were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military; as of 2020, only two were still believed to be alive. Yoshiaki Yoshimi notes that more than half of Taiwanese comfort women were minors. In 2023 the last surviving Taiwanese comfort woman died. The Japanese academic Nakahara Michiko from Waseda University wrote
12154-424: The surrender ". Nakahara said " Her daughter told me her mother has nightmares and cries in her sleep. She used to wander aimlessly after the bad dreams ... She told me herself that she begged God for pardon for the sins she had committed. She still suffers from her memory and her feeling of having sinned. It seems nobody in her village ever told her that it was not her sin at all ... She had asked her daughter to write
12272-598: The time of the Leyte invasion, four submarines were dedicated exclusively to the delivery of supplies. Other guerrilla units were attached to the SWPA, and were active throughout the archipelago. Some of these units were organized or directly connected to pre-surrender units ordered to mount guerrilla actions. An example of this was Troop C, 26th Cavalry . Other guerrilla units were made up of former Philippine Army and Philippine Scouts soldiers who had been released from POW camps by
12390-478: The treatment of wounded soldiers. At least 80% of the comfort women were Korean, who were assigned to the lower ranks, while Japanese and European women went to the officers. For example, Dutch women captured in the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia) were reserved exclusively for the officers. Korea is a Confucian country where premarital sex was widely disapproved of, and since the Korean teenagers taken into
12508-494: The various groups. including Hukbalahap troops attacking American-led guerrilla units. Lack of equipment, rough terrain and undeveloped infrastructure made coordination of these groups nearly impossible, and for several months in 1942, all contact was lost with the Philippine resistance forces. Communications were restored in November 1942 when the reformed Philippine 61st Division on Panay island, led by Colonel Macario Peralta,
12626-514: The veranda which was used as a reception area for the Japanese personnel who would choose from these photographs. Over the following four months the girls were raped and beaten day and night, with those who became pregnant forced to have abortions. After four harrowing months, the girls were moved to a camp at Bogor , in West Java, where they were reunited with their families. This camp was exclusively for women who had been put into military brothels, and
12744-477: The victims were forced by the Japanese to dig their own graves first. In some cases, the bodies of vivisected Filipinos were sewed back up, then the living victims were shot dead. In other cases, the vivisected victims were left with huge open stomachs then dumped in their graves along with their intestines and left to die. Many of the doctors and surgeons who performed their human experimentations kept quiet about their deeds until some information came out decades after
12862-640: The war so the true number of Indonesian comfort women is unknown. The first president of Indonesia, Sukarno was a collaborator of the Japanese and recruited Indonesian girls as prostitutes for Japanese soldiers. It is estimated that most of the survivors became infertile because of the multiple rapes or venereal diseases contracted following the rapes. Women and girls were stripped of their agency and dehumanized as "'female ammunition', 'public toilets', or 'military supplies'". In order to help injured Japanese soldiers receive treatment, some of them were even forced to donate blood. Even though every victim's testimony
12980-414: The war. In those cases, the "wartime friends" of the doctors who exposed their own acts tried to prevent the historical stories from coming out to the public in a bid to defend Japanese war crimes. The majority of the doctors, however, never spoke about their crimes and remained at-large in Japan until their comfortable retirement. Some Japanese ultra-nationalists have harassed doctors who wanted to tell about
13098-556: Was able to establish radio contact with the USAFFE command in Australia. This enabled the forwarding of intelligence regarding Japanese forces in the Philippines to the SWPA command, as well as consolidating the once sporadic guerrilla activities and allowing the guerrillas to help in the war effort. Increasing amounts of supplies and radios were delivered by submarine to aid the guerrilla effort. By
13216-587: Was followed by landings of ground troops both north and south of Manila . The defending Philippine and United States troops were under the command of General Douglas MacArthur , who had been recalled to active duty in the United States Army earlier in the year and was designated commander of the United States Armed Forces in the Asia-Pacific region. The aircraft of his command were destroyed;
13334-678: Was in charge of what territory, and began to formulate plans to assist the return of American forces to the islands. They gathered important intelligence information and smuggled it out to the US Army, a process that sometimes took months. General MacArthur formed a clandestine operation to support the guerrillas. He had Lieutenant Commander Charles "Chick" Parsons smuggle guns, radios and supplies to them by submarine. The guerrilla forces, in turn, built up their stashes of arms and explosives and made plans to assist MacArthur's invasion by sabotaging Japanese communications lines and attacking Japanese forces from
13452-555: Was not until individuals and groups such as the Foundation of Japanese Honorary Debts began advocating for victims of the Japanese occupation that the plight of Dutch comfort women entered the collective conscience. As well as being raped and sexually assaulted every day and night, the Dutch girls lived in constant fear of beatings and other physical violence. J.F. van Wagtendonk and the Dutch Broadcast Foundation estimated
13570-420: Was only 170,000 during World War II. Others came from the Philippines, Taiwan, the Dutch East Indies , and other Japanese-occupied countries and regions. Some Dutch women, captured in Dutch colonies in Asia, were also forced into sexual slavery. In further analysis of the Imperial Army medical records for venereal disease treatment from 1940, Yoshimi concluded that if the percentages of women treated reflected
13688-580: Was reopened to the public on August 16, 2019. Filipino architect Juan Arellano designed the UP Visayas Main Building for ₱90,000 . The building was made in the neo-classical design. The law and order bronze male statues present in the building's facade was made by Italian sculptor Francesco Riccardo Monti. The building's main features are the Court Room and the Session Hall, the latter of which
13806-504: Was unique, they all shared commonalities: they all experienced severe and brutal physical, sexual, and psychological abuse. They were repeatedly beaten and forced to perform sexual service with 10 men on normal days and up to 40 men on days after combat. Sufficient food, water, proper housing, toilets, and washing facilities were not provided to the women, and the extent of medical care was restricted to treating sexually transmitted diseases, sterilization, and terminating pregnancies. Torture
13924-406: Was used against women who attempted to flee or refused to comply with the troops' demands. In addition, threats were made to the families of girls who attempted suicide. Since comfort women were forced to travel to the battlefields with the Japanese Imperial Army, many comfort women perished as Allied forces overwhelmed Japan's Pacific defense and annihilated Japanese encampments. In certain cases,
#717282