Diary of a Japanese Military Comfort Station Manager is a book of diaries written by a clerk who worked in Japanese "comfort stations", where the Japanese military trafficked women and girls into sexual slavery, in Burma and Singapore during World War II. The author, a Korean businessman, kept a daily diary between 1922 and 1957. The diaries were discovered by historian An Byeong-jik in 2012 and published in South Korea in 2013.
The Diary of a Japanese Military Comfort Station Manager is regarded as a credible contemporary document on the workings of Japan's comfort women system. The diary sheds light on the lives of women who worked in "comfort stations" and the relationship between comfort station managers and the Japanese military.
Background
The author of the diary is identified only by the surname Park. Mr. Park was born near Gimhae, South Gyeongsang Province, in 1905 and died in 1979. After graduating from high school in 1922, he kept a diary which he updated every day until 1957. When Korea was part of the Japanese Empire, Mr. Park ran a scriveners' office and at first enjoyed a well-to-do lifestyle. However, in 1940, when his profits declined, he put a substantial portion of his remaining wealth into a plan to build a restaurant in Manchuria, which turned out to be an investment scam. At this time, Mr. Park's brother-in-law was involved in recruiting Korean comfort women and sending them overseas to provide sexual services to Japanese soldiers. Partly because of his financial difficulties, Mr. Park decided in 1942 to travel to Japanese-occupied Southeast Asia with his brother-in-law to manage a comfort station, and he stayed there until 1944.
After Mr. Park's death, parts of his diary found their way to a used bookstore. Oh Chae-hyeon, a sculptor, purchased them and took them to the Time Capsule Museum in Paju, a privately owned museum where he served as curator. In May 2012, Korean historian An Byeong-jik, Professor Emeritus at Seoul National University, learned of the existence of the diary from an archivist at the Academy of Korean Studies and borrowed its 26 volumes from the Time Capsule Museum with permission from Oh. The diary entries for the years 1943 and 1944 were examined by An jointly with two Japanese researchers, Kyoto University professor Hori Kazuo and Kobe University professor Kimura Kan. These 1943-44 entries, written in a mix of older Korean and Japanese, were translated entirely into modern Korean by the Naksungdae Institute of Economic Research and then into modern Japanese by Hori and Kimura.
Contents of the diary
The diary is written in a mixture of Japanese characters (kanji and katakana) and the Korean alphabet. Each diary entry starts with the date, followed by a description of the weather, including the daily minimum and maximum temperatures in degrees Celsius, and then an account of the author's daily activities. It is unclear whether Mr. Park intended the diary to be a simple chronicle of his day-to-day activities and thoughts, as a record of his business transactions, or both.
The diary's entries for 1942 are missing from the diary, but it is known that Mr. Park arrived in Burma on August 20, 1942, and ran a comfort station called the Kanpachi Club in modern-day Sittwe until January 16, 1943. He subsequently managed a comfort station called Ichifuji-rō in Insein, Rangoon, from May 1, 1943, to September 9, 1943, before moving to Singapore on September 29, 1943, where he worked with a taxi company. On February 1, 1944, he started work at a comfort station called "Kikusui Club", which he continued to manage until December 16, 1944, when he left for home. The published version of his diary includes all his diary entries between January 1, 1943, and December 31, 1944.
Mr. Park's daily responsibilities were to man the front desk at the station between around 2:00 PM and 1:00 AM, to take the guests to the comfort women's rooms and to record all profits and expenditures. The comfort stations were set up in existing buildings in civilian areas, rather than in segregated red-light districts. Some of Mr. Park's other frequent responsibilities included shopping for daily goods, collecting and distributing rations, maintaining his car, and attending air raid watches. Mr. Park was in constant contact with the Japanese military authorities to submit reports on his business and to obtain entry permits, employment permits, and travel papers for the comfort women and himself.