Truth of Korean Comfort Women
Regarding the comfort women issue during World War II, some people say that 70% to 80% of the 200,000 women who worked as comfort women could not survive. Aside from the question of whether the alleged total number of comfort women, 200,000, is a ridiculous number with no historical evidence at all, How did the figure of 200,000 and the figures of 70% to 80% come about anyway?
How did these figures of 70% to 80% come about anyway?
Dr. Gay McDougall, Special Rapporteur on systemic rape, sexual slavery and slavery-like practices during armed conflict, submitted a paper that reporting the number to the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities of the United Nations in 1998. Before delving into the report, mind you that this report was written in 1998 while we are talking about the comfort women of the Pacific War that happened 50 years prior. There was several misquoting and wrong copy-paste of numbers by the author.
Paragraph 7 of the appendix of the report says, “Only about 25 percent of these women are said to have survived these daily abuses”. According to the footnote, this part was cited from a 1975 statement by Seijuro Arafune, Liberal Democratic Party member of the Japanese Diet, that 145,000 Korean sex slaves had died during the 2nd World War. If you do the research, the truth is that the 1975 statement by Seijuro Arafune is an irresponsible remark made at a gathering of his local constituency in Saitama prefecture on November 20, 1965, not 1975.
Also, Mr. Arafune mentioned the number of the victims as 142,000, not 145,000.
The McDougall report cited these remarks without any verification from another paper by Karen Parker and Jennifer F. Chew, titled “Compensation for Japan’s World War II war-rape victims”.
This careless copy-paste reporting for a United Nations report resulted in complete nonsense and an exaggerated number of comfort women during Pacific War.
Professor Yasuaki Onuma, professor of International Law at Tokyo University also realized the grave error of the UN report which he detailed in his book “What Was the Significance of Comfort Women?”(Chuko-Shinsho, 2007).
Professor Onuma decisively wrote, “The McDougall report is nothing but a low-quality level report.” He also wrote, “It is very difficult for those who do not have the expertise or technical knowledge on a disputed issue, including scholars, NGOs and media, to make a judgement on the academic quality of a report by a special rapporteur of the United Nations” and “if people find the experts’ views and opinions which are turned to be different from what they want, they have to squarely face the bitter truth. NGOs should reconsider their views and activities, and the media should reflect the bitter truth, which might be different from their opinions and past reported stories, in their reports.”
He also made tremendous efforts for some controversial social issues such as comfort women, and the repatriation of former Koreans left in Sakhalin. He was a unique amalgamated figure of an academic and an activist; well respected by many people. He, unfortunately, was also harshly criticized by many people, from both left and right camps, but he was a genuine believer for the solution of comfort women issue.
Professor Onuma also took a part in the Asian Women’s Fund, which was created to support comfort women in South Korea, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Indonesia and Taiwan, from its beginning until its dissolution. In his book, he mentioned the failure of the Asian Women’s Fund. He raised several factors for the “failure” and among them he pointed out that one factor was the inflexible attitude of Korean NGOs, notably the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery (now known as the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance or Chong Dae Hyup), and the Korean media. The comfort women who received the atonement money from the Asian Women’s Fund were severely criticized, bashed and denounced by NGOs and media in South Korea because these women were regarded as “national traitors blinded by hush money.”
The same extremist response was also directed towards Dr. Mark Ramseyer of Harvard University, who wrote an article on comfort women in the journal of International Review of Law and Economics, titled “Contracting for sex in the Pacific War.” http://chwe.net/ramseyer/ramseyer.pdf
The supporters of the comfort women narrative often employ extremist tactics in achieving their goal of blaming Japan for everything. This includes using exaggerated numbers and extreme response in bashing the Korean comfort women themselves and everyone else that does not conform to their narrative.
Professor Onuma also wrote in his another book titled “What Is the Significance of the Recognition of History?”(Chuko-Shinsho, 2015): “The value for the society and the virtue for the human being are not limited to justice. What various victims want is not only recovery of justice.” Professor Onuma died in 2018 at the age of 72. Do you hear his messages ?
