Never Let Their Voices Fade! Remembering the “Comfort Women” of WWII

The International Women's Alliance recognizes the importance of August 14 as the official day to commemorate and give honor to the "Comfort Women" of WWII. Today, 80 years after the end of the Second World War, we recognize the significant crimes committed against women and children at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army.

Under the guise of maintaining morale for the army, the Japanese Government set up "comfort stations" where women and girls were forced to perform sexual acts with 5-60 men per day. A majority of the 400,000 women and girls held prisoner in the program were captured from Korea, China, the Philippines, and Indonesia (a smaller number came from Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Australia, East Timor, Hong Kong, and Macau). While a small number were recruited through sham work programs that promised jobs as house maids or nurses, most were violently captured and taken from their homes. Women were forced to live in the "comfort stations" where they were starved, faced regular physical and psychological abuse, and were easily susceptible to disease, infection and rampant STDs. This high rate of sexual violence resulted in an estimated fatality rate of 87% (aprox. 348,000 women and girls).

At the end of the war Comfort Women were largely massacred by the Japanese Army, while many of the remaining survivors had extreme psychological and physical trauma. Some women were ostracized from family and community upon return their home, others stayed at the comfort stations out of shame and fear of judgement if they returned home.

The story of Comfort Women was largely untold until 1991 when Hak-soon Kim, a Korean Comfort Woman shared her story publicly. Since her bold act more Comfort Women from around the region have come forward, carrying demands of reparations and apology from the Japanese Government, and actively campaigning against foreign military bases, wars of aggression, and violence against women.

Despite the movement to seek justice for the Comfort Women, who are now largely in their 90s, the Japanese Government has failed to meaningfully address their demands and has gone as far as to cover up and use diplomatic relations to try to discredit and obfuscate the story of the Comfort Women. In 2023, while negotiating a trilateral military agreement between the United States, Korea, and Japan, one of the conditions for signing the agreement was ensuring the Korean Government dropped its pursuit of justice for Comfort Women and renounced its claims against Japan. Upon signing the agreement the Prime Minister of Japan called it the “End of a long, cold winter” in terms of its renewed diplomatic agreement with South Korea.

But Comfort Women's fight for justice extends beyond the Japanese Government. In The Philippines Lila Pilipina, an organization of surviving comfort women and their advocates, mobilizes to expose the role the U.S. military plays in continuing to enact violence against women during military exercises, shore leave, and through their permanent presence due to unequal military agreements. In South Korea, comfort women and their families continue to rally demanding recognition and justice. Across the Asia-Pacific region, Comfort Women and their communities are fighting back to ensure there is not another generation of comfort women as global tensions continue to grow towards impending war and conflict.

Lila Pilipina holds a rally in Manila on Aug. 14, 2025

It is impossible to acknowledge the horrors endured by Comfort Women without also acknowledging the other atrocities experienced by civilians during WWII. The experiences of the Comfort Women represent one of the most brutal chapters of history, but their suffering is not isolated. It is part of a global pattern of violence that war unleashes upon the most vulnerable. August 6 and 9 marked the 80th anniversary since the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which killed over 240,000 civilians and has had lasting impacts on the health of millions in the surrounding area. The U.S. attacks against Japan also led to 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry in the US being detained and held in concentration camps. Under German occupation, over one million innocent lives were taken in concentration camps as part of the genocide against Jews, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and political dissidents.

The horrors of WWII cannot be underscored and must not be forgotten, and yet we find ourselves on the brink of history repeating itself. The International Women's Alliance calls on all our members to not only demand justice for comfort women, but to raise our voices louder than ever against the continued imperialist wars and conflict of our time: the U.S.-funded genocide in Palestine, the proxy war in Ukraine, and the sharpening inter-imperialist conflict between the U.S. and China. We must continue to advance IWA's anti-war campaigns and build the militant movement of women to denounce these wars of imperialist aggression and militarization. As global wars continue to escalate, we know that it is innocent men, women, and children who will be the biggest victims of war, while the global elite line their pockets with the profits from war and fight over natural resources.

Women in particular are subjected to the most dehumanizing, systematic forms of brutality during war—rape as a weapon, forced sterilization, and sexual slavery In war it is the civilians who are most impacted by displacement, dehumanization, criminalization, and systematic violence, and women often face the most brutal conditions. The Comfort Women of WWII serve as a strong reminder of the horrors that can easily befall women in times of conflict, but also give us the strength to continue to fight and ensure there is never another generation of Comfort Women, and that military violence against women, and especially the use of rape as a tool of war, comes to an end as we unite and fight to end wars of aggression, military occupation, and all imperialist violence! May we never let the voices of Comfort Women fade, and may we continue their legacy of boldly exposing the truth of war's impacts on women!