Topic summary
Sex slaves
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Sexual slavery.
Japan during World War II
"Comfort women" are a widely publicized example of sexual slavery. The term refers to the women, from occupied countries, who were forced to serve as sex slaves in the Japanesearmy's camps during World War II. Estimates vary as to how many women were involved, with numbers ranging from as low as 20,000 from some Japanese scholars to as high as 410,000 from some Chinese scholars. The numbers are still being researched and debated. The majority of women were taken from Korea, China, and other occupied territories part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. They were often recruited by kidnapping or deception to serve as sex slaves. Each slave reportedly suffered "an average of 10 rapes per day (considered by some to be a low estimate), for a five-day work week; this figure can be extrapolated to estimate that each 'comfort girl' was raped around 50 times per week or 2,500 times per year. For three years of service – the average – a comfort girl would have been raped 7,500 times." (Parker, 1995 United Nations Commissions on Human Rights)