U.S. occupation authorities continued Japan’s system of sexual slavery in Korea.
Evidence
Most troublingly, U.S. military authorities occupying Korea after the war took over some of the “comfort stations” that had been central to the Japanese war machine since the nineteenth century. During its conquest of territory across East Asia, the Japanese military forced hundreds of thousands of women from Korea, China, Okinawa and rural Japan, and other parts of Asia into sexual slavery, providing soldiers with “royal gifts” from the emperor. With the assistance of Korean officials, U.S. authorities continued the system absent formal slavery, but under conditions of exceedingly limited choice for the women involved. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 481
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- QUESTION: Worth verifying extent and documentation of U.S. takeover of Japan’s comfort stations in Korea.
- XREF: Relates to broader history of U.S. bases global sex trade and Japanese wartime sexual slavery scholarship.