In early 1992, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew gave a public statement about the dark years of World War 2, namely that Korean comfort women kept Singapore women from suffering the same sexual slavery at the hands of the Japanese military. This one statement, as Nanyang Technological University professor Kevin Blackburn writes in his new book, The Comfort Women of Singapore in History and Memory, was not only inaccurate but further cemented an unwelcoming environment for former Singapore comfort women to break their silence about the trauma they experienced during WW2. Blackburn’s 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. The Singapore story, apart from Jing-Jing Lee’s How We Disappeared, has rarely been recorded in English literature. As Blackburn shows throughout his book, there is good reason for this.
Weeks before Lee Kuan Yew’s speech, the subject of Korean comfort women made international news when three Korean women sued the Japanese government for suffering and damages from being forced into sexual slavery during the War. It was this news that Lee was responding to in his statement. But it wasn’t just Korean women who were subjected to sexual slavery and in fact not a few women from Singapore—from a variety of ethnic backgrounds—were also comfort women during the war. Yet there wasn’t the same supportive environment in Singapore as there was in South Korea for former comfort women to come forward.
… the news of the Korean women demanding compensation encouraged other Asian women to also ‘roar’, but there was a noticeable silence about the local Singapore comfort women. It seems likely that Lew Kuan Yew’s statement at the beginning of 1992 suggested to potential witnesses that there would not be a sympathetic government to support them in speaking out, unlike in other countries.

Early in the book, Blackburn explains the term “comfort women” and how it seems antithetical to what these girls and women suffered during the war, yet a word that does justice to these women’s experiences has yet to be found. Blackburn also spends considerable time showing that in Singapore, as in many Asian countries, women who were victims of the Japanese military in WW2 have traditionally been viewed as the ones at fault and therefore a disgrace to their friends and family. No wonder so few former comfort women ever came forward. But the evidence was there for those that looked Blackburn quotes from Major-General HR Hone, the Chief Civil Affairs Officer in 1945, who wants to help the former comfort women:
Our interest at this moment is not in professional prostitutes or those who were acting as such of choice; but in those girls who have been forced into such a way of life by the Japanese and the economic conditions during the occupation.
And in 1946 journalist VKG Nair writes in an article titled “Ex-Japanese Prostitutes in British Singapore”:
… ‘the hundreds of prostitutes who ply their trade in the streets of Singapore after sunset’ was ‘one of the many legacies left behind by the Japanese’ and that a ‘large majority of these unfortunate girls are therefore victims of circumstances …’
After experiencing so much trauma at the hands of the Japanese military, former comfort women usually felt so ashamed of what they had been through that they didn’t dare tell their families. Some couldn’t bear to even return home to their families. Many felt like they couldn’t return to normal society and had no choice but to go into prostitution. As Blackburn writes, the increase in prostitution after WW2 was so noticeable that the Singapore government started blaming the women and felt that the best way to reform them was to send them to the Poh Leung Kuk, a home for girls that originally taught homemaking skills but by the 1950s had become more of a punitive detention center.
But Lee Kiu, the only female on the Singapore Advisory Council in Singapore’s British government, had other ideas. Rather than detaining women who have turned to prostitution, Lee recommended opening factory jobs to women and providing them with leisurely activities that would bring joy to their lives. Lee’s efforts would result in 1947 of a newly-formed Women and Girls’ Section in Singapore’s Social Welfare Department. By the 1950s, most of the former comfort women in Singapore had fully integrated back into society, but happiness remained elusive. They knew they would fare better if they never spoke about their experiences during the war. So for the next forty years until the Korean women’s lawsuit and Lee Kuan Yew’s speech, the subject of Singapore comfort women would all but disappear.
Even when these stories started to emerge again after so many decades, the Singapore government still distanced itself from the issue compared to a country like South Korea. There’s a famous statue of a comfort woman at the Japanese embassy in Seoul. But when the same group that funded that statue wanted to place one in Singapore, the government hemmed and hawed and eventually the statue did not go up, presumably to avoid the risk of offending Japan. Given its history with Japan, the Korean government could take more risks with such a bold statue, but the Singapore government is not in the practice of making political statements.
Blackburn explains towards the end of his book the main ways in which the history of Singapore comfort women has lived on. Several dramatic productions and television programmes in Singapore have centered around stories of comfort women, all while respecting the privacy of the last remaining Singapore comfort women and those who are no longer alive. 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.
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