“What Did Japanese Soldiers Do With ‘Comfort Women’ in WW2?” For years, many believed Japanese expansion during World War II was mainly about control. But not later, something far darker began unfolding behind the front lines. Young women started disappearing from villages, often promised ordinary jobs before being pulled into a secret military system that would leave lifelong scars on thousands of victims.
It starts in the early 1930s, when the Japanese Empire was growing fast and violently. Japan had already modernized its military and wanted more land, more resources, and more power across Asia. In 1931, Japanese forces invaded Manchuria in northeastern China. A few years later, in 1937, full-scale war broke out between Japan and China after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident near Beijing. What followed became one of the bloodiest wars in Asian history.
As Japanese troops pushed deeper into China, stories of mass killings, r*pe, torture, and looting began spreading everywhere. One of the most infamous events happened in late 1937 during the capture of Nanjing, then the capital of China. During what became known as the Nanjing Massacre, Japanese soldiers murdered huge numbers of civilians and prisoners of war.
Estimates place the death toll between 200,000 and 300,000 people. Tens of thousands of women were r*ped during those weeks. The violence terrified not only civilians but also Japanese military leaders themselves. Officers worried that uncontrolled r*pe by soldiers was damaging Japan’s image overseas and creating stronger resistance among occupied populations.
Some military officials also feared that soldiers visiting ordinary prostitutes could spread se*ually transmitted diseases through the army. Out of these fears, the Japanese military began creating what they called “comfort stations.” The women forced into these places became known as “comfort women.” The term itself sounds harmless today, but the reality behind it was horrifying.
These were military brothels controlled directly or indirectly by the Japanese armed forces. Women and girls were forced to provide s*x to soldiers day after day. Many historians today describe the system as one of the largest organized systems of se*ual slavery in modern history. The first comfort stations appeared in Shanghai around 1932 after fighting between Japanese and Chinese forces.
At first, some of the women involved were Japanese prostitutes already working overseas. But as the war expanded across Asia, the system grew far beyond that. The military needed thousands more women. Soon, recruiters, brokers, police, and soldiers themselves began targeting vulnerable women from occupied territories. Most of the victims came from Korea, which had been under Japanese colonial rule since 1910.
Korea became the biggest source of comfort women because Japan had total control there. Recruiters promised poor families that their daughters would receive factory jobs, nursing work, cooking jobs, or opportunities overseas. Many girls were teenagers. Some were barely in their mid-teens. Others were kidnapped outright.
Women were also taken from China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Burma, Malaya, Vietnam, and even Dutch women captured in the Dutch East Indies, which is modern Indonesia today. Historians estimate that somewhere between 50,000 and over 200,000 women may have been trapped in the system, though exact numbers remain impossible to prove because many wartime records were destroyed.
The Japanese military did not simply “allow” the system. Documents later discovered showed that army officials organized transportation, controlled medical inspections, built stations, and regulated the movement of women. In many places, local commanders directly supervised the facilities.
As Japan’s war spread during the late 1930s and early 1940s, the military needed more and more women for its growing network of comfort stations. Japanese forces were now fighting across massive areas of Asia and the Pacific. Soldiers were stationed in remote jungles, islands, occupied cities, and frontline camps. Wherever troops went, comfort stations often followed. In Korea, recruiters became extremely active.
Some worked privately, while others cooperated closely with police or colonial officials. Poor families were especially vulnerable because Korea, during Japanese rule, was filled with poverty, land seizures, forced labor, and discrimination. A Korean teenager named Kim Hak-sun later became one of the first former comfort women to publicly tell her story in the early 1990s. She described being taken at age 17 after being promised work.
Instead, she was sent into military se*ual slavery. In China, the situation was often even more brutal. Japanese troops conducting military operations sometimes seized women directly during raids on villages. In occupied regions, soldiers kidnapped girls from streets or homes. Families that resisted could be beaten or killed.
Chinese women were frequently viewed by Japanese soldiers as enemies connected to anti-Japanese resistance movements, which often led to especially cruel treatment. In the Philippines, many women were taken during anti-guerrilla operations. Filipino resistance fighters were actively attacking Japanese forces throughout the war, and civilians were often accused of helping them.
Some girls were locked inside small military buildings near garrisons where soldiers assaulted them daily. Indonesia saw another side of the system after Japan defeated Dutch colonial forces in 1942. Japanese authorities imprisoned many European civilians, including Dutch families. Some Dutch women were later forced into comfort stations.
One famous case involved Jan Ruff-O’Herne, a Dutch teenager who survived repeated assaults after being taken from an internment camp in Java. In some places, local collaborators helped identify vulnerable girls. Human trafficking networks expanded quickly because the Japanese military wanted a steady supply of women near military bases.
For many comfort women, the moment they arrived at a station was the moment they realized escape would be nearly impossible. Most stations were heavily controlled military facilities. Some were ordinary buildings converted into brothels. Others were small wooden huts near battle zones. In crowded cities, stations could sit behind restaurants or military offices.
In jungle areas, they might be hidden beside army camps surrounded by guards. Women were usually given small rooms with thin bedding and little privacy. Many stations had strict schedules organized by soldiers or military police. In some places, women were forced to service dozens of soldiers every single day.
Survivors later described endless lines of men waiting outside their rooms, especially before military offensives or after soldiers returned from combat. Medical inspections became a routine part of life. Japanese military doctors regularly examined women for se*ually transmitted infections because commanders feared diseases spreading among troops. But these inspections were not done for the women’s health or safety.
Women suffering injuries, infections, or severe bleeding were often still forced to continue. Violence was constant. Soldiers beat women who resisted, cried, or failed to follow orders. Some victims were burned with cigarettes, stabbed, or tortured. Pregnancies became another terrifying issue. Some women were forced to undergo crude abortions under terrible conditions.
Others were injected with drugs or chemicals. Food shortages were common, especially later in the war. In remote stations, women survived on tiny amounts of rice and soup while soldiers received military rations first. Diseases spread quickly in overcrowded camps. Malaria, dysentery, tuberculosis, and infections killed many women.
The psychological damage was just as severe. Many survivors later said they felt completely cut off from humanity. They were isolated in foreign countries, unable to speak the local language, surrounded by armed men, and constantly threatened with violence. Some women attempted escape.
A few succeeded with help from local civilians or resistance fighters. But many escape attempts ended in brutal punishment or death. In some areas, Japanese troops executed women suspected of trying to flee. The system also varied depending on location and commanders. A few survivors later recalled rare moments where individual soldiers showed small acts of kindness, like secretly giving extra food or medicine. But those moments never changed the overall reality.
The women remained prisoners trapped inside a system built around organized abuse. As the Pacific War intensified after 1941, conditions became even worse. Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in December 1941, bringing the United States fully into World War II. Soon, Japanese forces were fighting massive battles across the Pacific against American, British, Chinese, Australian, and Allied troops.
By 1943, the tide of war had started turning against Japan. American forces were advancing across the Pacific island by island. Japanese troops were suffering heavy losses in places like Guadalcanal and New Guinea. In China, fighting dragged on endlessly. Supplies grew weaker, transportation became dangerous, and military discipline began breaking apart in some areas.
For comfort women trapped near combat zones, this period became even more deadly. In earlier years, many comfort stations operated behind relatively stable front lines. But now, battlefields moved constantly. Allied bombings destroyed roads, ports, and military bases. Japanese units retreated through jungles and mountains while carrying wounded soldiers and limited supplies.
Women trapped inside the comfort system were often forced to move alongside the army. Some women marched long distances through tropical forests with little food or medical care. Sick or injured women sometimes could not keep up. Survivors later described seeing abandoned women left behind to die during retreats. In the Philippines, conditions became especially horrific during the final years of Japanese occupation.
Filipino guerrilla fighters were launching attacks across the islands while American forces prepared to return. Japanese troops grew increasingly paranoid and violent toward civilians. Some comfort women were locked inside military compounds and assaulted repeatedly while nearby towns suffered massacres and destruction. In Burma, now Myanmar, Japanese troops faced brutal fighting against British and Indian forces.
The jungle climate itself killed huge numbers of soldiers through disease and starvation. Comfort women trapped there endured the same misery. Some later described living in collapsing huts filled with mosquitoes, infections, and wounded soldiers. As defeat became more likely, Japanese commanders also started destroying records connected to the comfort station system.
Documents were burned, military files disappeared, and witnesses were silenced. This later made it harder for historians to calculate exact numbers or fully trace how the system operated. In some places, Japanese troops murdered comfort women before retreating. Soldiers feared that captured women could testify about military crimes to Allied forces.
There are accounts from different regions of women being shot, stabbed, or abandoned during evacuations. Others died during Allied bombings or naval attacks while being transported by Japanese ships. These transport vessels were already overcrowded with troops and supplies. When American submarines attacked, prisoners and comfort women often had almost no chance of escape.
Yet despite everything, some women survived through extraordinary luck and determination. A few escaped during battles when guards fled. Others were rescued by local resistance groups or Allied soldiers advancing into occupied territories. But survival did not mean freedom from suffering. Many women emerged from the war physically destroyed, traumatized, and unable to return to normal life.
Some were still teenagers when the war ended, yet already carried years of abuse and disease. Then, in August 1945, everything changed suddenly. The United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Days later, the Soviet Union invaded Japanese-controlled Manchuria. Japan announced its surrender on August 15, 1945.
World War II was over. Asia was filled with chaos. Cities were destroyed, governments had collapsed, transportation systems barely worked, and millions of people were stranded far from home. Former comfort women suddenly found themselves abandoned across battle zones, occupied territories, and ruined military camps.
Some women were rescued by Allied forces. Others wandered through villages searching for food or help. Many had no money, no documents, and no idea how to get home. For Korean women, returning home could take months or even years. Korea itself had just been freed from decades of Japanese colonial rule, but the country was unstable and divided between Soviet and American occupation zones.
Transportation across East Asia was devastated. Some survivors crossed borders on foot. Others depended on refugee ships. Many women returned carrying severe injuries or illnesses. Se*ually transmitted infections were common. Some women could no longer have children because of repeated abuse, forced abortions, or untreated medical complications.
Others suffered permanent pain from the violence they experienced during captivity. But the emotional wounds often cut even deeper. In many Asian societies during the 1940s, se*ual assault carried enormous stigma. Women who had been forced into comfort stations were often treated with shame instead of sympathy. Some families rejected daughters who returned.
Others refused to discuss what happened. Many survivors stayed silent for decades because they feared being blamed or humiliated. Some married without ever telling their husbands. Others lived completely isolated lives. A large number never married at all. In Korea, former comfort women were largely ignored after the war because the country soon faced another catastrophe: the Korean War.
The war devastated the Korean Peninsula and pushed many personal wartime stories into silence. In China, survivors also rarely spoke publicly. China itself was entering a civil war between Communist and Nationalist forces. Villages destroyed during the Japanese occupation focused on survival, not documenting the experiences of women.
In the Philippines and Indonesia, many survivors disappeared into poverty. Some worked low-paying jobs for the rest of their lives while hiding their past from neighbors and relatives. Meanwhile, Japan, after World War II, rebuilt itself rapidly under American occupation. The country focused heavily on economic recovery and political reconstruction.
Discussions about wartime crimes often remained limited during the early postwar decades. The comfort women issue slowly faded from public conversation internationally. Many records had been destroyed. Survivors remained silent. Governments focused on Cold War politics rather than wartime justice. For years, countless victims believed the world would never know what happened to them.
But in the late 1980s, researchers and activists in South Korea and Japan began uncovering more evidence about the military system. Then came a major turning point. In 1991, Kim Hak-sun publicly testified in South Korea about being forced into a comfort station during the war.
Her testimony shocked many people because she described in detail how young girls had been deceived, transported, and repeatedly assaulted by Japanese soldiers. Soon, other survivors came forward from Korea, China, the Philippines, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. Elderly women who had spent decades hiding their trauma suddenly began speaking publicly at press conferences, lawsuits, and international hearings.
Historians also discovered wartime Japanese military documents showing direct military involvement in organizing comfort stations. These findings weakened earlier claims that private businesses alone had operated the system. In 1993, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono issued what became known as the Kono Statement.
The statement acknowledged that the Japanese military had been involved in the establishment and management of comfort stations and admitted that many women were recruited against their will. For many survivors, however, the statement did not go far enough. They wanted formal legal responsibility, direct government compensation, and a clearer apology from the Japanese state itself.
During the 1990s, lawsuits were filed against the Japanese government in Japanese courts and internationally. Former comfort women demanded recognition and justice for what they described as wartime se*ual slavery. Japan later helped create the Asian Women’s Fund in 1995, which offered payments and apology letters to some survivors using privately raised money supported by the government.
But the fund became controversial because many survivors believed compensation should come officially and directly from the Japanese state, not through a semi-private organization. Meanwhile, historians and politicians argued fiercely over the issue. Some Japanese nationalists denied coercion or claimed the women were simply wartime prostitutes.
Survivors and many scholars strongly rejected those claims, pointing to military documents, testimonies, and recruitment methods involving deception, coercion, and kidnapping. The debate spread internationally. The United Nations discussed the issue multiple times. Human rights organizations described the comfort women system as se*ual slavery.
Museums, documentaries, and memorials began appearing around the world. Every Wednesday in Seoul, South Korea, protests began taking place outside the Japanese embassy. Elderly survivors and supporters demanded justice and remembrance. These demonstrations continued year after year and became one of the longest-running protest movements in the world.
What made the issue so powerful was not only the historical evidence. It was the fact that the survivors themselves were now elderly women speaking about trauma they had carried almost their entire lives. Many suffered severe psychological damage long after the war ended. Nightmares, depression, panic attacks, and isolation were common. Some women described being terrified of men for decades.
A heartbreaking number of women died before receiving any public acknowledgment at all. Some Japanese citizens, journalists, historians, and activists worked hard to preserve survivor testimonies and push for acknowledgement. Others believed Japan had already apologized enough.
Political debates over school textbooks, memorial statues, and official statements became deeply emotional and controversial. In South Korea, comfort women became a powerful national symbol connected to the memory of Japanese colonial rule. Memorial statues honoring victims appeared in different countries, including South Korea, the United States, Germany, and the Philippines.
One famous statue, often called the “Statue of Peace,” shows a young girl sitting quietly in a chair beside an empty seat. The empty chair represents victims who never returned or never lived long enough to tell their stories. In 2015, Japan and South Korea reached another agreement intended to “finally and irreversibly” resolve the comfort women issue.
Japan contributed funds for surviving Korean victims and expressed renewed apologies. But the agreement remained controversial, especially among survivors who felt they were not properly consulted. Today, the comfort women issue still affects relations between Japan and several Asian countries. It remains one of the most painful unresolved memories of World War II in Asia.
