A Thai friend of mine who is involved in women’s rights campaigns told me about the story of one Madam X.

Madam X was still a young girl in British Malaya when she was forcibly dragged by the invading Japanese army from her kitchen in Kuala Lumpur and made to serve as one of the many so-called comfort women in a private venue in Jalan Ampang.

It was January 1942. After some ‘training’, Madam X and other girls were transferred to Tai Sun Hotel in Pudu, not far from where Sun Complex is today. There, they continued to entertain Japanese soldiers under duress for more than three years. The liberation only came when Emperor Hirohito announced via radio Japan’s surrender in the aftermath of the atomic bombings against Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

The “comfort stations” - set up by the Japanese army in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Java, Luzon Island, Sarawak and North Borneo - were mostly made up of Chinese, Malays, Javanese, Sumatrans, Eurasians (Dutch-Javanese etc), Formosans (Taiwanese), Filipinas, Koreans and also Japanese. There were also Russian women among them, mostly found in Japanese-occupied Manchuria.

My Thai friend added that from all the documents, materials and sources that she had gleaned through, she could not find one single comfort woman of Tamil origin.

“I reckon the imperial system of Japan at the time was racist in nature, and the soldiers were brainwashed to think of people with darker skin as lowly, just like western colonialists.”

(To be fair, the Japanese today are probably no more racist than an average Malaysian.)

Madam X did survive the ordeal. Back in 1994, the New Straits Times interviewed her. Already 79 then, she talked about the horrific experience of sex slavery. Her real name was Rosalind Saw.

According to George Hicks, author of the book The Comfort Women , the volumes of visits to the various comfort stations in Malaya in 1943 were high based on the numbers of condoms distributed: in July, 1,000 for Negri Sembilan, 10,000 for Perak; in August, 5,000 for Malacca, 10,000 for Selangor and 30,000 for Penang.

Why did it take Madam X and her fellow victims nearly half a century to speak out? The reasons are, in my humble opinion, many. But her bravery was in line with the trend across Asia, especially in countries such as South Korea and the Philippines.

Throughout the 1990s, more and more former victims of sex slavery began to demand from the Japanese authorities public acknowledgement and unreserved apologies over the existence of the degrading, inhumane institution as part of the war machinery.

Even in Taiwan, the island state that traditionally views Japanese colonial rule  more positively than its Asian neighbours, angry voices of former comfort women can still be heard from time to time.

Suppressing the sorrowful stories

The Cold War and geo-strategic considerations, to a very large extent, were instrumental in suppressing the sorrowful stories of the victims.

Being the closest ally of the United States in Asia, Japan enjoyed the ‘privilege’ of not having to fully own up to its war responsibility as Germany did. Scholarly research - such as Herbert Bix's Pulitzer-winning book Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan - points to the vitally important role Emperor Hirohito played behind Japanese expansionism in the 1930s and 1940s.

To guard against Japanese society being influenced by left-wing forces after the war ended, the US as the occupying power absolved him of all the responsibility.

Compared to the numbers of Nazi operatives on trial across postwar Europe, the number of Japanese officials being held to account for their wartime activities was ridiculously small, which is why the successive Japanese governments have been least willing to mention Japan’s past atrocities. Why should the Japanese people be made a scapegoat if the emperor himself was ‘unblemished’? So argue some right-wing politicians.

Former comfort women in South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia found their voices cruelly muted simply because their authoritarian or semi-authoritarian governments were backed by the US to ensure ‘stability’. Any social movement that would potentially upset the political status quo in these countries would not go down well with Washington.

This was particularly true in Malaysia. Moreover, Barisan Nasional parties benefited hugely from Japanese investments, making them even less keen to take up the cause of the former sex slaves, not to mention the fact that Umno has been portraying the Japanese occupation as a blessing in disguise in that it enabled Malaya to ‘get rid of British control’.

Mahathir Mohamad, for instance, constantly urges others to forget Japan’s war crimes and turn over a new leaf, although he remains viciously bitter of British colonialism.

The disappearance of communist threat and the democratisation of South Korea, the Philippines and Taiwan in the late 1980s and 1990s changed the situation dramatically, making an Asia-wide movement for Japan to face up to its ignominious past possible. To its credit, Japan does have a fairly independent judiciary and there have been several just-minded judges who ruled in favour of former comfort women seeking apologies and compensations from Tokyo.

Very encouraging development

A growing number of American lawmakers - acutely aware that this issue can no longer be swept under the carpet - have also started to put pressure on Japan to right its wrongs. All this is a very encouraging development, although the majority of Japanese politicians remain evasive at best and in denial at worst.

China, being arguably the biggest victim of Japanese imperialism, has been inscrutably silent.

Ever since Beijing began its reform policy in the late 1970s, the country has been dependent on Japan for economic growth, and there was also some sort of a tacit understanding that Tokyo would compensate for its war atrocities through increased investment, overseas aid and technological transfer in China. Despite China’s vastly improved economic prowess, the conspicuous silence on the part of the Chinese government is most puzzling.

As Roland Barthes has said: Myth can only work through a neglect of politics and the forgetting of history. The sustained myth around the divineness of Emperor Hirohito is therefore a stumbling block that prevents the Japanese nation from coming of age. Unlike Germany, Japan has clearly failed to live up to its desired image as a responsible and respectable power.

JOSH HONG studied politics at London Metropolitan University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. A keen watcher of domestic and international politics, he longs for a day when Malaysians will learn and master the art of self-mockery, and enjoy life to the full in spite of politicians.