Women Settlers’ ‘Sexual Entertainment’ of Soviet Red Army Troops in Postwar Manchuria

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The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus
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I Learned about the Wretchedness of War: Women Settlers’ ‘Sexual Entertainment’ of Soviet Red Army Troops in Postwar Manchuria

Sato Masaru

Translated and with an introduction by Joseph Essertier

Japanese text from the July 3, 2017 Tokyo Shimbun is available below the English translation.

".....With the comfort women issue and other wartime violence against women being debated, survivors of other forms of wartime sexual violence began to speak out.

The recent Tokyo Shimbun newspaper article translated here tells a number of stories that have rarely been told, including the story of the self-sacrifice and trauma of Japanese adolescent girls and unmarried women in Manchuria following Japan’s 1945 defeat. Soviet Red Army soldiers entered Manchuria at the very end of the war on August 8, 1945, occupying the area following Japan’s surrender and capturing Japanese soldiers, many of whom faced years of imprisonment in Siberia.

This article describes the fate of the young women of the Kurokawa Settler Community who were dispatched by their own community to provide sexual services to Soviet Red Army soldiers in hope of assuring the survival of the local community and safe passage to Japan in the wake of Japan’s defeat. More than half a century would pass before the first aging survivors began to tell their stories to the next generation.

This article reveals the decades-long silence surrounding the sacrifice of the young women for their community. The weight of community pressure to maintain silence about their sacrifice meant that the issues remained suppressed even after many of the victims passed away.

The involvement of family and community members in the case of the Kurokawa Settler Community also complicates the picture of military sexual slavery and sex trafficking. The remorse of a few of the remaining elderly settlers and their children, and their gradual, public recognition today, nearly three-quarters of a century later, of the sacrifices made by the adolescent girls and young women was presented in a Tokyo Shimbun article and an NHK documentary that aired on August 8, 2017, on Japan’s public broadcasting station NHK: “Kokuhaku: manmō kaitakudan no onna tachi” (Confession: Women of the Settler Community of Manchuria and Mongolia).

The Tokyo Shimbun article introduced here is not the only coverage of the Kurokawa Settler community case. For example, researcher Inomata Yūsuke, who is cited in the article, has studied the case since 2005, conducting interviews with former members of the Kurokawa Settler Community.6 Nonfiction writer Hirai Miho also conducted investigative journalistic work and interviewed the survivors and others in the community, and published her articles in such popular media venues as the women’s magazine, Josei Jishin (Oct 4, 2016), and more recently, in an online magazine, Gendai Business.7 Their groundwork led to further work, including the Tokyo Shimbun article introduced here, and the NHK documentary mentioned above. These works by scholars and journalists play crucial roles in highlighting the forgotten history and the voices of the aging survivors, just as researchers working on “comfort women” have long been doing. (JE)"

http://apjjf.org/2017/18/Masaru.html




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The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Joseph Essertier is an associate professor at the Nagoya Institute of Technology. He has written about debates over the use of the colloquial in Japanese writing and the Romanization movement in the Meiji period (1868-1912).

Sato Masaru is a Tokyo Shimbun journalist.


Like · Reply · 8 hrs · EditedManage

Wendy Mansell Just so hard to even imagine what they had to deal with. They and other sex slaves of war - like ISIS etc and India with "rape" as punishment in religious and tribal conflicts Appalling how women and children together have and still are treated inhumanly by men for power. Reflections on an old quote seem most accurate here - for evil to exist, it only requires that good men do nothing.


Like · Reply · 4 hrs · Edited