A balanced, sensitive study of the history of comfort women in Singapore during World War II. "Comfort women" or ianfu is the euphemism used by the Japanese military for the women they compelled to do sex work in the Second World War, and has become the term generally used in English to discuss the subject. The role of comfort women in the Japanese empire during World War II remains an important and emotional topic around the world. Most scholarship concentrates on Korean comfort women, with less on their counterparts in Japan, China, and Taiwan, and even less on Southeast Asia. That gap persists despite widespread knowledge of the elaborate series of comfort stations, or comfort houses, that were organized by the Japanese administration across Singapore during the Occupation from 1942 to 1945. So why, the author asks, did no former comfort women from Singapore come forward and tell their stories when others across Asia began to do publicly in the 1990s? To understand this silence, this book offers a detailed examination of the sex industry serving the Japanese military during the wartime occupation of Singapore: the comfort stations, managers, procuresses, girls, and women who either volunteered or were forced into service and in many cases sexual slavery. Kevin Blackburn then turns from history to the public presence of the comfort women in Singapore's memory, including newspapers, novels, plays, television, and touristic heritage sites, showing how comfort women became known in Singapore during the 1990s and 2000s. Bringing great care, balance, and sensitivity to a difficult subject, Blackburn helps to fill an important gap in our understanding of this period.
Kevin Blackburn is associate professor at the National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technological University.
Introduction 1. Lee Kuan Yew and Masculinist Memories of the Comfort Women 2. The Role of the Women of Singapore in the Sex Industry of the Japanese Military 3. Inside the Comfort Stations of Singapore 4. Korean and Indonesian Comfort Women in Singapore 5. The Comfort Women Returning to Live in Postwar Society 6. The Silence of the Local Comfort Women of Singapore 7. The Comfort Women of Singapore as 'Dark Heritage' Conclusion Bibliography Endnotes
"In all, the book ought to be included in courses on Southeast Asia and Singapore, and on Japanese imperialism in Asia. The book will also appeal to audiences interested in the value of oral history for historical research. Blackburn relies extensively on oral history collections in Korea and Singapore, including a less-known oral history collection in the National Institute of Education he and his students are developing. Furthermore, Blackburn's observations call for us to consider how oral history archives can institutionalize the erasure of women by privileging and normalizing the patriarchal, gendered lenses of mostly male interviewees (23, 27). Finally, this empathetic history of comfort women in Singapore, and of their absence from Singapore's public memory, reminds us to reflect on the ways we become complicit ourselves in discouraging victims from stepping forward, from speaking out, and from seeking the support they deserve."-- "Pacific Affairs" "Blackburn, with great care, explores encounters between comfort women from other countries and Singaporean society during and after the Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945 .... Scholars and students of Asian history, women's history, gender studies, international relations, and memory activism would find much of interest in this book. The book would also attract a wider readership with its accessibility through the provision of relevant background in text and footnotes. Without a doubt, this book is a significant contribution to the memory scholarship in Asian history, successfully demonstrating the extent of complexity and tensions in the past and present of comfort women issues."-- "Southeast Asian Studies" "This is an appealing and lucid read for undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers alike. Carefully researched and intelligibly written, Blackburn draws upon voices and testimonies from a range of actors who were involved in the Japanese sex industry during wartime. He demonstrates how such plurality of memory recall and history importantly complicates and adds on to further understandings of comfort women and military sexual industry. Further facets, testimonies, experiences, and hardships of the comfort women presented in the book contribute richly to the existing corpus of literature and studies on the women."-- "Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society" "In The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory, Kevin Blackburn examines the effects of the sex industry in Singapore established by the Japanese military during wartime occupation to uncover why Singaporean women remained silent while women from other societies shared their stories . . . The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory is an insightful read that serves as a reminder of the ongoing struggle for gender equality and justice in Asia."-- "E-International Relations" "The world is familiar with the ordeal of comfort women mainly because of the courage shown by Koreans who were coerced into bondage and have publicly campaigned for compensation and acts of contrition from Japan. Less well known is the way that Japan reshaped and directed the sex industry of Singapore from 1942, when British colonial rule was vanquished, until Tokyo's defeat three years later. Fear of stigma and a lack of encouragement have hampered survivors in this Southeast Asia country from attaining similar recognition. . . . The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory charts the development of comfort stations during the war and why it's been so hard to document their brutality."-- "Bloomberg" "Without a doubt, The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory greatly expands the scope of extant scholarship on the comfort women, and as such it will appeal to a wide readership, including scholars, students, and the wider public... the book will certainly engage the reader in discussions about gender, sexual slavery, human rights, and more, both within and beyond Singapore."-- "Seoul Journal of Korean Studies" "[This book] explores the history of comfort women in Singapore and how it has differed from that of South Korea, the subject of not a few novels and memoirs. . . . Now with Blackburn's book, the Singapore comfort women can be remembered even more in a way that does not shame them but rather holds their memories close." -- "Asian Review of Books"
