The Complete History of the Japanese Military Comfort Women, Volume Two: The Establishment and Spread of Comfort Stations

The second volume of A Complete History of the Japanese Military’s “Comfort Women” takes an academic approach to examining the comfort stations and “comfort women” system established by the Japanese military in China and across the Pacific during World War II. After Japan launched its full-scale war of aggression against China, it began establishing comfort stations on a massive scale. Drawing on numerous historical cases, documentary sources, field investigations, and firsthand accounts, this volume reconstructs the reality of the “comfort women” system. It focuses in particular on how Japanese military comfort stations were established, operated, and expanded in occupied China. After the Pacific War broke out, the system was also extended to Southeast Asia and islands across the Pacific. The volume’s central argument is that understanding this system requires looking beyond written records and the framework of licensed prostitution, and examining how it actually operated under wartime conditions in order to determine its true nature: a system of military sexual slavery.