What knowledge do we have of comfort women in Burma during more than three years of Japanese occupation in the early 1940s? The matter is clearly of historical interest, in that it is important for the record to be as complete and accurate as possible. It also has contemporary resonance, for charges of sexual abuse are often leveled at Myanmar’s tatmadaw and can be most fully addressed in a country prepared to trace such issues all the way back. I therefore decided to see what I could unearth online. The answer is not much. Certainly military comfort stations were established in Burma during World War II, but direct testimony is hard to find.

One excellent source is a set of interviews conducted by a US psychological warfare team working at the Ledo Stockade towards the end of the war. Following the Allies’ recapture of Myitkyina in August 1944, this team talked with 20 Korean “comfort girls” and two Japanese civilians. Its brief report testifies that in early May 1942 Japanese agents arrived in Korea to recruit around 800 women for vaguely-specified “comfort service” in Southeast Asia. At least 700 women reached Rangoon around August 20, 1942, and were distributed mostly to towns close to Japanese Army camps. In the houses where they lived and worked, separate blocks of visiting time were scheduled for soldiers, NCOs and officers, together with graduated prices. Slots were also sometimes allocated to particular units to deal with problems of congestion. Matters of hygiene were managed through weekly visits by army doctors. Contraceptives were widely available. In late 1943, some women were allowed to return to Korea. Those remaining were released by Kachin soldiers led by an English officer on August 10, 1942.

Another source is Video Juku, a women’s group that creates documentaries with the aim of building a society free of violence and discrimination against women. On its list are two short films focused on the Burma theatre in World War II, though neither is accessible through the Video Juku site (and neither turns up on a YouTube search). One from 1999, running to 22 minutes in length, is entitled “Burma’s Vanished ‘Comfort Women’: Record of the Field Research from May 1997 to September 1998”. Another from 2000, running to 40 minutes, is entitled “‘Comfort Women’ of Japanese Army in Burma: The Record of Inquiry during 1997-2000”. Both documentaries reportedly contain testimony from South Korean women, plus in the latter case some mention of Burmese women – but I haven’t been able to view either of them.

This is all valuable material, and I’d like to gather further information about the hundreds of Korean comfort women taken to work in Burma in the early 1940s. Still more, I’m keen to know about Burmese victims of this brutal Japanese military practice.