36th Annual Nimitz Symposium - 2023 | Mindy Kotler, Guest Speaker

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Imperial Japan's Wartime Policy of Rape and Privilege: The Comfort Women
In 1932, Japanese Army and Navy officers in occupied Shanghai established a government sponsored regime to provide sexual services to Japanese military and civilian personnel. This was known as the Comfort Women system. The stated purpose was to prevent rape, avoid disease, stop espionage, and provide comfort. The economic reason was to keep military salaries contained within the Japanese treasury. The Comfort Women system was both a euphemism for and a way to distinguish the trafficked women and girls for the military from the then-legal private system of civilian prostitution.
Japan’s military-dominated government institutionalized the Comfort Women system throughout its wartime empire. Japanese government involvement in overseeing and managing the Comfort Women resulted in the largest modern example of state-sponsored sex trafficking. This instilled in Japan’s occupying military and civilian administrators a sense of entitlement and privilege associated with their access to sex.
Speaker's Biography:
Mindy L. Kotler is founder and director of Asia Policy Point (APP), a nonprofit research center in Washington, DC, studying U.S. policy relationships with Japan and Northeast Asia. She focuses on the connection between history and Asian regional security and writes on the politics and policy implications of Comfort Women, prisoners of war of Imperial Japan, and historical memory in Asia. Kotler works closely with members of Congress on the history and foreign policy with Japan and advised Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA) in his drafting and defense of the 2007 Comfort Women resolution, H.Res 121. She also helped garner an apology from the Japanese Government in 2009 to the American POWs of Japan. Kotler received her M.A. in International Relations from Yale University and her B.A. in Government and History with High Honors in Chinese History from Smith College.
APP’s members include leading American scholars, officials, analysts, journalists and institutions that follow the region and introduces new research, analysis, and information to the American Asia policy community.
36th Annual Admiral Nimitz Symposium Sponsors and Donors:
Fischer & Wieser
Dian Graves Owen Foundation
Dr. Leon Bromberg Charitable Trust
Humanities Texas
Messina Hof
Hilmy Cellars
From the National Museum of the Pacific War, thank you to our guest presenters for
providing the content for this program. Any research, historical information, and opinions expressed are their own.
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