Comfort Women-related News

But they have one named for Teheran. Kind of puts things in perspective

I believe that was a reciprocal naming agreement with the mayor of Tehran, no?

BTW, while I can kinda, sorta understand the desire for a memorial in remembrance to the Comfort Women in Flushing (of all places!), doesn’t the naming of a street seem a bit, well, bizarre?

I mean, memorials are by their design meant to remember all sorts of events, particularly solemn ones, but street names are typically reserved to honor or celebrate some sort of person, event, or achievement, no?

I’d like to know what name the good people of Flushing have in mind for this proposed street. If it’s the name of an actual victim, then I’d say fine, but if it’s something like “Comfort Women Avenue,” then I think this is a terrible idea.

I genuinely can’t imagine anyone wanting to live or have a place of business on a street with “Comfort Women” as part of its title.

DLB

It is a little strange. If there are a lot of Koreans in Flushing, why not a street named after Young Ok Kim or Philip Jaisohn?

Ditto many of the Allied POW in Asia.

The vast majority of Korean participants in that war were unwillingly drafted. It’s a factual caveat that I though I would mention to add valuable perspective to your comment.

PS I believe the majority of Koreans conscripted by the Japanese were put to work in Japanese factories.

Sorry, but I think that is of as little significance morally as the fact that they “collaborated’, i.e., did their duty – as long as they didn’t commit crimes against prisoners.

Yes – Good on Singapore. There is no need to allow other countries to erect “monuments designed to stir hate against another country” for crimes committed more than 65 years ago.

How would Korea like “Jewish holocaust” monuments erected all over Korea – trying to stir hatred again Germany because of what happened to the Jews? That also happened over 65years ago – same thing.

Korea has to learn to respect other countries and stop pushing their issues on others who have their own issues.

If they committed abuse against prisoners then they should be tried as war criminals. No disagreement there.

Well there are Holocaust museums all over the world: http://www.science.co.il/holocaust-museums.asp . Granted we’re talking 5-7 million people, not ~1-200,000, but still, since Japan occupied Singapore it wouldn’t be out of place to have a museum documenting their crimes, including a memorial to the sex slaves, who weren’t only Koreans.

I’d recommend to read Yuki Tanaka, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes In World War II (Transitions–Asia and Asian America). I am sorry for the lengthy paragraph in regard to Korean guards:

“UTSUMI Aiko of Keisen University, Japan, conducted extensive research on
Korean POW guards and found that more than 3,000 young Korean men were “recruited” (that is “press-ganged” or otherwise forced to “volunteer”) for the prison guard corps. Many of [them] feared they would be shipped to Japan as indentured servants if they did not join the corps. Others were perhaps attracted by the high pay rates offered – 50 yen a month, a large amount at that time. [They] were classified as civilian employees rather than members of the military, and many hoped this status would prevent their transfer to the front line and … allow them to be demobilized after their two-year contract was concluded. However, on joining, the new recruits were issued with uniforms, and their basic training was very much military in character, including weapons training. Despite the difference between the promise and the reality of the guard corps, few deserted,possibly because deserters were threatened with court-martial.” (p.38)

“The Koreans were trained in Japanese and forbidden to use their native tongue. They were also given Japanese names in place of their Korean names. They were instructed to treat POWs as animals as a way of ensuring their fear and respect. They were trained primarily in the Japanese Field Service Code, and they were frequently beaten by Japanese officers, for no justifiable reason. The Geneva Convention was never mentioned. In other words they were trained as de facto Japanese soldiers, yet their rank of “kanshi-hei” (guard) was lower than that of a private, and there was no possibility of promotion. Clearly the Korean guards … were treated as second-class soldiers within the forces, bound by the same iron discipline, yet enjoying none of the prestige accorded to Japanese soldiers. Indeed, one of their unstated functions … was to give the Japanese soldiers someone to look down on, thus strengthening a sense of ethnic solidarity among the Japanese and minimizing the resentment felt by Japanese troops toward their officers.” (p.39)

There is a memorial in Singapore to the ethnic Chinese massacred by the Japanese occupation forces.

So, to engage in a bit of the sort of intellectual chicanery common among the more jejune Korean apologists here (among which faction, I don’t want to include you), why haven’t you seen fit to comment negatively on the attempt to rehabilitate and exonerate the convicted Korean war criminals, which ROKGOV itself (during the RMY administration) sanctioned. Isn’t that empowering the deniers of history and indirectly defending the people you say should be trea
ted as war criminals?

Brandon Palmer has done the most work on these numbers and he has the following estimates:

“The Japanese army mailed 273,139 draft notices to young Korean men, and 231,424 men (84.7 percent) returned the notices. The forty-two thousand notices that were not returned indicate there were ongoing problems with the koseki as well as draft dodging.”

[....]

“On December 1, 1944, the first coterie of forty-five thousand conscripted
Koreans entered the Imperial Japanese Army and ten thousand entered the Imperial Japanese Navy. An equal number of men entered the army and navy on May 1, 1945. In addition to regular conscription, Higuchi Yuichi estimated that
fifty-eight thousand Koreans were called up from the reserves (twenty-nine thousand in each 1944 and 1945) and another twenty-two thousand were mobilized as labor soldiers (in addition to the volunteer soldier systems), bringing the total number of Korean men who served in the Japanese military to 213,719.67 From “Imperial Japan’s Preparations to Conscript Koreans as Soldiers, 1942–1945″

From Imperial Japan’s Preparations to Conscript Koreans as Soldiers,1942-1945,” Palmer, Brandon. Korean Studies, Volume 31, 2007, pp. 63-78 (Article), Published by University of Hawai’i Press

Palmer estimates Korean volunteers who actually went into all the Japanese military branches at 16,830.

Those are conclusory allegations, not evidence. More preview: Many of Palmer’s conclusions, re e.g., topics like “coercion”, are not persuasively supported by the available facts.

YBS,

Here are the facts:

Before conscription of Koreans began a small number had volunteered to serve the Japanese, and from these approximately 3,000 served as guards at Allied prisoner-of-war camps. These Korean auxiliaries were given extremely low status by their Japanese masters and were brutally treated- even by the harsh standards endured by all Japanese soldiers. In their turn they earned a reputation amount Allied POWs for being particularly brutal and cruel. Camp guards were regarded as beneath the level of the lowest ranking Japanese soldier, and units of Koreans could be commanded by NCO; e.g. at one camp a Korean unit of 30 guards was commanded by a Japanese lance-corporal.

Pages 21-22, The Japanese Army 1931-45 (2): 1942-45, By Philip Jowett.

Its a really excellent book which documents Japanese war crimes from a Japanese perspectice. The author also included his theories for why the Japanese committed war crimes.

Well then, what are these available facts?

The Japanese only accepted 17k Korean men who applied. They also preferred to conscript rather than accept “volunteers” overwhelmingly so? Why is that? It was because most of those applications were bogus and the Japanese knew it.

Sperwer,

Here is the real reason why Japan didn’t accept a lot of “applicants”:

“Despite the government’s best efforts, Japanese distrust of Koreans lingered throughout the war. Japanese public opinion was divided on whether Koreans should be required, or even allowed, to serve in the mlitary. Until the war’s end, Japanese citizens harbored doubts whether Koreans were worthy of military service. The Japanese pulblic thought Korean men were unmasculine, largely because they did not serve in the military, and lacked a cultural foundation to be soliders. Some Japanese argued that arming Koreans could lead to trouble.”

Page 66-67.

Why would they be in Palmer? He had already said they were coerced.

Would it be too much to ask that we restrain ourselves from referring to our friendly neighbors across the East Sea as “Japs”?

I would only add: “Important thing is to not let it be hijacked to promote an anti- or pro- foreign, insert nationality agenda.”

So you’re saying that Palmer provides no evidence for his allegations?

Yes, he does. I’ve been outlining them this whole time. Here is more:

Page 81-81:

“As the statistics show, in 1938, only a small fraction (0.004%) of eligible men applied. In 1943, less than half (43 percent) of the trageted population applied in spite of bureaucratic coercion, propaganda and enticements. The low percentage of applications indicates the unpopularity as well as the inability of the volunteer system to legally force Koreans to submit an application.”

I remember some guy (not Korean, before some people here start having seizures) referring to the Japanese as Japs, and another guy, who seemed quite offended, exclaimed “That’s racist, man. They prefer to be called ‘Nips’.” I re-looked at their table to see if he was joking… and he wasn’t.

Why did anyone submit an application at all? Well look here:

Page 88-89:

“Government organs, especially the police, school authorities, and the aikokuhan, promoted a spirit of ‘volunteerism’ among Koreans. If a young man did not desire to volunteer, officials found pressure points to compel him to turn in an application.

The colonial bureaucracy recognized that coercion was the root of many applications and could not ignore the potential backlash of discontent. The police closely monitored Korean public opinion and acted decisively to prevent resistance. High Police sources noted that roughly half of the Korean applicants were apathetic toward the volunteer system because they had been bullied to apply for service. In a 1941 survey, the government estimated that only one-third of all applicants were true volunteers while 55 percent were forced in one way or another.”

The Japanese were concerned about the quality of their army. They knew the so called Korean “applicants” were not motivated. They didn’t want bad soldiers so they ignored most of the applicants.

Can’t you see it’s a losing cause to argue with people like him? He will never accept any evidence from sources that are not Japanese sourced. You can throw a million evidence in front of his face, he’ll still demand proof, a Japanese sanctioned proof.

Here is more comprehensive description on Korean guards at Japanese POW camps:

http://cultureandtime19.blogspot.com/2013/02/korean-guards-in-japanese-pow-camps.html

I gave a Japanese source. Utsumi Akio, cited in my comment: http://www.rjkoehler.com/2013/02/08/comfort-women-related-news/#comment-792533077

Indeed, one of their unstated functions … was to give the Japanese soldiers someone to look down on, thus strengthening a sense of ethnic solidarity among the Japanese and minimizing the resentment felt by Japanese troops toward their officers.

Reminds me of that line in Dower’s “Embracing Defeat” where he notes that, contrary to wartime propaganda, the people Japanese soldiers most wanted to kill were their commanding officers.

This is the THIRD time I’ve TRIED to explain this to you. The 800k number is completely BOGUS. The Koreans of that time knew this the Japanese knew this. Most people, upon rational reflection, will probably admit to this also. YOU are the only one that clings to it like a widower to her pension. I don’t get it. It’s an absolute mystery to me. I’ve cited the same sources to you in the past. It’s like your brain just can’t digest it.

Here is the first attempt:http://www.rjkoehler.com/2010/08/10/japanese-pm-naoto-kan-apologizes-in-tears-to-korea/#comment-97538219

Here is the second attempt, now in Google cache heaven due to a lot of comments being lost during Robert’s Disqus transition, but here is the Google link: https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=%22If+you+want+to+check+out+the+facts%2C+you+can+download+this+PhD+thesis+by+Brandon+Palmer%22

The evidence is stacked against you. Any impartial judge would say so. It’s like this weird psychosis you have that you MUST believe that the Koreans wanted to be Japanese subjects. Even without this objective evidence that Palmer and Akio bring about, there is PLENTY of Circumstantial evidence that should have raised alarm bells with anyone who has objective intelligence.

Okay, 800k applications were received. Okay, WHY were a vast majority of these applications rejected? Shouldn’t you ask that question? There is SUCH a big discrepency here. 800k vs. 17k. Ask the QUESTION. Use your HEAD. Well, if you look at it and objectively view the evidence, then clearly these applications were not accepted because a majority of them were not worth the paper they were written on. The Japanese clearly knew this. Plus, because so many of them were bogus if they even attempted to draft even half that many men then the Korean population, probably even those that filled those applications, would revolt. The Japanese were seriously concerned about that.

I think what you just did was once you saw the number, it just became way too tempting to use it without examining it critically. It fit your views perfectly and you didn’t BOTHER to do your DUE DILIGENCE. But, if you are gonna use evidence so powerful, you better do your due diligence. That’s just common sense 101. There is no excuse for it. You f*cked-up bro.

Who are you to decide which is “infinitely more dire” in a human situation? I’m not equating or passing moral judgement because I was not that person, in that situation, in that time. And neither were you.

“We” were not issuing any warning. I was issuing a warning that the thesis of there being 800k real, honest to God volunteers was to be proven very much wrong.

But since it had been done decisively before two times previously, I honestly didn’t want to do it a third time. Hence, the numerous warnings.

Your post clearly sought to elicit sympathy for the Koreans by comparing their situation to that of Jewish death camp inmates, which only makes sense if you think there is some sort of equivalence, which only makes sense if you assume some sort of applicable universal standard. I only pointed out that the actual circumstances were very different, so different as to defeat any such equation. If you think that someone faced with the certainty of imminent and painful death by poison gas is in the same situation as someone who was being paid and fed to guard people in a prison where they were often tortured and sometimes participated in the torture are in the same situation and shouldn’t be judged dissimilarly, notwithstanding that we might appropriately sympathize with both, then your moral compass is so distorted by the magnetic force of your Korean prejudices as to render you incapable of finding the door that I will be closing after you leave the room.

Yep, and Palmer who is, at best, 1/10th the scholar Fujitani is, gets it wrong.

It obviously hasn’t made you resistant to “the blandishments and Big Lies” of Japanese Newspeak.

Anyone have any idea why one of the main streets in Taipei is named Roosevelt?

Please back up that scurrilous slur with evidence of my ever having subscribed to, let alone defended, the views of Japanese nationalist wing-nuts or even mainstream Japanese historiography or opinion insofar as it seeks to deny certain elements of Japanese conduct . otherwise treat yourself to a nice hot cup of STFU.

OK. Been there, done that, but we can sort it later.

foff moron

hope you end up killed in a hideously violent manner

LOL; nice. Why don’t you come over and try to do that

You’re backsliding. LOL

Stereo: You are off the track here. Chae’s statements clearly constitute evidentiary testimony; that’s not the issue. The problem involved is determining its probative value, because (i) it apparently is not corroborated, and (ii) there apparently is insufficient additional information to conclude that he hasn’t retrospectively characterized what happened in order to avoid the social death of being branded a collaborator for admittedly joining up. Without such corroboration and without such affirmative proof of the integrity of his testimony, its evidentiary value is almost nil.

Is it a bot? The theme is consistent, but the phrasing is pretty varied.

OK, i agree up to a point. Some also need to be compared with the Poles, Finns, Swedes, Dutch, etc. etc, who joined the Wehrmacht or the Waffen SS. Others also were workers but, even if their lot was rough, not forced labor in the way that others were in the Reich and the Japanese Empire. What I am arguing is that any assessment of the situation has to take account of these significant differences in order to be honest, reasonable and persuasive.

Yes, the word honest does emerge rather mangled from your piekimchi-hole.

dear wang, i wanted to thank you for taking the time to clarify this notion of 800 thousand korean ‘volunteers’ to the japanese war machine. i think it’s evident that sperwer is an aoplogist for the japanese and no amount of cotradiction is going to contradiict that. fortunately, most people understand that koreans were an occupied people under the yoke of another. that is why sperwer’s korea narrative can only be told on the net and not on tv if you know what i mean.

Have a good weekend.
I, on the other hand, will probably be digging out from under 18 inches of snow..

All PhD dissertations should be available on ProQuest Academic.

http://www.proquest.com/en-US/catalogs/databases/detail/pqdt.shtml

Any university ID should be able to grant you access. You should check with the university librarian to see what your school’s specific proxy is.

My copy is over 30 megabytes and I haven’t seen a email account that would accept those sized files.

Brandon Palmer’s PhD dissertation is titled “Japan’s Mobilization of Koreans for War, 1937-1945,” University of Hawaii.

I can’t speak for the Koreatowns elsewhere, but the one in Los Angeles does not have any massage parlors whatsoever. Those barber poles are actually used to denote legitimate barber shops. It’s like dog soup restaurants. Koreans don’t seem to have any visible shops in the U.S. that serve dog soup. I’m not saying that they don’t exist. They are just very hard to spot and probably a lot less common. Same with Korean massage parlors. Most of the more overt (i.e. have signs advertising “massage”) Asian massage parlors are in Thai town or Little Saigon.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a fair amount of prositution in Korean enclaves. I don’t know if it’s anymore prevalent than anywhere else in society though.

The Koreatown in Garden Grove, CA is sleepy boring.

This is a valid point. Won could have easily changed his position after Japan became the losers. However, let’s graft on Japanese survey data to gauge if Won’s testimony is plausible. The Japanese colonial government’s own contemporary (i.e. before Japan lost the war) survey data would indicate that 55% of the apparent “volunteers” were not really volunteers but just signed it to get the Japanese police, educators, officials off their backs. In other words, they indicated their belief that they were “coerced.” 12% were still considered suspect and only 33% of the volunteer applicants were deemed as “genuine” by the colonial government.

Thus, if you graft this data on to the testimony as a probability test, there is roughly a 67% chance that what Won was saying was the truth at the time he filled in and filed the application. Things that Won were saying, and those with similar stories, were likely the norm, not the exception. Koreans who enthusiastically wanted to die in a banzai charge were the exception.

It’s mandatory reading in Italian schools…i personally hated it to the core. My mom family lost everything when they were driven out of Dalmatia by Tito scum. I wasn’t really in the mood to read stories about bad evil fascists/nazis when it was the commies who took everything from us.

Three generations down all my relatives are still consumed with hatred for Slavic people, i learned to kinda let go over time. I went to Zara/Zadar, Croatia a few years ago. While ethnic Croats honestly will never top the list of my favourite people, i did finally realise the obvious truth: they’re human beings like the rest of us.

Whatever issues we might have, it is wise to work toward a common, accepted solution to put all these grievances behind us…

Sorry for stating the obvious

It isn’t the most servile thing i’ve seen nations do for a few barrels of oil

Mr. Cho Gap-Je, a conservative columnist, wrote an article that suggests changing half of Teheran St. to Truman St. and erecting a statue of President Truman. He wrote his great admiration for President Truman, while a bit critical to General MacArthur.

I understand why they want to bring the third party countries though. The fear is linked to people like GBevers – the fear is that, without an active voice confronting the Japanese claims in the international court of opinions, Koreans would be surrounded in the future with the rest of the world going “Hey! Quit accusing Japan of that sex slave crap! Everyone knows they were willing prostitutes!” while waving the Rising Sun flag and singing the latest international hit, Kimigayo 2, the Emperor’s Revenge.

Irrational fear, of course, but understandable.

or even mainstream Japanese historiography or opinion insofar as it
seeks to deny the unsavory elements of Japanese conduct vis-a-vis
Koreans

LOL- who the hell uses words like vis-a-vis? Are you a community college “professor” or a college freshman? Just use “treatment of” or “conduct towards”. Geez, talk about “Newspeak”.

Well, I’m biased, but yeah, she is

Proper idiomatic implementation dictates sesquipedalian loquaciousness.

I would rather recommend that you propose a different woman. The first woman who came forward was Kim Hak-sun, who was sold at 14 to her step-father at 40 yen (5 M won, just for a measure of current value). When she was 17 (in 1941), her step-father took her to Beijing. According to her description, she became a comfort woman in northern China, but she escaped the place with her Korean customer to Shanghai within the same year.

I am a great fan of Mun Ok-chu. She still has many secret admirers in Japan because of her amazing life story and courageous court battle to seek justice which was denied.

I hope many, many street should be named for her honor. It will teach a great lesson for the Japanese fascists about the true justice by people.

A really weak attempt to add insult to injury. Why am I not surprised that you have neither the integrity to acknowledge, or the grace to apologize, for your earlier slur when called on it – just sophomoronic jibes

That’s redundant.

But he was just making fun of youe petulant stupidity, so by your stds no foul

TK uses no ethnically charged verbiage in his response to you. However, you did in yours. I know you have been away from the states for quite some time, but using ethnically charged terms as a comeback is not considered acceptable in polite conversation. I don’t know if in your geography and/or period in time it was different, but it’s not acceptable any more.

Just keep your slurs race and ethnically neutral and everyone’s happy. Feel free to call them stupid or asinine or maniacal, or whatever superlative is out there.