Author: N.K. Sandhya Devi, RV University - Google Scholar

Abstract: »The current study intends to illustrate the atrocities perpetrated against Singaporean women by the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War. These women were called ‘comfort women’ and their sole purpose was to comfort the soldiers and boost their morale. By employing the wartime rape arguments of Brownmiller (2005), this study uses Discourse Analysis to examine the novel How We Disappeared by Jing Jing Lee (2020). The research objectives include the employment of sexual slavery as a strategic weapon of war enabling compliance and control and demonstrates how their identities were re-defined, stripped of autonomy and reduced to mere symbols of conquests. Further, the study exemplifies the historical erasure of comfort women and the denial of justice. The study revealed that these women were multiply discriminated against before, during and after war through familial, national and international structures, leading to unprecedented trauma. The study found that their identities and autonomies were manipulated and annihilated to suit the prevailing political powers. However, despite being haunted by memories of war, some victims were able to transform from subjugation to assertion by breaking the historic invisibility and voicing their experiences.« (Source: Journal of Gender-Based Violence)

Contents:

	Introduction (p. 2)
		Theoretical background (p. 2)
	Methodology (p. 3)
		Background (p. 4)
		Summary (p. 6)
		Critical analysis of Jing Jing Lee’s (2020) How We Disappeared (p. 6)
	Conclusion (p. 13)
	Funding (p. 14)
	Conflict of interest (p. 15)
	References (p. 15)

Wikipedia: History of Asia: History of Japan / Shōwa era | History of Asia: History of Singapore / Japanese occupation of Singapore | Literature: Singaporean Literature / Jing-Jing Lee | Literature: Works about comfort women / How We Disappeared | Prostitution: Forced prostitution / Comfort women | Sex and the law: Wartime sexual violence / Wartime sexual violence in World War II | War: Pacific War / Japanese war crimes