Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military : Includes New United Nations Human Rights Report (Science and Human Rights Series, 1)

During World War II, an estimated 200,000 girls and young women were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese imperial military - which was authorised by the highest levels of Japan's wartime government. The system resulted in the largest and most methodical mass rape of women in recorded history. Japan's Kem pei tai political police tricked or abducted females as young as eleven years old and imprisoned them in military rape camps known as comfort stations situated throughout Asia. These comfort women were forced to service as many as 50 Japanese soldiers a day. They were beaten, starved, made to endure abortions or injections with sterilizing drugs. Only a few women survived and those that did suffered permanent physical and emotional damage. Little was known about the true scope of this crime against humanity until 1991, when after almost fifty years of silence, seventy-four year old Kim Hak-Soon told the world about her experiences as a comfort woman. Her testimony gave others the strength to come forward. The Washington Coalition for Comfort Women (WCCW) carefully transcribed and translated the stories of nineteen survivors and these are now presented in this book. This not simply a history book. Comfort Women Speak documents the lives of nineteen courageous women who continue to fight to bring to account one of the most powerful governments in the world.