This article is part of a Women and Leadership special report highlighting women who are charting new pathways and fighting for opportunities for women and others.
When Gil Won-ok, a Korean woman, died recently at the age of 96, the international community lost an outspoken warrior in the effort to make Japan accountable for its practice of sexual slavery during the early part of the 20th century.
Ms. Gil was one of about 240 so-called comfort women from South Korea who had publicly spoken out about their abuse at the hands of the Japanese military from the 1930s through World War II, and her death left just a handful of survivors to continue the cause.
But Mina Watanabe, a Japanese woman who was born years after the war ended, and who had no direct relationship to the practice or its victims, has continued to press for fuller acknowledgment and reparations from Japan. As director of the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace (WAM) in Tokyo, she and the museum focus on sexual violence against women in war and conflict situations — with extra attention focused on her homeland’s history.
Ms. Watanabe said she had been interested in women’s rights since her school days in Tokyo. When some of the survivors of Japan’s military sexual slavery system finally came forward in the 1990s, her encounters with them “changed my life,” she said in an interview in Tokyo.
She co-founded the museum in 2005 with donations from people in Japan and abroad, and has been campaigning internationally for the rights of survivors since.
Activists for comfort women are often subjected to criticism or left isolated by their fellow Japanese. The interview was edited and condensed.
Who are the women referred to as “comfort women”?
That refers to the victims who were put into the sexual slavery system for Japanese troops from the 1930s up to 1945 in the Asia-Pacific region. While “sex slaves” is a more accurate term to express the essential nature of many different forms of sexual exploitation they were subjected to, we retain the term “comfort women” because it has a historical significance, as it was the euphemism used by the Japanese military at the time.
The Japanese government admits that girls and women suffered, but denies evidence that they were taken against their will during wartime. They have said that with the agreement reached at the Japan-ROK Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in December 2015, the issue was “resolved finally and irreversibly.” What are you still seeking?
The issue is not how they were taken, but that they were held against their will and raped for months or years under military control. Without clear explanation, the government still denies that it was sexual slavery. What the survivors wanted was for the Japanese government to fully acknowledge what had happened to them and to pass their stories on to the next generation to prevent recurrence. It’s not just about a bilateral agreement with South Korea. Although many survivors have passed away, we continue to work to make the government acknowledge the crimes its own military forces committed. I feel it is my responsibility as a woman in Japan.
Has any progress been made?
As for reparations, nothing has progressed. The government claims it has apologized, but what damage it has apologized for has never been clear. It is our regret and shame that the Japanese government does not accept the survivors’ testimonies as evidence even now.
The general perceptions of “comfort women,” however, have changed dramatically in the world community. International law now explicitly recognizes wartime rape and sexual slavery as crimes against humanity. People have listened to the survivors’ stories with compassion and respect them as human rights defenders.
You have said that the legacy of Japan’s treatment of comfort women influences the treatment of women in today’s society in Japan. Could you give us some examples?
It is still common that victims face difficulties in bringing perpetrators of sexual crimes to justice anywhere in the world. However, in Japan, I find a kind of “tolerance” exists for sexual violence committed by military forces. There have been many rapes by U.S. troops in Okinawa, where U.S. bases in Japan are concentrated, but they often go unprosecuted. One well-known Japanese politician even suggested U.S. military officers utilize the sex industry. The idea that sexual violence by soldiers is inevitable must be deeply ingrained in Japan.
(Asked to respond, the Pentagon said in a statement: The standard of behavior for U.S. Forces Japan is unwavering professionalism and zero tolerance for criminal behavior. U.S. personnel who commit criminal acts are held accountable under both Japanese and U.S. law, per the Status of Forces Agreement. Acts of sexual assault undermine the values of respect and dignity that are fundamental to service. These incidents overshadow the friendship and professionalism we exhibit daily. They do not reflect the positive actions of the overwhelming majority of U.S. service members who serve honorably in this country.)
How did you become involved with the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace (WAM)?
I got involved in the women’s movement in the mid-1990’s and met the late Yayori Matsui, a prominent journalist and leading activist in Japan. She proposed the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery be held in 2000 in Tokyo, a people’s tribunal to bring those responsible to justice based on evidence and the law. I was involved from the preparation period. After the judgment was delivered in 2001, however, Yayori passed away in 2002. Her last will was to establish a museum in Japan to pass on the testimonies and documents accumulated for the Women’s Tribunal. To show the full picture of the “comfort women” system in our limited exhibition space, we have held a dozen special exhibitions in these 20 years focusing on different countries and areas of the Asia-Pacific.
What work have you been doing to improve the treatment of women in Japanese society?
As one of our concerted efforts, WAM, together with activists and scholars from eight other countries, has submitted the application related to “comfort women” to the UNESCO Memories of the World Register as a unique and rare documentary heritage to be preserved. The Japanese government has tried to prevent this and withheld its contribution to UNESCO once, but the pending procedure is to start again this year.
There are people in Japan, too, who support our efforts to answer the call of these courageous survivors for justice and nonrepetition. That gives me hope.
