Voices of the Korean Comfort Women

by Chungmoo Choi (Editor), Hyunah Yang (Editor)

An innumerable number of young women were taken from Korea during the Pacific War to provide sexual services to Japanese soldiers. These women, including teenagers, euphemistically referred to in Japanese documents as Comfort Women, were shipped to the vastly expanded battlefronts throughout the Japan-occupied territories covering Northern China to Myanmar and to the South Pacific Islands. Many of these girls died, were killed or abandoned during and after the war, but a small percentage of them returned only to face yet another devastating war at home and lasting social stigma. In Voices of the Korean Comfort Women , nine survivors tell their traumatic life stories as to how they were taken, how they had been treated with atrocities at the Comfort Stations, and how they had survived through not only the Pacific War but also the Korean War and beyond. These often-harrowing personal testimonies are each expanded by the interviewer’s observational notes, thereby providing poignant contextual information. This English translation of vital oral history, underpinned with theoretically informed guides, will be invaluable to students and scholars of Asian history, the Pacific War and wartime sexual violence against women as well as those interested in historical trauma and human rights.

Genres: Nonfiction

220 pages, Paperback

Published January 17, 2023

Reviews

[Sydney Southern · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the center of my History Capstone. I read it in one sitting. Each woman who told their story has since passed, but I feel this book will make them live forever.

[Michael Tatum · Rating 2 out of 5]

The narrative was distorted by the author's insistence on including every word and sound uttered during their interviews even when it did nothing to add to the narrative.