User:Jmckeon ie/svav/Selected article/3

Rangoon, Burma. August 8, 1945. A young ethnic Chinese woman who was in one of the Imperial Japanese Army's "comfort battalions" is interviewed by an Allied officer.

Comfort women is a euphemism for women forced into prostitution and sexual slavery for Japanese military brothels during World War II. Around 200,000 are typically estimated to have been procured, with lower estimates from some Japanese scholars starting at 20,000 and higher estimates from some Chinese scholars ending at 410,000. The disagreement about exact numbers is still being researched and debated.

Historians and researchers have stated that the majority were from Korea, China and Japan, but women from the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, and other Japanese-occupied territories were also used in "comfort stations". Stations were located in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, then British Malaya, Thailand, then Burma, then New Guinea, Hong Kong, Macau, and what was then French Indochina.