"For decades, Hata Ikuhiko has enjoyed a well-earned reputation as the leading authority in the world on the history of Japan's role in World War II. Now, Jason Morgan's excellent translation of Hata's 1999 book Comfort Women and Sex in the Battle Zone, which the author has revised and updated to cover recent debates on the issue, makes this extraordinary historian's work available to the broader international community This work by a careful, thoughtful historian, who follows primary documents meticulously to build his conclusions, should be the definitive study on the highly controversial 'comfort women' issue that, up to now, sadly has generated
more heat than light. An essential work for historians, policy analysts, political scientists, politicians, and anyone who wants to truly understand a sad chapter in modem history."
-KEVIN M. DOAK, Georgetown University
"This is a must-read for anyone curious to know how the transnational feminist topic of comfort women has transformed into a focus of anti-Japanese nationalism in Korea today. Placing the issue in the universal framework of war and sex, Hata counters the master narrative disseminated by Japanese and Korean activists since the I990s and points to the uncomfortable truth that profiteering Korean handlers lured destitute young women with false job offers and exploited them as war-zone prostitutes."
-CHIZUKO T. ALLEN, University of Hawai'i at Manoa
"Hata Ikuhiko tackles difficult questions by thoroughly examining official and private sources in |apan, Korea, and other places under Japanese control during WWII. His findings shed new light on this controversial issue, ultimately showing that war produces the ugliest crimes, in this case against helpless young women."
-BEN-AMI SHILLONY The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Comfort Women and Sex in the Battle Zone is an exhaustive examination of the controversial issue of comfort women, who provided sexual services to soldiers before and during World War II. This book provides extensive documents and narratives by witnesses to shed light on the reality of these women who worked in the battle zone. It also covers Japan's political and diplomatic disagreements with neighboring nations, in particular South Korea and China, over this issue as well as other international reactions, including the U.S. House of Representatives resolution that urged the Japanese government to apologize to former comfort women. This book is an English translation of the Japanese version first published in 1999 and reprinted several times, with additional sections covering recent developments.
HATA IKUHIKO, professor emeritus of Nihon University, is a leading Japanese historian who has extensively researched Japan's modern history, including the second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.