Comfort women were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. The term "comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese ianfu (慰安婦), which literally means "comforting, consoling woman". During World War II, Japanese troops forced hundreds of thousands of women from Australia, Burma, China, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and other countries into sexual enslavement for Japanese troops; however, the majority of the women were from Korea. Many women died or committed suicide due to brutal mistreatment and sustained physical and emotional distress. After the war, Japan's acknowledgment of the comfort women's plight was minimal, lacking a full apology and appropriate restitution, which damaged Japan's reputation in Asia for decades. Only in the 1990s did the Japanese government begin to officially apologize and offer compensation.
Korean comfort women being questioned by the United States Army after the Siege of Myitkyina, August 14, 1944
Rangoon, Burma. August 8, 1945. A young ethnic Chinese woman from one of the Imperial Japanese Army's "comfort battalions" is interviewed by an Allied officer.
Chinese and Malayan girls forcibly taken from Penang by the Japanese to work as 'comfort girls' for the troops
Studio portrait of Jan Ruff O'Herne, taken shortly before she, her mother and sisters, and thousands of other Dutch women and children were interned by the Imperial Japanese Army in Ambarawa. Over the following months, O'Herne and six other Dutch women were repeatedly raped and beaten, day and night, by IJA personnel.
Carmen María Argibay was a member of the Supreme Court of Argentina. She was the first woman to be nominated for the Court by a democratic government in Argentina, and caused some controversy upon declaring herself an atheist and a supporter of legal abortion.
Carmen Argibay
