Interrogation Report No.49
In 1944, the U.S. military's psychological warfare team conducted an investigation into 20 Comfort Women and 2 'masters' (Japanese pimps) in Burma. This interrogation report has often been cited by Japanese scholars and politicians to prove that the Comfort Women were simply voluntary prostitutes. However, there are a lot of flaws that prove that firstly, this interrogation report is not valid in the context of investigating the true nature of the Comfort Women system, but also shows that this system was not truly voluntary.
Photocopy of the original document: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Japanese_Prisoner_of_War_Interrogation_Report_49#/media/File:Japanese_Prisoner_of_War_Interrogation_Report_No._49_p1.png
Alex Yorichi was a Japanese American soldier investigating the effectiveness of Japanese-language leaflets distributed in the Japanese-occupied territories in Burma. The report was not a formal investigation into the treatment of women or the conditions in "comfort stations" but about the psychological warfare tactics the U.S. had employed. It is also likely that the interview was conducted in Japanese, and therefore compared to the broken, forcefully learned Japanese of 20 young Comfort Women, the Japanese masters' responses carried more weight.
This quote has been frequently cited by Japanese revisionist scholars and politicians as proof that the system was not a forced system of sexual slavery.
The number of girls shipped to a single territory (Burma) in just one year (1942) shows the scale of the system. Many Japanese politicians have attempted to lower the estimate of 200,000 total Comfort Women.
This line proves that in fact, girls were not informed of the exact nature of service they were signing up to do. Even though many were directly kidnapped, most women were lured under false pretenses. It is incorrect to say that girls simply came to "comfort stations" with their free will when they were deceived into thinking that the jobs would entail nursing and factory work, not the degrading system of sexual slavery that awaited them.
This statement alone shows the underlying prejudice against the girls that were being interviewed. He crudely judges their appearance in an official military report.
This proves that the Japanese government was actively involved in the creation and management of the system. It was not individual Japanese businessmen creating these stations but a systematic execution of sexual slavery.
Even if this was true (which for a lot of smaller "comfort stations" it wasn't), the stations were only concerned with treating STDs and transmittable diseases that the soldiers could contract, ignoring the many injuries the girls incurred due to the torture and abuse by the soldiers.
