Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

2-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Program

Liberal Studies

Advisor

Elissa Bemporad

Subject Categories

Chinese Studies | Japanese Studies | Korean Studies | Military History | Oral History | Women's History

Keywords

Comfort Women, Restorative Justice, Women's Rights, Memory Studies

Abstract

Between 1932 and 1945 an estimated 200,000 women across the globe were coerced into becoming comfort women for the Japanese military. As comfort women they were forced to prostitute themselves to soldiers, and endured physical, psychological and emotional torture. While comfort stations were liberated in 1945 with the end of World War II, the Japanese government has yet to formally apologize for their treatment of comfort women, and has failed to meet the demands of survivors and their families who seek reconciliation and justice. The global leaders of these movements for reconciliation are institutions and organizations in South Korea, China, and the Philippines. These countries’ proximity to Japan made it so they had the greatest number of comfort women, and currently have the largest movements calling for redress. These movements were started in the 1990s after the first former comfort woman, Kim Hak-Sun, publicly testified about her experiences at the hands of the Japanese military. I argue that these movements have since grown to be global because of what scholar Nikki Marczak termed ‘transmitted defiance’. This idea states that defiance and the burden of justice are passed down from survivors of mass violence to their children and grandchildren through storytelling. I expand on Marczak’s idea and argue that the transmission of defiance and the burden of justice goes far beyond familial ties, and that so long as survivors share their stories, defiance can be transmitted to anyone that hears them.

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