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The Project
About the Project
“In Her Memory” is a pitch deck made for an interactive exhibit dedicated to the education and the remembrance of the euphemistically called "comfort women" who were women and girls forced into sexual slavery under Imperial Japan during the 1930s and WW2. This project combines historical research and analysis with research in museum design and digital interactivity to conceive an engaging exhibit design that would provide an American audience with a comprehensive and tangible understanding of this complex history. The central question of this project is how do we effectively educate a modern western audience about the importance and relevance of unknown history from other parts of the world? This means looking into the social structures and cultures of different Asian Pacific countries and seeing how they impacted the perception of women, virginity, and consequently, rape. This also means understanding where this event sits within the history and continuation of global sexual violence and war and rape culture while also asking what should be done order to prevent future atrocities. This project aims to put the women at the center of the narrative and includes their voices as both evidence and examples of activism as they encourage the accountability and awareness of rape in war and general society. This history goes beyond Japan and Korea and involves many other countries and their unspoken acceptance of rape as just an acceptable tragedy, including America. In our history courses, we never look close or long enough in order to properly analyze the impact of horrific events on the victims, and in the case of the "comfort women," they were victims of an awful system which was held together by both the main perpetrators and the bystanders. This exhibit aims to introduce and create dialogue around the uncomfortable topic of sexual violence in history in order to bring awareness to global atrocities and to promote the sharing and hearing of victim stories as a means to promote change.
*In this project I do not intend to speak for these women or claim that this is the solution for any of the tension that still remains between Japan and other Asian countries, but I do believe that the sharing and elevation of foreign narratives and histories is necessary in order to expand our worldwide views and understandings. All the audio clips are just prototypes and my voice would not be used in the final translations.
Pitch Deck
Pitch Deck
The main portion of the thesis was the culmination of assets, research, and ideation into a single pitch deck. This deck contains all the main points concerning the goals and purpose of the exhibit, as well as, mockups and prototypes for the interior look, audioscapes, and interactive components. Due to time constraints only one of the main rooms was able to be fully mocked up. While I would have loved to conceptualize the design and audio portions for the entire exhibit, I simply was not able to due to time constraints. A majority of this project's development was spent on research because without a proper understanding of the complexity of this history, the visuals would be for nothing. This deck emphasizes the intent and purpose of the exhibit while allowing room for the continuation of research and design exploration. I do hope to expand on this project in the near future.
Concept Art
Concept Art
General Layout of the Exhibit (standalone, not to scale or any size specifications)
Front (right) and Back (left) of ticket given to guests at the entrance
Guests will later have a QR placed on the ticket where they can access soundscapes and some images from the exhibit online.
Entrance Hallway
Korean "Comfort Women" Room (Right Wall)
Korean "Comfort Women" Room (Left Wall)
Refresh Hall Between Part 1 (Station Replica) and Part 2 (Legacy Room)
Legacy Room Walls 1,2,3
Legacy Room Walls 4,5,6
Audio
Sample Audio Tracks
Please Use Headphones for Full Experience
Exhibit Entrance Audio
Korean "Comfort Women"
Room Audio
Legacy Room Entrance Audio
Legacy Room
Exit Audio
History
An Abridged History of "Comfort Women"
The story of the "comfort women" spans from the pre WWII era to today. In an attempt to prevent mass rapes of civilians, especially after the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, the Japanese Empire established and continuously expanded a system that lasted from 1932 (when the first official comfort station was established in Shanghai) until 1945, where “between eighty thousand to four hundred thousand women and children were trafficked into sex slavery camps throughout the Japanese Empire in the Pacific Theater” (Friedman, 2016, pg.1). These (possibly 700+ according to the AWF) comfort stations existed in various forms across many locations such as: Japan, the Philippines, China, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Thailand, East Timor, Cambodia, Laos, French occupied Vietnam - essentially any territory in the Japanese Empire. (Friedman, 2016, pg. 3 and Edwards, 2019, pg.5). Women sent to these camps were from “Asia and the Pacific, with Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese, Filipina, and Indonesian women comprising the vast majority” (Asia-Pacific Journal Feature). Though many Japanese women initially entered comfort stations with a background of prostitution, the "comfort women" from other countries, some of whom were as young as 12 or 13, were kidnapped, coerced, or deceived into working in these brothels. Although the comfort stations varied in type and quality, the stories told by the few remaining "comfort women" each follow a similar pattern, with only a few exceptions. First, girls were either unwillingly and forcefully taken by the troops or were deceived by collaborators who recruited and helped run brothels. In the stations they were continuously raped, abused, tortured, starved, infected, and saw fellow women and girls killed. While treatment and accommodations did tend to vary by race of women, and some of the women even fell in love with soldiers, the overall system was horrendous and a few experiences should not overshadow the system that violated women's bodies and destroyed their livelihoods. Though it is hard to truly tell the overall devastation due to destroyed records, it has been estimated that 75% of the 'comfort women' died in captivity due to many possible factors that can be attributed to the unbearable and destructive comfort station conditions (Edwards, 2019, pg.5). However other accounts have reported that only 10% of the women survived the war (History). Furthermore, those who survived the war never left it and lived in silence with permanent physical and mental scars for about 40 years until the first "comfort woman" publicly filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government and testified about her experiences in 1991.
The women who occupied the comfort stations ranged from young girls to women. Though the first comfort stations from 1933 to 1937 were mostly occupied by Japanese prostitutes, whom we still know very little about, after the Nanjing Massacre and mass rape of tens of thousands of Chinese women in 1937, Japan expanded their comfort station to prevent the further rape of civilians. Despite this initial intent, this system simply allowed for institutionalized rape and did not prevent civilian rape either, as told in both testimony of women and soldiers. This system only continued to expand as Japan’s territory increased and thus did the need for more women for their various number and types of stations. In 1939, the number of these "imported" women was aimed to provide 1 woman per 100 soldiers, but was later expanded to 1 woman per 35 soldiers (Wallace, pg. 25-26). Of these 200,000 - 400,000 women, Chinese researcher, Su Zhiliang, estimated that "about 140,000 to 160,000 of the total number of 'comfort women' were Korean and that 20,000 were Japanese, with several thousand being from Taiwan and Southeast Asia and several hundred coming from European countries. The rest were Chinese women, who numbered about 200,000." (Qiu et. al, pg. 38). Japan took advantage of the pre-existing economic structures and Confucius ideals from different territories as they targeted local women and girls to bring to the stations. For both numerical and national interests they began recruiting more and more women and girls through deception, kidnapping, and various levels of force. Many of these women, who were usually poor and illiterate, were told that they would be working in factories and other wartime facilities and then found themselves in other countries. In other countries, like China and the Philippines, soldiers would attack them and their families, abduct, rape, and use other forceful methods in order to take women to their stations. In these stations, women reported how they were forced to have sex with tens of men a day while others served so many they could not even remember. There have been many testimonies citing torture and gruesome murders among other horrors in vivid detail when describing their experiences in stations. One woman described how she saw "two Japanese army privates stab a pregnant woman in the belly and murder her" (Friedman, pg. 147-148). A case reported from a comfort station in Yunnan Province stated that "Japanese soldiers poked a long radish into the vagina of a "comfort woman" named Wang Huandi, causing her death" (Qui et. all, pg. 70-71). These are just a few events among a long record of various beatings and tortures carried out by Japanese soldiers. Women who did survive the stations had many health problems caused by their treatment and injuries and many could not have children either due to these injuries or forced sterilization (Wallace, pg. 99). Furthermore, many of the survivors struggled to reintegrate into their prospective societies. Many women have described their immense feelings of shame post WII and kept their rapes mostly or completely a secret. Many struggled to find a spouse, maintain their marriage, or have a family. Others were socially ostracized by their families and communities. Some never went home. Others committed suicide. Poverty was also a problem that many of these women faced. For around 40 years the "comfort women" were kept silent until Kim Hak-Sun spoke out and filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government in 1991.
When the allies arrived to various territories in the Pacific, they encountered "comfort women," but neglected to look into their cases and bring these crimes to the Tokyo Tribunal. The allies did, however, interview these women and had reports filed with Allied Command and there were even pictures of these women taken when the allies found them. Unfortunately, these reports were never followed through as seen in a report completed by the US military intelligence (US Military Psychological Warfare Team based in Myanmar and India). In their description of the "experiences of twenty women [the] report describes the women as being, for the most part, uneducated and naïve" (Friedman, pg. 115-116). The allies failed to provide justice to these women due to racial prejudice among other issues. This is further enforced by the fact that the only case in which the Japanese were prosecuted on the "comfort women" system as a war crime was "one involving Dutch women in Indonesia, but not the Indonesian women who were Dutch colonial subjects, and the other Guam female residents" (Friedman, pg. 119). Despite this exception, the "comfort women" system was widely forgotten by the world due to the destruction and denial of evidence by the Japanese the neglect of the allied forces, and the socially forced silence of the survivors. This all changed in 1991 when Kim Hak-Sun from South Korea became the first to testify about her experience and filed a lawsuit with 2 other women against the Japanese government requesting an apology and reparations. As a result, many other women from other countries came out and followed suit in the succeeding years. Despite these early claims, the Japanese government initially denied involvement with the system claiming it was the work of private contractors. This all changed in 1992 when Professor Yoshimi Yoshiaki found documentation showing Japanese government and military involvement with the comfort station system. This was followed by the UN Human Rights Commission declaring the military comfort system as crime against humanity. In 1993, the Prime Minister of Japan personally apologized and accepted involvement in Kono Statement, but did not technically accept legal responsibility. Japan then set up the privately funded Asia Women’s Fund for survivor payments and created a digital museum dedicated to the education of "comfort women." Despite this, the apology's sincerity and authenticity has been debated due to the lack of an official government statement and the denialist statements of Prime Minister Abe years later. There have also been issues with the voices of the "comfort women" being excluded in many of the talks concerning reparations between governments and Japan. The most notable example has been Prime Minister Abe's refusal to provide an additional apology at Korean President Moon's request due to him having already made an agreement with former President Park in 2015 (New York Times). Today, the topic of "comfort women" is still controversial and difficult to talk about in Japan, and although there is the Active Museum Women's War and Peace Museum in Japan, Japanese interviews have revealed that the knowledge of "comfort women" among the Japanese populace is smaller than expected. Furthermore, there have been pushes to stop the education about the "comfort women." In 2015, a Tokyo-based textbook publisher, Suken Shuppan, received approval from the Japanese ministry of education to remove references about the discussions about "issuing compensation for 'forcibly moving' foreigners to work in Japan and for 'military comfort women' during the war" (The Japan Times). While there have been efforts by activists, like the Secretary General of Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21, Yoshifumi Tawara, who play major roles in the fight against textbook revisionism, the conflict goes beyond textbooks (Friedman, pg. 192). Statues to commemorate "comfort women" around the world have faced various levels backlash by Japan and other groups who called for their removal. There has also been much debate surrounding Korean Professor, Yuha Park's, recent statements and writing about "comfort women" and how it portrays the women and deflects accountability away from Japan. Meanwhile, the number of media produced and research made on "comfort women" continues to tell these women's stories for various audiences. In fact, this project would not have ever come to fruition if I had never watched Spirits' Homecoming (2016). Though the comfort system ended in 1945, the fight for justice and education on the subject still is alive in 2020.
While Imperial Japan’s "comfort women" were unique in that they were victims of an organized government sanctioned sex slavery system, these were by no means the last cases of violence of women during wartime. During the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, Pakistani soldiers raped more than 250,000 Bangladeshi women who have been coined as Birangonas. During the Vietnam War, South Korean soldiers raped Vietnamese women which resulted in the births of 5,000 to 30,000 children who were labeled Lai Dai Han and ostracized from Vietnamese society. American soldiers, who also used Japan sanctioned comfort stations post WWII, are not exempt from committing rape either. One group of GI’s forcefully took a Vietnamese girl named Phan Thi Mao, gang raped her, and then killed her (Lang). The story goes on with rape playing a key part in genocides in the cases of Rwanda and in Yugoslavia. Sexual violence and brutality are both still very present abroad in the cases of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan as well. The Fourth Geneva Convention in 1949, stated that “women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution or any form of indecent assault.” Furthermore, the1993 United Nations (UN) Commission on Human Rights declaration was even further enforced in 1995 when UN’s Fourth World Conference on Women specified that rape by armed groups during wartime is a war crime. Despite all of this, it was not until 1998 when rape was prosecuted as a war crime in the case of the Rwandan Genocide. These achievements were accomplished with the help of many parties, but especially the voices of the women who spoke up. This exhibit or the recognition of "comfort women" would not have been possible without the work and dedication of people from all around the world. Professors and historians have and still continue to search for more information in order to document the history of comfort stations and the stories of these women. Nonprofit organizations and museums still continuously work to educate various countries about "comfort women." Various activists lobby and fight to keep these women's stories alive and for apologies and other forms of reparations. Moreover, "comfort women" have and continue to share their stories and educate others in order to prevent future atrocities from occurring ever again. This is more than politics between Korea and Japan and is beyond just the actions of Imperial Japan. It is about accountability for perpetrators and bystanders, looking at the scope of events and societal structures that aid in these atrocities, and the education of these historical events around the world. The Halmoni, the Ama, the Nai Nai, the Birangona, the Lola, the general “survivor” are all connected. Their words and their bodies are the proof. We are the ones who are now responsible to carry on their memory.
References
Special Thanks To:
Jordanna Gessler & Christie Jovanovic, Holocaust Museum Los Angeles
Stephanie Lee, Comfort Women Action for Redress and Education
Miho Kim Lee, Comfort Women Justice Coalition
Thank you for taking the time to speak with me and help me navigate this history and develop my project.
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