Comfort women

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". During World War II, Japanese troops forced hundreds of thousands of women from Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, China, and other countries into brothels where they were sexually enslaved and repeatedly raped. Many women died or committed suicide due to brutal mistreatment and sustained physical and emotional distress. After the war, Japan's acknowledgment of the comfort women's plight was minimal, lacking a full apology and appropriate restitution, which damaged Japan's reputation in Asia for decades. 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 mixed race 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, mostly from the Netherlands and Australia with an estimated 200–400 Dutch women alone, with an unknown number of other European women. 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.