Comfort Women

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Comfort women or comfort girls were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. The term "comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese ianfu (慰安婦), which literally means "comforting, consoling woman".

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. 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 Japanese-Papuans) and other Japanese-occupied territories. Stations were located in Japan, China, 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 from the Netherlands and Australia with an estimated 200–400 Dutch women alone, with an unknown number of other European females.

Originally, the brothels were established to provide soldiers with a sexual outlet in order to reduce the incidence of wartime rape, a cause of rising anti-Japanese sentiment across occupied territories. However, despite the goal of reducing rape and venereal disease, the comfort stations aggravated rape and increased the spread of venereal diseases. Many women were coerced into working in the brothels. According to testimonies, some young women were abducted from their homes in countries under Imperial Japanese rule. 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. In many cases, local middlemen tasked with procuring women for the military deceived them with promises of work in factories or restaurants. In some cases, propaganda advocated equity and the sponsorship of women in higher education. Other enticements were false advertising for nursing jobs at outposts or Japanese army bases; once recruited, they were incarcerated in comfort stations both inside their nations and abroad. A significant percentage of comfort women were minors.