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Comfort women

Comfort women
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 慰安婦
Simplified Chinese 慰安妇
Japanese name
Kanji 慰安婦
Hiragana いあんふ
Alternate Japanese name
Kanji 従軍慰安婦
Korean name
Hangul 위안부
Hanja 慰安婦

Comfort women were women and girls who were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied territories before and during World War II.

The name "comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese (慰安婦), a euphemism for "prostitute(s)". Estimates vary as to how many women were involved, with numbers ranging from as low as 20,000 (by Japanese historian Ikuhiko Hata) to as high as 360,000 to 410,000 (by a Chinese scholar); the exact numbers are still being researched and debated. Most of the women were from occupied countries, including Korea, China, and the Philippines, although women were used for military "comfort stations" from Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan (then a Japanese dependency), Indonesia (then the Dutch East Indies), East Timor (then Portuguese Timor), and other Japanese-occupied territories. Stations were located in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, then Malaya, Thailand, Burma, New Guinea, Hong Kong, Macau, and French Indochina. A smaller number of women of European origin were also involved from the Netherlands and Australia.


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