Conducts research and collects data on the global history of labour, workers, and labour relations

Comfort Women

8 January 1992
Monument in memory of the victims of sexual slavery, Manila
Source: 
2011/0764

On January 8, 1992, the first 'Wednesday Demonstration' was held by surviving comfort women and sympathizers in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. The demonstration was sponsored by the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. Japan's military brothels during the Pacific War were 'a highly organized trafficking system run by the Japanese Imperial Army, secret police, and local "labor recruitors" using the ruse of legitimate jobs for good pay. Girls and women taken from occupied territory all over the Pacific were hijacked in broad daylight on city streets, became a human cargo that was transported to barracks in frontline posts, jungle airstrips, and base camps, where the captives remained in sexual servitude until the war's end.'

In December 2015, the Japanese prime-minister officially apologised and offered a remuneration.

From: Yuki Tanaka, Japan's Comfort Women. Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation (London 2002)