Inconvenient and Uncomfortable

Book excerpt: Since the early 1990s, the controversial comfort women system has been universally described in the West as Imperial Japan's military having engaged in atrocious criminal acts of abduction, forcible recruitment, and other means of coercion to procure young women as sex slaves for its soldiers during and before World War II. This highly emotional issue has become a matter of wartime human rights violations, a gross affront to women's rights, and a call to reexamine the need to properly address Japan's war crimes in the international community. Though understandable given the information being disseminated by the mainstream media, the comfort women issue turns out to be much more complex and multifaceted by evaluating historical documents such as the Allied Forces' official military documents, a diary by a military brothel manager, memoirs of comfort women, and various primary sources on the trafficking of women in that era. The more information on Japan's comfort women is objectively reviewed, it becomes increasingly difficult to blindly accept the narrative being promoted by the media. In fact, an inconvenient and uncomfortable truth as to what was the norm for so many in parts of Asia of that generation emerges. Were the comfort women sex slaves or prostitutes? The conclusion of the book is bound to surprise a great many readers. "Marshall Wordsworth has penned an immaculate work and appraisal of World War II military brothel issues. This book ranks easily among the top works on the subject. Well written and researched, this tome is a must read for serious scholars and journalists who embark to discuss the modern day "comfort women" controversy. The author's conclusions may displease some readers though the conclusions are fully supported by the evidence presented. Read this book." - Michael Yon, author of Moment of Truth in Iraq