Event Title

Comfort Women, Intersectionality and the Importance of Women's Voices

Presenter Information

Miho Chisake, Minnesota State University, Mankato

Location

CSU 255

Start Date

27-4-2009 1:00 PM

End Date

27-4-2009 3:00 PM

Student's Major

Gender and Women's Studies

Student's College

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Mentor's Name

Jocelyn Fenton Stitt

Mentor's Department

Gender and Women's Studies

Mentor's College

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Description

During the Asia-Pacific War, a large number of women were forced to work in Japanese military brothels as sex slaves. Women who worked as comfort women are still suffering both physically and psychologically, significantly because the full contexts of their experiences have gone imacknowledged by the Japanese government Although many of the women want an official apology, the Japanese government has denied its involvement. Specifically, in 2007 the then Prime Minister publicly denied the involvement of the Japanese government, thus erasing comfort women's voices and experiences and their testimonies as official documents. Comparatively, the oppressor and the oppressed have different perspectives regarding the women's agency in their roles as comfort women. However, while comfort women worked as sax slaves during the war, they were discriminated against due to racism, sexism, classism, and other kinds of oppressions by the Japanese soldiers and military personnel. In this research, I examined the Japanese government's system of comfort women and comfort stations, the impact of interlocking systems of oppression on comfort women's lives, and the validity of testimonial narratives/voices as official historical documents. As such, I posited that a feminist analysis of the two main positions on this issue allows for a needed re-visioning of a key historical moment in Japanese and Korean women's history, we well as a validating of women's lived experiences.