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Behind the `On Taiwan' debate

A-tao, an 80-year-old former comfort woman demands that business leader Shi Wen-lung and Japanese cartoonist Yoshinori Kobayashi apologize for their remarks about comfort women during a press conference on Feb. 27. TAIPEI TIMES FILE PHOTO

Since 1992, when it was discovered that Taiwanese women had been recruited as so called "comfort women" -- military prostitutes -- for the Japanese army during Word War II, the issue has received surprisingly little attention in Taiwan.

Only with the arrival of Yoshinori Kobayashi's comic On Taiwan (台灣論), has the comfort women issue loomed large in both the media and everyday discussions.

One could hardly have imagined the effect the comic would have on Taiwan's media -- many of which have launched campaigns against the Japanese right-wing activist's book.

But while opposition politicians have mounted vicious attacks against the author and two business leaders, Shi Wen-lung (許文龍) and Tsai Kun-tsan (蔡焜燦), there are also supporters of the book who condemn the campaigns against it as being politically-motivated.

Both opponents and proponents of the book have been using Kobayashi's presentation of Taiwan's history to strengthen their political ideologies. In fact, the differing opinions among Taiwanese on the issue of national identity underlie the debate of Kobayashi's book.

For those who identify with China ideologically, both Kobayashi's accounts of the Nanking Massacre and his acknowledgement of Taiwan as an independent entity are irresponsible and dangerous.

However, those who strongly maintain Taiwan is independent of China believe On Taiwan provides a rare view which differs from the prominently Chinese accounts of Taiwan's status. With pro-unification forces lodged in intense attacks against Shi, a long-time supporter of Taiwan independence, Taiwan's ever-present ethnic and ideological divisions have been widened.

Deception, not abduction

When Shi first came forward to speak about the comfort women issue, he maintained Japanese military personnel did not use force or coercion to gather Tai-wanese women and girls. He said the women were sold by their poverty-stricken parents and that was just a fact of life at that difficult time.

The remarks caused such a heated row that Shi offered a written apology last Tuesday, admitting his knowledge on the issue was limited which resulted in misunderstandings which hurt survivors.

In fact, many people in Taiwan agree with Shi based on their own experiences or those of acquaintances. Arguably, the view that the Japanese military did not directly round up Taiwanese women by force is correct since private operators and procurers carried out the job for the military.

And in colonized areas, there was a system whereby the officials did not do the dirty work but had procurers do it for them.

In Taiwan, the methods of recruiting comfort women differed from those in Japan's occupied territories.

While there was a considerable number of abductions in China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific region, there were fewer instances in the Japanese colonies of Korea and Taiwan.

According to research on the issue, the first recruiting method was for the army in the field to appoint a director or private operator and send him or her to Taiwan to recruit comfort women.

The second is that the army in the field sent requests to army units in Japan or Taiwan, which would then choose an agent to round up comfort women.

Having received 92 complaints since 1992, investigations by the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation have confirmed 68 of them were in fact former comfort women. And it was found that a majority of them were deceived about the nature of the work they were being forced into.

They were told by procurers that they would be transporting food for military cafeterias and bars, doing menial tasks, or working as waitresses and barmaids, but not selling their bodies.

Survivors' tales

A-tao (阿桃), an 80-year-old survivor, said she was applying for a position as a cook in the South China Sea at the age of 20 only to find she was deceived and forced to be a comfort woman.

Lu Mang-mei (盧滿妹), a 75-year-old survivor, said at the age of 17 she accepted an offer from a private procurer to be waitress at a restaurant on Hainan Island, and not until she arrived did she realize it was an establishment for comfort women.

"Thinking it was only a one-year contract and thinking of the pay, I myself and the other two girls decided to go. We were very poor at that time and expected to improve the living standards of our families by working there," said Lu, whose reasons for accepting the job offer are the same as most.

Aside from the private procurers, Taiwan's police were also involved in the rounding up of comfort women.

Lin Shen-chung (林沈中), a 72-year-old aboriginal survivor said that at the age of 16, the chief of police recruited her and three other girls to sew clothes and buttons for the Japanese army stationed in her township. It was not long after she began working their that she was raped by Japanese soldiers and forced to provide sex services for them.

"Our tribe is very strict about chastity, and might end a woman's life if they find a violation, so I could not tell my family and could only hide the pain in my heart," Lin said.

While the Korean victims of Japan's wartime sexual slavery system initiated a movement for reparation in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was not until 1992 that records concerning the recruitment of Taiwanese comfort women was made known to the public.

Three cables between Japan's army commander and the head army officer in Taiwan vividly disclose the fact that Taiwanese women were rounded up to comfort women stations at the request of the Japanese military.

Following the disclosure, the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation began investigating the cases of Taiwanese comfort women. Out of the 68 confirmed cases since 1992, only 38 are still alive.

Documented evidence

Aside from testimonies of former comfort women, documented evidence has been found in the files of the Taiwan Colonial Trade Corp-oration (台灣拓殖株式會社). Under the request and assistance of Japanese military forces, the government-sponsored corporation had carried out a significant part of the recruitment of Taiwanese comfort women.

Over the last few years, Taiwan has cooperated with NGOs of other victim countries to request justice and repatriation from Japan's government. Legal suits have been filed not only in Japanese courts but in US courts as well.

When the Japanese government established the private Asian Women's Fund in 1995 to compensate victims, Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejected the private donations from Japanese citizens and asked that the Japanese government take full responsibility.

Instead, the ministry gave each of the survivors NT$ 500,000 in 1997 as an advance of the compensation they might get from the Japanese government in the future.

Even though the money from the Asian Women's Fund could bring relief to financially constrained survivors, they have insisted the Japanese government, not Japanese citizens, should take responsibility for their suffering.

"I don't want the money from Japanese citizens because they're not responsible for my suffering. It is only compensation from the Japanese government that I insist I get since it is the party responsible for all the hurt suffered by former comfort women," A-tao said sternly.
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