A Sankei Shimbun feature examines the issue of “military and sexuality” through testimony from a former military doctor and international historical comparisons.
It suggests that debates surrounding the comfort women issue should be understood within a broader global wartime context.

(Directed by Jang Gil-su) is a masterpiece set during the Korean War, featuring a Korean prostitute serving U.S. soldiers as its protagonist.
2018-01-29
The following continues from the previous chapter.

■Criticism of Japan Is Unjust
The issue of “the military and sexuality,” needless to say, has existed everywhere throughout history and across the world.
The 1991 South Korean film Silver Stallion Will Never Come (directed by Jang Gil-su) is a masterpiece depicting a Korean prostitute serving U.S. soldiers during the Korean War.
The South Korean military participated in the Vietnam War and fathered many mixed-race children known as “Lai Dai Han” with local women, creating an international issue.
At the very end of the last war, Soviet forces that poured into Manchuria (now northeastern China) indiscriminately raped Japanese women, subjecting them to immense suffering.
There were comfort women in the Japanese military.
However, as indicated in Kōchi’s testimony, civilian operators brought the women and conducted business using them, while the military supervised the system.
Nothing more and nothing less.
From the outset, it was a shameful dark-side issue and not something to be openly discussed.
Until the 1980s, before the Asahi Shimbun and certain Japanese politicians and intellectuals ignited and inflamed the issue, that was also the case in South Korea.
It is a tragic story, but it was not only Korean girls from poor families who were sold for money and became comfort women.
There were also Japanese.
Though belated, it is worthy of recognition that voices seeking the truth have emerged from those who lived in Korea during the period of Japanese rule, such as through the alumni journal of Pyongyang First Middle School.
Similar movements are beginning to follow from alumni groups of other former middle schools.
In fact, this is not the first time that Kōchi has written about comfort women.
In the late 2000s, he wrote about his memories as a military doctor in several installments on his personal blog.
“It’s for my children and grandchildren. I’m getting old and my memories are fading. I want to properly record the war and my own experiences.”
Falsehoods spread around the world by Japanese themselves and the honor that has been damaged can only be refuted and restored by Japanese themselves.
(Cultural Affairs Editorial Writer: Yoshihiro Kita)