Lee Ok-seon was running an errand for her parents when it happened: a group of uniformed men burst out of a car, attacked her and dragged her into the vehicle. As they drove away, she had no idea that she would never see her parents again. On December 13, , Japanese troops began a six-week-long massacre that essentially destroyed the Chinese city of Nanking.
Along the way, Japanese troops raped between 20, and 80, Chinese women. As legal historian Carmen M. Women were rounded up on the streets of Japanese-occupied territories, convinced to travel to what they thought were nursing units or jobs, or purchased from their parents as indentured servants.
These women came from all over Southeast Asia, but most were Korean or Chinese. Once they were at the brothels, the women were forced to have sex with their captors under brutal, inhumane conditions.
Like other women, she was threatened and beaten by her captors. With millions of Americans unable to find employment, working wives became scapegoats. Until , pregnant or promiscuous women could be incarcerated for life in Magdalene Laundries. Under the 'American Plan,' women could be detained for sitting in a restaurant alone, changing jobsβor, often, for no reason at all.
By then, between 20, and , women had been enslaved in at least brothels. After the end of World War II, however, documents on the system were destroyed by Japanese officials, so the numbers are based on estimates by historians that rely on a variety of extant documents. As Japan rebuilt after World War II, the story of its enslavement of women was downplayed as a distasteful remnant of a past people would rather forget. Meanwhile, women who had been forced into sexual slavery became societal outcasts.
