Victims of Sexual Violence in War: Invisible Trauma Amidst Divergent Social Attitudes in Taiwan
This article is part of the 14th issue of LEAP — Voices of Youth e-letter. Subscribe now.
During World War II, women from Japan’s colonies in East Asia and Southeast Asia were forced to the front lines to provide sexual service to male officers and soldiers and became known as “comfort women”. Taiwan was one of the Japanese colonies at the time. More than 2,000 women from Taiwan became victims of sexual violence in war.
Due to lack of sufficient income and continued losses over the years, Taiwan’s one and only museum commemorating comfort women, AMA Museum [1], will close this November and become a part of history.
Yet, the issue of comfort women receives a lot of attention in South Korea, where also shares colonial and comfort women’s history. In South Korea, many people have set up comfort women memorial statues using personal names. Various organizations have also established different spaces to value the issue of comfort women, including the memorial parks or elderly care services specifically for comfort women. Other organizations have developed creative and cultural products based on the works from comfort women, advocating for comfort women with innovative business models.
In similar historical situations to South Korea, Taiwan experienced Japanese colonial power in WWII, and many Taiwanese women became comfort women under the threaten from Japanese army. Why does the Taiwanese public pay little attention to comfort women in comparison with people in South Korea?
Social justice evades AMAs due to divergent social attitudes
In On Taiwan, a manga published by a Japanese manga artist Kobayashi Yoshinori, it stated that Taiwanese businessperson Hsu Wen-lung once said that Japan did not force Taiwanese women to become comfort women. Hsu believed that every woman held the hope to enter the army because comfort women were a symbol of “success” as they would receive a stable income.
Upon hearing the words, a comfort woman named Ahtao said sadly: “I have lived with low self-esteem and no self-respect for my whole life just because I was a comfort woman. I feel aggrieved by Hsu Wen-long’s statement. Some Japanese people are trying their best to help us, then why Hsu Wen-long, a Taiwanese, treats his fellow in this way?”
There are different judgments in Taiwan society regarding history under Japanese colonial domination. Some praise urban development and modernization at that period, while others criticize the oppression from the Japanese colonial government. Under different interpretations of history and politics, comfort women often become the bargaining chips in politics. Few people face the historical truth of Ama’s victimization.
“We do not want this issue to become a means of partisan attacks.” Following the comfort women issue for a long time, Taiwan Women’s Rescue Foundation (TWRF) Executive Director Tu Ying-chiu addressed that in the complex political, historical, and social context of Taiwan, the issue of comfort women could be manipulated for political gains. “We believe that the issue of comfort women is the history of oppression on gender and human rights, and it should be regarded as the same as White Terror.”
However, since the first Ama spoke up in 1992, Taiwan society never brought substantial public pressure on Japan, and Taiwan’s official transitional justice policy also hardly touches on the comfort women issue. After 30 years, Amas passed away one after another in this social atmosphere, unable to see the social justice they deserve to be served.
See the complex historical facts of Ama’ suffering from the perspective of gender and human rights
Taiwan is still trapped in the dispute of “voluntary versus forced” under divergent social attitudes. Many people believe that comfort women have no right to compensation since they were voluntary.
“Since the Japanese used the term ‘recruitment,’ many people may believe that these AMAs joined the army willingly,” said Tu Ying-chiu. “Even if some have signed the contract ‘voluntarily’, it was due to a number of uncontrollable structural circumstances beyond.”
Historian Chu Te-lan points out in her book “Taiwan Comfort Women” that during the Japanese occupation, many women from poor families entered the labor market. Under economic pressure, the work of comfort women posed a great economic incentive, and the way of so-called recruitment could make it difficult to recognize the deceptive intentions. According to statistics, before entering the comfort station, 95% of the comfort women believed that they would serve as nurses or cleaners in the front lines of the war. Chu believes that since Taiwanese soldiers in the Japanese army in WWII were able to receive compensation, comfort women who suffered during the same period should also receive an apology and compensation from Japan.
Du Ying-chiu analyzed further that to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, the Japanese army specifically recruited girls without sexual experience. When the girls were sent to thousands of miles away from home with no familiar people around, they had no way to escape or no one to ask for help. “It is just like human trafficking. They have no alternative but be in sexual exploitation in a foreign land.”
Sociologist Chen Mei-hua once wrote that the dichotomy of “voluntary versus forced” cannot fully describe the situation of comfort women at the time. The intersectionality of sex, class, and colonialism must be seen in the life stories of these AMAs. Chen said that the Japanese army forced comfort women to provide sexual service overtime in comfort stations where the sanitary conditions were extremely poor, which left AMAs with permanent physical and psychological pain. Whether they had volunteered or were forced, comfort women were all subjected to suffering.
From the perspective of gender and human rights, no woman should be treated this way. If the public in Taiwan could better realize the stories behind each Ama, they would understand it was such a painful and unbearable journey for comfort women.
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Note 1: Ama means “grandma” in the Taiwanese language. Since comfort women are all advanced in age now, they are called Ama or grandma in public, as is the case in this article.
LEAP — Voices of Youth is a monthly e-letter with a focus on the progress for gender equality and women’s status in Taiwan, including the LGBTQ+ community and gender issues in schools. Click here to subscribe.
Also in This Issue:
AMA Museum: Lighting a Lamp to Shine on the Dark History of Comfort Women
TWRF empowers Taiwanese comfort women to look back on their life experience, also brings up gender and human rights issues to the public.
Author: Lin Si-hou
Freelance journalist exploring gender and public issues.
Photographer: Chen Wan-zhen
A journalist and photographer who understands the society and introspects herself by constantly listening to people from varying backgrounds. Chen double majored in Philosophy and Communication Studies.
