Comfort Women (Fwd)

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Date: Sat, 21 Jan 1995 13:00:55 JST
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Subject: The Comfort Women
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Title           : The Comfort Women
Author          : George Hicks
                  (An economist & writer w/ a lifetime's experience of Asia.
                   He divides his time btn Singapore & Australia.)
Publisher       : YENBOOKS
                  1-2-6 Suido, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo 112, Japan.
                  (by special arrangement w/ Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd., Australia.)
Copyright       : 1995 by George Hicks
Listed price    : 1240 Yen (about US$ 12) (paperback)

(From the back cover)
        In 1938, Japan's imperial armed forces established in Shanghai what
they designated a "comfort station." This pleasant-sounding facility in fact
represented the first step into an unending nightmare for women across East
Asia, as the Emperor's forces rampaged across the continent. Sexually enslaved
by the invaders, over 100,000 young women- many of them prepubescent- were
trafficked across Japan's wartime empire by its soldiers and their collaborators
        Using official documents and other original sources unavailable until
now, George Hicks tells how prevalent, organized, and concealed the comfort
system was. He also traces the fight by Japanese and Korean feminist and liberal
groups to expose the truth and tells of the complicity of the Japanese governm-
ent in maintaining the lie. "The Comfort Women" is an account of a shameful
aspect of Japanese society and psychology. It is also an exploration of
 Japaneseracial & gender policies.
        Above all else, "The Comfort Women" allows the victims of this unacknow-
ledged war crime to tell their own stories powerfully and poignantly: their
shame, and the full magnitude and brutality of the system.
        Nearly 50 years after the war former comfort women are beginning to
speak out, to fight for compensation and demand that their stories be acknowled-
ged in the official history of the war. This book is an important step in that
process.
(With 22 rare photos of comfort women & stations in China, Korea, Japan, Burma,
 Malaysia and Indonesia.)