[Lil-Mac]

The Japanese forced girls and young women from all over the Pacific Rim to be comfort women. Koreans, Chinese, Phillipina's and western women when they could be gotten. Many of the American nurses captured in the Phillipines were forced into prostituation by the Japs. The prettier ones were often taken by senior officers to be concubines.

For political reasons many of their worst excess were diliberately downplayed by the British and American press. The reason? We knew we would need them after the war to help counter balance the communists in China and the Soviet Union. Had people in the west, especially America, really known what was happening to our captured women it would have made post war relations extremely difficult. Also because of the social mores of the late forties and the stigma attached to rape it wasnt hard for the governments involved to get the victims to play along and keep their mouths shut.

Even today it's almost unheard of for the victims of the Japaneese to speak out, and when they do as happened in Korea a few years ago it is quickly hushed over. When you stop and think about it it's really pretty sad the way these women have been treated. Raped by the Japs during the war and raped by their own governments for the 60 years since. Pitiful.