Comfort women were forced to serve soldiers who
had destroyed their lives.

They were torn from their homes, many through lies and kidnappings,
and were thrown into a nightmare with no escape and no mercy.

One system of control turned entire
generations into fear, silence, and lasting pain.

The idea of using women for soldiers’ “comfort”
didn’t begin during World War II.

It started years earlier, when Japan was already expanding its
empire in Asia.

In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria, a large region in northeastern China rich in
coal, iron, and farmland.

Japan wanted these resources to fuel its growing industries and
to strengthen its military power.

After taking Manchuria, Japan set up a puppet state called
Manchukuo, ruled by officials loyal to Tokyo.

This invasion marked the beginning of Japan’s
aggressive push across Asia.

Villages in Manchuria soon felt the harsh presence of Japanese soldiers.

Local people faced violence, forced labor, and land seizures.

Many women were attacked by
troops during this time, and reports of assaults spread quickly.

Chinese families lived in constant
fear, as soldiers often acted without restraint.

The Japanese army began to realize that such
actions not only caused resistance from local people but also attracted international
criticism.

So, they decided to control the problem in their own way.

Instead
of letting soldiers attack women freely, they created a system of controlled brothels
where the abuse would be hidden behind closed doors.

This was presented as a way to “keep order”
and to prevent disease among soldiers, but the real purpose was to give the military control
over something they knew they could not stop.

In 1932, the first official “comfort
station” was set up in Shanghai, China.

This was right after the Shanghai Incident, when
Japanese troops clashed with Chinese forces in the city.

Shanghai was chosen because
it was a major center of war activity, with thousands of soldiers stationed there.

The army believed that if they placed women inside organized stations, soldiers would line up
there instead of attacking women on the streets.

At first, most of the women brought into
these stations came from Japan itself.

The military thought that
using Japanese women would make it easier to control the system
and reduce international criticism.

But Japan’s empire kept expanding.

By the
mid-1930s, the war in China was spreading, and Japanese forces moved into more and
more territory.

The number of soldiers grew, and so did the demand for women.

Soon, the army
realized it could not rely only on Japanese women.

They began to look elsewhere, targeting
women from the lands they occupied.

When the Second Sino-Japanese War began
in 1937, the system of comfort stations grew quickly.

Japan’s army moved deeper
into China, taking city after city.

The battles were not just between soldiers;
ordinary people were caught in the middle.

Towns were bombed, villages burned, and
millions were forced to flee their homes.

The worst came in December 1937, when Japanese
troops captured Nanjing, the capital of China at the time.

What followed became known as
the Nanjing Massacre.

For about six weeks, the city was turned into a place of terror.

Soldiers went door to door, dragging people out.

Entire families were executed.

Homes,
shops, and temples were looted and set on fire.

Historians estimate that at least 200,000
people were killed, though some believe the number could be even higher.

Tens of thousands
of women, from teenagers to elderly grandmothers, were brutally assaulted.

Many were killed
afterward to silence them.

Rivers near the city were filled with bodies.

The
cruelty shocked even foreign witnesses, such as Western missionaries and businessmen
who were still in the city.

They wrote reports, took photographs, and tried to protect civilians
in what became known as the Nanjing Safety Zone, but they could only save a small number
compared to the vast suffering around them.

For the Japanese military, this massacre
showed them that their soldiers could not be stopped from attacking women, but they
wanted to hide the crimes and keep control.

The government and high-ranking officers again
decided to expand the system of comfort stations.

They thought it would make their soldiers “more
disciplined,” reduce the chance of disease, and lower the risk of scandals that
could damage Japan’s image abroad.

By 1938, comfort stations were being built
wherever the army went.

It was no longer only Japanese women trapped inside them.

Women
from Korea were taken in large numbers.

Similarly, women from Taiwan, which
Japan had controlled since 1895, were also taken in.

And as the war
spread south into Southeast Asia, women from the Philippines, Indonesia, and
Burma were also dragged into the system.

The comfort system expanded just like
the war did.

Every time Japanese soldiers occupied a new city or a new base,
comfort stations were set up nearby.

What had started as a small system in Shanghai
had now become a vast network, stretching across almost every battlefield where Japanese troops
were stationed.

For the women caught in it, this meant that the war was not only fought with
guns and bombs, it was fought on their bodies too.

The ways women were taken into the system were
not all the same.

Some were kidnapped outright.

Soldiers or police would come into a village,
take the girls they wanted, and leave.

Others were tricked with lies.

Recruiters spread
promises of well-paying jobs in factories, restaurants, or as nurses helping the army.

For poor families, these offers sounded like a chance for their daughters to have a
better life.

Parents who were struggling to survive sometimes agreed, not realizing they
were sending their daughters into slavery.

In Korea, which had been under
Japanese colonial rule since 1910, the problem grew especially large.

Japan treated
Korea as a colony to be controlled and exploited.

Korean language and culture were suppressed,
schools were forced to teach in Japanese, and many young men were taken as laborers
for Japan’s factories and mines.

Families already lived under strict surveillance, with
police and officials monitoring daily life.

Because of this tight control, it was easier for
the Japanese military to target Korean girls and women.

Young girls vanished from villages without
warning.

Some were taken from their homes at night.

Others disappeared on the way to school.

By
the early 1940s, Korea had become the main source of women for the comfort system.

Historians
believe that more than half of all comfort women came from Korea alone.

This was possible
because the Japanese government already controlled the police, schools, and local officials
there, making it easy to target young girls.

The deception often became
open violence.

Military police, with the help of local collaborators, carried
out raids.

They stormed into houses, schools, and even markets, grabbing girls as young
as 12 or 13.

Families who tried to resist were threatened or beaten.

Once a girl was
taken, her family almost never saw her again.

Women were also transported across long
distances.

Some were sent hundreds or even thousands of miles away from their homes,
moved by trains or ships to places they had never heard of.

This made it nearly
impossible for them to escape or return.

Once inside the comfort system, there was no way
out.

They were trapped in a cycle of violence, hidden from the world, and forced to endure
horrors they could never have imagined.

The stations were usually small, hidden
buildings set up close to army bases, so soldiers could visit easily.

Inside, the
women were locked in cramped rooms with barely enough space to move.

Each woman had her own
small cubicle, often with only a bed or mat.

Soldiers lined up outside, waiting for their
turn.

For many women, it meant facing dozens of men in a single day, sometimes over
20 or 30, until their bodies gave out.

There was no choice.

Refusing a soldier meant
severe punishment.

Beatings with sticks, whips, or fists were common.

Some women were tortured
as examples to scare others into obedience.

In the worst cases, refusal led to execution.

Fear hung in every corner of those stations.

The daily living conditions were harsh.

Food was
poor and often not enough.

Women were given only rice, watery soup, or scraps left over from
the soldiers.

They were malnourished and weak but still forced to keep working.

Hygiene was
almost nonexistent.

There was little clean water, and women had no privacy.

Many contracted
venereal diseases from the constant abuse.

The Japanese army did provide “treatments,”
but they were crude and painful.

In some cases, women were injected with mercury or
other chemicals that poisoned their bodies.

The so-called medicine did not
heal them.

It only caused more suffering.

Pregnancy was another horror.

Many women became
pregnant, but carrying a child was not allowed.

Those who did were forced to undergo abortions,
often performed without proper medical care.

These operations left many women sterile for the rest
of their lives.

Others were injected with drugs meant to prevent pregnancy, but the side effects
damaged their health permanently.

For some, childbirth happened in secret, with no help or
safety.

When babies were born, they were often killed immediately or abandoned, because the
army did not allow infants in the stations.

The women lived in constant pain, physically and mentally.

Days blurred into nights.

Some did not survive even a few months.

The scale of the comfort women system
was enormous.

Historians estimate that between 200,000 and 400,000 women were forced
into it.

The numbers are not exact because many records were burned or destroyed by the
Japanese army at the end of the war to cover up the crime.

Survivors also rarely came
forward at the time, so much evidence was lost.

But even the lowest estimates show how
massive and widespread the system truly was.

The women were taken from almost every place
Japan occupied, including Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Burma, and Indonesia.

Even women from the Pacific islands, such as Guam and Micronesia, were forced into comfort
stations when Japanese soldiers arrived there.

The system did not stop with Asian women.

When Japan occupied European colonies, they also captured European women.

In the
Dutch East Indies, which is now Indonesia, Dutch women and girls were rounded up and placed
in comfort camps in 1942.

Some were very young, only teenagers, and they suffered the same
abuse as the others.

This showed that the system did not discriminate; it targeted
anyone the Japanese army could control.

By the early 1940s, comfort stations had become
a regular feature of Japanese military life.

They were found in nearly every place
where Japanese troops were stationed.

From the frozen landscapes of Manchuria in
northern China to the tropical jungles of Papua New Guinea.

From the mountains
of Burma to the scattered islands of Micronesia.

Wherever the Japanese
army marched, the system followed.

It grew alongside the empire’s expansion,
spreading its cruelty across half the world.

It was a network of abuse built on war.

The individual suffering was unbearable.

Young girls faced lines of soldiers.

Some were beaten to death when they resisted.

Others
tried to escape but were shot on the spot.

Many women committed suicide, unable
to take the endless abuse.

Those who survived carried lifelong scars.

Bodies
were broken, and minds never healed.

The war destroyed their childhoods,
their futures, and their chance at a normal life.

And the shame forced upon them
meant many never spoke about it for decades.

Even in such terrible conditions, some women tried
to resist.

They looked for any chance to escape, even though the risk was death.

In 1943, in
Burma, a group of Korean women attempted to flee from a comfort station.

They managed
to slip away for a short time, but Japanese soldiers quickly caught them.

To send a message
to the others, the women were beaten and then executed in front of everyone.

The soldiers wanted
to show that resistance would never be tolerated.

Stories like this happened in many
places.

Escape was almost impossible because comfort stations were always surrounded
by soldiers.

Even if a woman managed to get away, she had no food, no map, and no way to
return home.

She was often in a foreign land where she didn’t know the language.

Local civilians were too afraid to help, since anyone caught helping could
also be punished by the Japanese army.

Punishment was also used on women who could
no longer serve.

If a woman became too weak, too injured, or too sick to keep working,
she was considered useless to the soldiers.

Some were beaten to force them back to work
despite their illness.

Others were abandoned, left without food or medicine
until they died.

In many cases, women were quietly taken away and executed
so the army would not have to care for them.

In the Philippines, survivors later remembered
how sick women were sometimes taken into the nearby forests by soldiers and never seen again.

It was understood what had happened; they had been killed, so they would not be a burden.

In other
places, such as Manchuria and Indonesia, women who tried to resist orders were tied up, tortured,
or even used as targets in military training.

These punishments kept the rest of
the women living in constant fear.

They knew that any sign of disobedience,
illness, or weakness could mean death.

By 1944, Japan’s empire was finally collapsing
under the pressure of Allied advances.

Cities were being bombed, supply routes were cut
off, and troops were retreating from every front.

But the comfort stations still operated,
and conditions inside grew much worse.

Food and medicine were scarce, and women often went hungry.

Soldiers, frustrated and fearful of defeat, became even more violent, taking out their anger
on the women who had no way to protect themselves.

When Japan finally surrendered in August
1945, the system fell apart almost overnight.

Many women were simply abandoned where they
were, left without food, shelter, or money.

Some were killed by retreating soldiers who wanted
to destroy evidence of what had happened.

Others were stranded in distant lands, far away from
their families, with no way to return home.

In Indonesia, Dutch women who had been taken into
the camps were discovered by Allied soldiers in terrible condition, starving, sick, and
deeply traumatized.

In Korea and China, thousands of survivors made
it back to their villages, but instead of being welcomed, many were
rejected by their own families because of the stigma and shame attached to their
suffering.

This left them isolated and alone.

For decades after 1945, their voices
were not heard.

Many stayed silent out of fear of shame.

Governments
also avoided the topic.

Japan, trying to rebuild and become an ally
of the West, denied responsibility.

Because of this, their stories remained
hidden for almost half a century.

That changed in 1991, when a Korean woman
named Kim Hak-sun bravely stepped forward.

She was the first to openly testify about
her experience as a comfort woman.

Her words broke the silence that had surrounded
the issue for so long.

Once she spoke, it gave strength to others.

Soon, more
survivors from Korea, the Philippines, China, Taiwan, and the Netherlands
also began to share their own stories.

These testimonies shocked the world.

Many people
outside Asia had never even heard of the comfort women system before.

The survivors’ voices turned
a hidden history into an international issue.

Their bravery also pushed historians, journalists, and human rights groups to investigate further,
gather evidence, and demand recognition.

For the women themselves, speaking out was
not easy.

Many were already elderly and had lived with their trauma in silence for most
of their lives.

Yet they chose to tell the truth so the world would know what had happened,
and so younger generations would never forget.

They wanted more than just sympathy.

They
wanted justice.

Many filed lawsuits in Japan and in international courts, asking
for an official apology from the Japanese government and financial compensation as
recognition of the suffering they had endured.

At first, Japan’s response was slow and
careful.

For years, officials avoided direct responsibility, often saying that
private contractors had run the stations, not the government.

This angered survivors
who knew the army had been directly involved.

A turning point came in 1993, when Chief Cabinet
Secretary Yohei Kono issued what became known as the Kono Statement.

In it, Japan admitted
that the military had played a role in setting up and running the comfort stations.

While
this was the first official acknowledgment, many survivors felt it lacked the
full weight of a sincere apology.

In 1995, Japan created the Asian Women’s
Fund.

It was meant to provide money and medical support to former comfort women.

But
the money came mostly from private donations, not from the Japanese government itself.

Survivors in Korea, the Philippines, and other countries rejected this, saying it was
a way for Japan to avoid true responsibility.

For them, only direct government compensation
and a clear, formal apology would be enough.

The legal battles went on through
the 2000s and beyond.

Survivors, now elderly, still gathered outside Japanese
embassies in Seoul, Manila, and other cities, holding signs and demanding recognition.

They
stood in the heat, in the rain, and in the cold, week after week, because they
wanted the world to remember.

By the 2010s, the number of surviving comfort
women had dropped sharply.

In South Korea, where many survivors lived, only a few dozen remained by the mid-2010s.

Each
year, fewer voices could speak.

Yet their struggle made history.

International organizations, human rights groups, and even governments
began to recognize comfort women as victims of one of the largest organized se*ual
slavery systems in modern history.

Statues were built in their honor.

Memorials
were raised.

The world finally began to listen.