Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says he will not review historic Japanese apology for military use of wartime sex slaves, presented by previous administrations, his government announced. "We must be humble about history. It must not be politicized or turned into a diplomatic issue," Abe said. During the war, more than 200,000 Asian women served in its brothels by troops of the Imperial Japanese Army. China and South Korea have accused Japan of trying to rewrite history. The Historical Truth Comfort Women were women and girls forced into a prostitution corps created by the Empire of Japan during World War II. The name "comfort women" is a translation of a Japanese name ianfu (慰安婦). Ianfu is a euphemism for shōfu (娼婦) meaning “prostitute(s)”. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Why violent video games should not be banned'? Get an original essay Estimates vary as to the number of women involved, with figures ranging from as low as 20,000 to 200,000 and even as high as at 360,000 to 410,000, but the exact numbers are still the subject of research and debate. Many women came from occupied countries, including Korea, China, and the Philippines, although women from Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, and other Japanese-occupied territories been used as military “comfort centers”. Stations were located in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, then in Malaysia, Thailand, Burma, New Guinea, Hong Kong, Macau and French Indochina. Smaller numbers of women of European descent from the Netherlands and Australia were also involved. According to accounts, young women from countries under Japanese imperial control were kidnapped from their homes. In many cases, women were also lured by promises of work in factories or restaurants. Once recruited, the women were incarcerated in “comfort centers” abroad. Japanese military prostitution Military correspondence of the Imperial Japanese Army shows that the aim of facilitating comfort was to prevent rapes committed by Japanese army personnel and thus prevent the rise of hostility among the population of the occupied areas. Given the well-organized and open nature of prostitution in Japan, it seemed logical that there would be organized prostitution in the service of the Japanese armed forces. The Japanese military established comfort stations to prevent venereal disease and rape by Japanese soldiers, to provide comfort to soldiers, and to prevent espionage. However, the toilet blocks did not constitute real solutions to the first two problems. According to Japanese historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi, they made the problems worse. Yoshimi asserted: “The Imperial Japanese Army feared most that the soldiers' latent discontent might explode into riot and revolt. This is why she provided women. » The first "comfort station" was established in the Japanese concession in Shanghai in 1932. Previously, comfort women were Japanese prostitutes who volunteered for such services. However, as Japan continued its military expansion, the army found itself short of Japanese volunteers and turned to the local population to coerce women to serve in these positions. Many women responded to calls to work as factory workers or nurses and did not knowthat they were forced into sexual slavery. At the start of the war, Japanese authorities recruited prostitutes through conventional means. In urban areas, conventional advertising through intermediaries has been used alongside kidnappings. Middlemen advertised in newspapers circulating in Japan and the Japanese colonies of Korea, Taiwan, Manchukuo, and China. These sources quickly dried up, particularly from Japan. The Foreign Ministry opposed issuing new travel visas for Japanese prostitutes, saying it tarnished the image of the Japanese Empire. The military turned to acquiring comfort women from outside mainland Japan, especially Korea and occupied China. Many women were tricked or defrauded into joining military brothels. The situation worsened as the war progressed. Under the strain of the war effort, the army became unable to provide sufficient supplies to Japanese units; in response, units made up the difference by demanding or looting supplies from locals. On the front lines, particularly in the countryside where intermediaries were rare, the military often directly demanded that local leaders provide women for brothels. When local inhabitants, particularly the Chinese, were considered hostile, Japanese soldiers enforced the "Three All Policy", which included indiscriminate kidnapping and rape of local civilians. The U.S. Office of War Information report on interviews with 20 comfort women in Burma found that the girls were lured by offers of lots of money, the chance to pay off family debts, a job easy and the prospect of a new life in a country. new land, Singapore. Based on these misrepresentations, many girls enlisted for overseas missions and were rewarded with an advance of a few hundred yen. Treatment of Comfort Women About three-quarters of comfort women died and most survivors remained infertile due to sexual trauma or sexually transmitted disease. According to Japanese soldier Yasuji Kaneko. "The women were screaming, but we didn't care whether they lived or died. We were the emperor's soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in villages, we raped without hesitation." Beatings and physical torture are said to be commonplace. Japanese revisionist historian Ikuhiko Hata claims that Kaneko's testimony is false since he testified about the Nanjing Massacre in 1937, but he was not in the army until 1940. Ten Dutch women were taken from force from prison camps in Java by officers of the Imperial Japanese Army to be forced there. sex slaves in February 1944. They were systematically beaten and raped day and night in what was called a "comfort station." As a victim of the incident, in 1990, Jan Ruff-O'Herne testified before a committee of the United States House of Representatives: "Many stories have been told of the horrors, the brutalities, the suffering and the starvation of Dutch women in Japanese prison camps. But one story has never been told, the most shameful story of the worst human rights violations committed by the Japanese during World War II: the story of the "comfort women", the jugun ianfu, and how these women were forcibly captured against their will, to provide sexual services to the Imperial Japanese Army. In the so-called “comfort station,” I was systematically beaten and raped day and night..