¹ Hong Yunshin, Okinawa senjō no kioku to “ianjo” (Tokyo: Inpakuto Shuppankai, 2016, 495 pages).

² Hong Yunshin, “Comfort Stations” as Remembered by Okinawans during World War II. Trans. Robert Ricketts (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2020, 564 pages).

³ Ama yuu is the title of a collection of essays edited by Mori Yoshio, Tomiyama Ichirō, and Tobe Hideaki: Ama yuu e: Okinawa Sengo-shi no jiritsu ni mukete [Toward a Better World: For a Self-determining Postwar History of Okinawa] (Tokyo: Hosei University Press, 2017). Tomiyama's major works include Kindai Nihon shakai to “Okinawajin:” “Nihonjin” to naru toiu koto [Modern Japanese Society and “Okinawans”: What it Means to Become “Japanese”] (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Hyōronsha, 1990); Senjō no kioku [Memories of the Battlefield]. Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Hyōronsha, 1995 (revised edition, 2006); Bōryoku no yokan: Ifa Fuyu ni okeru kiki no mondai [Presentiments of Violence: The Problem of Crisis in Ifa Fuyu's Writings] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002); Ryūchaku no shisō:“Okinawa mondai” no keifugaku [Contemplations of a Castaway: A Geneology of the “Okinawa Problem”](Tokyo: Inpakuto Shuppankai, 2013); and Hajimari no chi: Fanon no rinshō [Beginnings: Fanon, Clinically Situated] (Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Shuppanyoku, 2018). Since 2006, Tomiyama has also edited six volumes dealing with postcolonial memory, post-utopian anthropology, Okinawa's modern historical experience, conflict and its resolution, military violence, and the construction of an autonomous Ryukyuan consciousness in postwar Okinawa.

⁴ In addition to the present volume, Hong's work includes “Okinawa kara hirogaru sengo-shisō no kanōsei: Senjō ni okeru josei no taiken o tsūjite” [The Possibilities of an Emergent Postwar Thought Proper to Okinawa: The Experiences of Women on the Battlefield]. Ōgoshi Aiko, Igeta Midori, eds., Sengo, bōryoku, jendā I: Sengoshisō no poritikkusu [The Postwar Era, Violence, and Gender, I: The Politics of Postwar Thought in Japan] (Tokyo: Seikyūsha, 2005); Hong Yunshin, ed., Senjō no Miyakojima to “ianjo”: 12 no kotoba ga kizamu “josei-tachi e” [The “Comfort Stations” of Miyakojima in the Okinawan War: “To the Women,” a Memorial Engraved in 12 Languages] (Naha: Nanyo Bunko, 2009); “Kakko-tsuki no kotoba-tachi e: Miyakojima, sono ”ishitsu“ no Okinawasen kara no toikake [To the Little Words in Quotation Marks: Problematizing Miyakojima and its ”anomalous“ experience in the Battle of Okinawa]. Ōgoshi Aiko, Igeta Midori, eds., Sengo, bōryoku, jendā III: Gendai feminizumu no eshikkusu [The Postwar Era, Violence, and Gender, III: Modern Feminism and Ethics] (Tokyo: Seikyūsha, 2010); ”‘Nikkan kankeishi’ no shūhen: Chōsen to Ryūkyū, ‘Chizujō’ ni egakareru kankeishi“ [On the Pheriphery of Japanese-Korean Relations: Korea and the Ryūkyūs, a Relationship that can be ”Traced on a Map“]. Ajia Taiheiyō Tōken (Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies), Waseda Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, No. 20, 2013; and ”Nago/Yanbaru ni okeru Nihongun ‘ianjo’“ [Japanese Military ”Comfort Stations“ in Nago and Yanbaru]. Nago City History Editorial Committee, ed., Nagoshi Honhen 3: Nago/Yanbaru no Okinawasen [The History of Nago City, Vol. 3: The Battle of Okinawa in Nago and Yanbaru], (Nago: Nago City, 2016).

⁵ Hong Yunshin, “‘Tomadou ningen’ no tame no anzen hoshō: Okinawa to Kankoku ni okeru hankichi-undō ‘jūmin akutā’ no shiten kara” [Human Security for Overwhelmed War Survivors: Anti-base Citizens’ Movements in Okinawa and Korea]. Master's Thesis, Waseda University, March 2004. This was published under the same title in the periodical Josei, sensō, jinken [Women, War, and Human Rights], July 2005, pp. 53–93.

⁶ “Okinawasen-ka no Chōsenjin to ‘sei/sei’ no poritikusu: Kioku no ba toshite no ‘ianjo’.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Waseda University, 2012.

⁷ In Japanese, the military euphemisms “comfort women” (ianfu) and “comfort stations” (ianjo), coined in 1932 by imperial armed forces in Shanghai, are frequently enclosed in parentheses to remind the reader that the terms are problematic. To reduce redundancy, I follow English-language academic convention and forego that emphasis after first usage.

⁸ In 1872, four years after its creation in 1868, the Meiji state forcibly annexed the Ryūkyū Kingdom (1429-1879) on Japan's southern periphery and, in 1879, integrated it into Japan's national administrative grid as Okinawa Prefecture. Three years later, the government incorporated the Ainu homeland (Ainu Moshir) in the north into the home islands as Hokkaido (1882). Following the Sino-Japanese (1894-95) and Russo-Japanese (1904–05) wars, Japan extended this colonial empire by annexing Taiwan (1895) and Korea (1910). The latter were declared external territories (gaichi), and their inhabitants were forced to become imperial subjects—Japanese nationals second class. Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the Japanese state added the former German mandates in the Pacific to its overseas domain. In 1932, the imperial military occupied parts of Shanghai, where it set up the first comfort stations,* and established the puppet state of Manchukuo in northeastern China (Manchuria), which it had invaded in the autumn of 1931. Five years later, in 1937, it launched a full-scale invasion of China. Japan's attacks on Southeast Asia and the United States in early December 1941 marked the beginning of the so-called Pacific War (1941–45). * Regarding the Shanghai comfort stations and the origins of the comfort women system, see The Digital Museum: The Comfort Women and the Asian Women's Fund (2007), available online. This site is a collection of military archival documents published by the Japanese government and is available in Japanese, Korean, and English.

⁹ Source: Bōeichō Bōeikenkyūjo Senshishitsu [War History Office, National Institute for Defense Studies, National Defense Agency]. Senshi sōsho (11): Okinawa hōmen Rikugun sakusen [War History Series no. 11: Japanese Army Operations around Okinawa]. Tokyo: Asagumo Shimbunsha, 1968, p. 22. Hong 2020: p. 45.

¹⁰ Source: Yōsai Kenchiku Kinmu Dai-roku Chūtai. Jinchū nisshi [Sixth Fortress Construction Duty Company. Staff activity report], June 4, 1944. Hong 2020: p. 122.

¹¹ Comfort stations generally followed combat units as the latter were redeployed south in late 1944. The “military service club” above did not migrate but was enlarged, presumably for the use of incoming aircraft maintenance personnel and other units. Source: Yōsai Kenchiku Kinmu Dai-roku Chūtai, Kita Hikōjō 56 Hidai Haken Shinobu Han. Jinchū nisshi [Shigenobu Platoon, Sixth Fortress Construction Duty Company, detached (from Iejima) for duty with the 56th Airfield Battalion at North (Yomitan) Airfield. Staff activity report], December 1944. Hong 2020: p. 158.

¹² Hong uses war statistics sparingly. “My concern,” she explains, “is not primarily with the horrendous cost of the war in human lives, utterly shocking as that figure is, but with […] Okinawans who survived the war. In [their] war remembrances, the Battle of Okinawa is never over but is relived daily, in all his horror and confusion” (p. 102). It is the insights of the living about the nature of war and sexual violence that she tries to understand and share her.

¹³ Source: Okinawa no Joseishi Kenkyū Gurūpu [Okinawan Women's History Research Group], ed. In Hōkokushū Henshū Iinkai [Editorial Committee for the Report], ed. Daigokai Zenkoku Joseishi Kenkyūkai no Tsudoi hōkokushū [Report of the Fifth National Colloquium for Research on Women's History]. Tokyo: Zenkoku Joseishi Kenkyūkai no Tsudoi Jikkō Iinkai [Executive Committee, National Colloquium for Research on Women's History], 1994, p. 26. The location of airfield sites are from archival documents in the Okinawa War Materials Reading Room at the Cabinet Okinawa Development and Promotion Bureau, Tokyo. Data compiled by Hong Yunshin. Graphic design by Kawamitsu Akira. Hong 2020: p. 105.

¹⁴ There, the general command moved into a vast underground headquarters complex beneath Shuri Castle in February 1945, complete with comfort station. Forced to retreat to the southern tip of the island in late May, army headquarters organized a last stand in the Mabuni hills and caves overlooking the Pacific, going down to defeat in late June.

¹⁵ This article is based on two of my previous reviews of Hong's book and an essay. The reviews are “Sude ni taningoto de wa nai shintai kankaku” [A Gut Feeling that this is no Longer Someone Else's Problem], Okinawa Times, April 23, 2016, and “Haijo sareta ryōiki tou itonami: manen suru bōryoku” [Problematizing a Foreclosed Territory: Escalating Violence], Okinawa Times, August 21, 2020. The essay is “Shōgen no ‘ato’: katawara de okite-iru no da ga, sudeni taningoto de wa nai” [What Comes “After” the Testimony? The Events Next Door are no Longer Someone Else's Worry]. War, Women, and Violence: Remembering the “Comfort Women” Transnationally, International Conference, Critical Studies Institute, Sogang University, March 2019, pp. 63–70.

¹⁶ On August 14, 1991, Kim described her wartime experiences at a press conference in Seoul, using her full name. On December 6 of that year, she joined other Korean victims in a lawsuit against the Japanese state, demanding a clear admission of responsibility for sexual abuse, a formal apology, and legally mandated compensation.

¹⁷ Although comfort women and girls came from a dozen countries and territories in Asia and the Pacific, the public consensus in Japan remains that military sexual enslavement is a bilateral issue between Japan and the Republic of Korea (Tokyo does not officially recognize the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and thus refuses to acknowledge the existence of North Korean comfort women survivors). In the early 1990s, however, women of several nationalities, emboldened by Kim's example and assisted by local citizens' groups, came forward to share their experiences of captivity. More than 90 from the ROK, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Taiwan, and China initiated 10 civil suits against the Japanese government. Several courts, including higher appeals tribunals, admitted plaintiff depositions as evidence, quoting from them in their verdicts, but all cases were ultimately dismissed on legal technicalities raised by the state: the expiration of the statute of limitations, the assertion of state immunity from individual war claims, and bilateral treaty arrangements.

¹⁸ See Hong Yunshin, “Bae Pong-i-san o kioku suru to iu koto: Okinawa no jūmin-shōgen kara no toi” [Remembering Bae Pong-i: Some Questions Raised by Okinawan Testimonies Concerning the Comfort Women]. Presentation to the Working Group on the Elimination of Sexual Discrimination, Human Rights Association for Korean Residents in Japan, Tokyo, April 23, 2021.

¹⁹ Bae died in October of that year, just weeks before Kim joined the first lawsuit to be filed by South Korean survivors in Tokyo.

²⁰ More precisely, in the 1970s, two books and one film about Okinawan comfort women, including Bae Pong-i, were released, and in Japan proper several important exposés were written about military sexual slavery in general, but none of these works had a lasting impact on the Japanese imagination. In 1976, Uehara Eiko, an Okinawan, published an autobiography under her real name that disclosed her life as an indentured prostitute in Naha's Tsuji district and later as a military comfort woman. See Tsuji no hana: kuruwa no onatachi [The Blossoms of Tsuji: Women of the Licensed Quarter]. Tokyo: Jiji Tsūshinsha. Yamatani Tetsuo's 1979 documentary film and book featured Bae's story, although the book version used a pseudonym. See Okinawa no Halmoni: shōgen/jūgun ianfu [The Halmoni of Okinawa: Testimonies of Military Comfort Women]. Akita City: Mumyōsha, 1979 (86 minutes, 16mm color) and Okinawa no Halmoni: Dainippon baishunshi [The Halmoni of Okinawa: A History of Prostitution in the Japanese Empire]. Tokyo: Banseisha, 1979. Kawata Fumiko's Akagawara no ie: Chōsen kara kita jūgun ianfu [The House with the Red-tile Roof: The Comfort Women from Korea] (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1987/2020) would fare better.

²¹ The tribunal was organized by women's groups and featured world-renowned jurists, historians, human rights experts, and 64 surviving ianfu from eight countries: the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the People's Republic of China, the Philippines, and the Republic of Korea.

²² Tomiyama Ichirō & Wesley Ueunten, “Japan's Militarization and Okinawa's Bases: Making Peace” (Trans. Wesley Ueunten). Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 1:2, 2010, p. 356.

²³ See for instance, this reviewer's Senjō no kioku [Memories of the Battlefield]. Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Hyōronsha, 2006 (revised version), pp. 32–35. The English translation of part of my argument is Tomoyama Ichirō, “On Becoming ‘a Japanese’: The Community of Oblivion and Memories of the Battlefield” (Trans. Noah McCormack), The Asia-Pacific Journal 3:10 (October 12, 2005).

²⁴ Biopolitics/biopower is that domain in which politics/power has become ascendant, arrogating to itself “the right to kill, to allow to live, or to expose to death.” Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics.” Public Culture, 15:1, Winter 2003, p. 12.

²⁵ The restaurant's red-tile roof caught the attention of U.S. fighter pilots during the air raids of October 10, 1944, and the building was razed shortly after its completion. Hong 2020: p. 170.

²⁶ See Tomiyama Ichirō, Bōryoku no yokan: Ifa Fuyu ni okeru kiki no mondai [Presentiments of Violence: The Problem of Crisis in Ifa Fuyu's Writings]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002, pp. 38–42. Some of my main arguments are summarized in English in “The Critical Limits of the National Community: The Ryukyuan Subject” (Trans. John Wisnom & Walter Hatch). Social Science Japan Journal. 1:2, pp. 165–79, 1998. See also Tomiyama Ichirō, Hajimaru no chi: Fanon no rinshō [Beginnings: Fanon, Clinically Situated] (Tokyo: Hōsei Daigaku Shuppanyoku, 2018), pp. 50–55.

²⁷ Tomiyama Ichirō, “‘Spy’: Mobilization and Identity in Wartime Okinawa,” Senri Ethnological Studies, No. 51, March 27, 2000, pp. 128–29.

²⁸ Tomiyama, 2000, pp. 129–30.

²⁹ Annmaria Shimabuku, Alegal: Biopolitics and the Unintelligibility of Okinawan Life (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019).

³⁰ Shimabuku, xv.

³¹ “Okinawa has always been located in an abyss of modern sovereignty, or what we call a ‘state of exception.’ Or we may say that Okinawa is constantly being exposed to the violence of exceptionalization. […] When we realize that the site of exceptionalization has its own history, we must ask, ‘What is history?’” Tomiyama Ichirō, “Preliminary Consideration on the Humanistic Significance of Okinawan Independence.” Kagaku Kenkyū Josei Jigyō: Kenkyū Seika Hōkoku [The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science: Final Research Report], June 24, 2019. JSPS Kakenhi C-19, F-19-1, Z-19 (futsū), Theme No. 34310. Available online.

³² In Butler's usage, foreclosure designates a “preemptive action … that is not performed by a subject but, rather … makes possible the formation of the subject…. [It] is not a singular action, but the reiterated effect of a structure. Something is barred, but no subject bars it; the subject emerges as the result of the bar itself.” Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, London/New York: Routledge, 2021 (1997), p. 138. See also Tomiyama, 2018, pp. 45–50.

³³ Butler, 132–35. See also my discussion in Tomiyama, “What Comes ‘After’ the Testimonies,” 2019, pp. 63–66.

³⁴ In Japan, two extreme historical examples come to mind. During the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, Korean residents, falsely accused of poisoning wells and plotting sedition, were stopped and made to repeat the phrase “15 yen 50 sen” (¥15.50) in standard Japanese. Failure to pronounce those words properly was seen as proof of Korean ethnicity and could result in immediate death. On April 9, 1945, shortly after U.S. forces invaded, the army issued orders to kill any Okinawan caught speaking their native language. Tomiyama, “What Comes ‘After’ the Testimonies,” 2019, p. 66.

³⁵ Shimabuku, 12.

³⁶ Nomura Kōya, “Nihonjin e no kodawari” [Dwelling on Japaneseness], Impaction 103 (1999), p. 40.

³⁷ Okinawa has been forced to accept more than 70% of all U.S. military installations in Japan. These currently occupy 15% of the prefecture's main island, where 90% of Okinawans live. The prefecture must also “host” roughly 30,000 active-duty American personnel. In addition to persistent sexual molestation, the bases cause intractable safety and environmental problems. A major issue is the continued operation of the dangerous U.S. Marine Air Station at Futenma, whose fleet of accident-prone tiltrotor Osprey aircraft operate in a densely populated area. Another is the construction of a new U.S. Marine base complex at Henoko on Ōura Bay. Henoko is supposed to replace Futenma someday, but structural engineering problems plague the project, which is destroying a rich coastal ecology known for its unique biodiversity. For several years now, residents, joined by mainland supporters, have engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience to stop reclamation and construction work there. Despite widespread opposition, Tokyo remains committed to completing the new base whatever the cost to Okinawa.

³⁸ See Tomiyama, 2000, pp. 122–23, and 2010.

³⁹ Tomiyama, 2000, pp. 126–27.

⁴⁰ The original idea for the memorial belongs to Yonaha Hiroshi, a Miyakojima resident who retains vivid memories of the comfort women he befriended as a boy. The memorial consists of two main parts. The boulder in the foreground is known as the Arirang Memorial, which honors the Korean, Okinawan, and Taiwanese ianfu held on Miyakojima. It marks the spot where they would stop to rest after visiting a nearby well. The well was an important social space, and it was there that friendships developed between comfort women and local villagers. Behind the boulder is a stone triptych dedicated to “All the Women.” It is inscribed in the 12 languages spoken by ianfu recruited in Asia and the Pacific. See Hong, pp. 441-42. A total of nine monuments have been built in Okinawa by groups memorializing Okinawans, Koreans, and Chinese who died in forced suicides, were exploited as manual or sexual slave labor, or were brutalized by Japanese soldiers during the Battle of Okinawa. Hong 2020: p. 485.

⁴¹ I would note that the Okinawan sculptor Kinjo Minoru recently cited this passage in Hong's book as his inspiration for a bas relief sculpture of four Korean comfort women. The faces on the tetraptych express four moods: sadness, prayer, pride, and anger. Miyazato Miki, “Rekishi manabu kikkake ni” [An incentive to learn from history]. Okinawa Taimusu (Okinawa Times), June 17, 2021.

⁴² A similar pattern can be observed in Okinawa today. In 1995, three U.S. servicemen sexually violated a 12-year-old girl, enraging Okinawans and sparking a revitalized prefecture-wide anti-base movement. Civil society mobilized to stop the recurrence of such atrocities, even forcing the U.S. government to reduce modestly the land surface under bases. But citizen's groups were silent about the daily GI rapes of Filipino hostesses, Okinawan sex workers, and the Okinawan girlfriends (amejo) of American soldiers in the entertainment districts. Here, one senses an unconscious distinction between women who require protection and those who do not. One also notes that the scapegoating of black male military personnel as would-be rapists tended to minimize the impact of sex crimes by white male troops. Tomiyama, 2010, pp. 354–55.

⁴³ For other examples, see Tomiyama, 2010, p. 350.

⁴⁴ Jahana was a rapporteur for Hong's talk, “Han to Chimugurisa: Okinawa ni okeru ‘ianjo’ to iu jōkyō” [Han and Chimugurisa: The state of research on “comfort stations” in Okinawa], East Asia Lecture Series No. 10: Okinawa to “Ianfu” Mondai [Okinawa and the Comfort Women Issue]. International Center for Japanese Studies, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, March 25, 2021. Jahana has reported extensively on the Battle of Okinawa. In 2007, she was asked to lead the Okinawa Times editorial response to the Ministry of Education's decision in March of that year to delete from Japanese high-school textbooks references to direct army involvement in Okinawa's wartime “group suicides.” Under her leadership, the daily published some 80 articles over a six-month period. The series effectively demolished the conservative establishment's revisionist narrative that Okinawans, “displaying the noble spirit of self-sacrifice,” had chosen the “patriotic path” of taking their own lives rather than disrupt Japanese military operations.

⁴⁵ Okinawan Women Act Against Military Violence, ed. Postwar U.S. Military Crimes Against Women in Okinawa. Published in 1996, the booklet was originally six pages. The 2016 updated version has grown to 28 pages and now chronicles 350 American crimes against women. See also Suzuyo Takazato, “Report from Okinawa: Long-term U.S. Military Presence,” Canadian Woman Studies/Les cahiers de la femme, 19:4, 2000, pp. 42-47.

⁴⁶ Butler, 129. See also Tomiyama, “What Comes ‘After’ the Testimonies,” 2019, p. 67.

⁴⁷ In August 1993, Chief Cabinet Secretary Kōno officially acknowledged Japan's responsibility for creating and operating the comfort station system and for recruiting women against their will, publicly apologized, and promised to revise the teaching of Japanese history to reflect the historical facts. On March 7, 2007, the first Abe Shinzō administration (2006–07) enacted a Cabinet decision declaring there to be no written evidence that the imperial military had employed force to marshal comfort women. In June 2007, prominent members of Abe's ruling conservative party (but also several opposition lawmakers as well as conservative academics and journalists) signed a full-page ad in the Washington Post asserting that comfort women were not sex slaves but prostitutes licensed by the state. The second Abe administration (2012–20) reiterated Abe's earlier position on forcible recruitment, telling the National Diet on several occasions that it had, in effect, nullified the so-called Kōno statement. In a joint memorandum with the ROK in December 2015, the Abe government admitted military “involvement” and expressed remorse, but without mentioning the Kōno statement. In the Diet deliberations of January 18, 2016, Abe's foreign minister, Kishida Fumio (now prime minister), insisted that the term “sex slaves” did not fit the facts, and Abe himself again denied coercive intervention by the Japanese military. In fact, Hong's book constitutes a refutation of those arguments, documenting the fact that in Okinawa, the Japanese military ordered and participated in the rounding up of women and set up special committees at all levels of command to regulate comfort station operations down the smallest details.

⁴⁸ Takemura Kazuko, Ai ni tsuite [On love]. Iwanami Shoten, 2002, p. 210.

⁴⁹ Takemura Kazuko, “Ika ni shite riron de seiji o okonau ka” [Using Theory to Make Politics], in J. Butler, Shokuhatsu suru kotoba: gengo, kenryoku, kōitai [Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performable]. Iwanami Shoten, 2004, p. 291.

⁵⁰ Tomiyama, 2000, p. 131.

⁵¹ See Tomiyama Ichirō, “Kokuba Kōtarō ni okeru minzokushugi to ‘shima’ [Ethnic Nationalism and Community in Kokuba Kōtarō's Writings] in Mori Yoshio, Tomiyama Ichirō, Tobe Hideaki, eds., Ama yuu e: Okinawa Sengo-shi no jiritsu ni mukete [Toward a Better World: For a Self-determining Postwar History of Okinawa] (Tokyo: Hosei University Press, 2017), pp. 115–30.

⁵² The phrase “totality of many diverse efforts” is borrowed from Franz Fanon, who spoke of l'ensemble des efforts as one of the essential conditions for national liberation. See Tomiyama, 2017, pp. 117–18. “All Okinawa” is from Tomiyama, 2017, p. 126.