During World War II, the Japanese Imperial Army forced young women and girls in occupied territories into sexual slavery. The purpose was to prevent rapes, sexually transmitted diseases, leaking of confidential information, and to provide "comfort " to Japanese soldiers. This sexual servitude gave rise to the euphemistic label "comfort women. " It is estimated there were between 50,000 to as many as 400,000 "comfort women " throughout more than ten occupied countries including Korea, China, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, the Dutch East Indies, Taiwan, Burma, and Vietnam. This dark period of Asian history remains hotly debated between the right-wing Japanese government and sympathetic groups of activists and feminists. Interestingly, this conflict found a new and unexpected battlefield on American soil and has become part of the discourse on human rights. "Comfort women " represent something universally troubling: the endemic assault on the rights and ownership of a woman s body and the patriarchal systems that leave such transgressions unpunished. "Comfort women " issues reflect the atrocities that continue to plague modern society today: rape, violations of human rights, sexual assault, sex trafficking, and more broadly, war-time traumas. What has made many sympathetic to this cause is not just the horrific experiences of these women, but also the realization that women's rights and justice have not greatly improved since World War II. This book is dedicated to compiling and recording the tremendous efforts of diverse groups of people for the cause of the "comfort women " in the United States for the last 28 years in hopes that readers can use and learn from these archived materials to prevent such atrocities in the future and to fight those battles today, where the voices of women in the past could not.

Introduction: Why do we deal with the "comfort women" issue in the U.S.? / Jung-Sil Lee and Dennis P. Halpin
Part I: The U.S. grassroots movement toward legislative advocacy
28 years of WCCW advocacy against injustice to "comfort women" / Jung-Sil Lee
House resolution 121 (110th Congress) interview with Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) / Mike Honda and edited by Mindy L. Kotler
"Comfort women": The making of U.S. House of Representatives resolution 121, 110th Congress, 2007 / Mindy L. Kotler
The "comfort women" issue brought to the forefront of the U.S. Congress / Dennis P. Halpin
Part II: The "comfort women" movement becomes transnation
The first academic conference on "comfort women": Its impact and legacies / Bonnie B.C. Oh
Girls and military sexual slavery through a feminist intersectional lens / Margaret D. Stetz
Can the arts heal the wartime trauma of sex slaves? Case study of visual art, film, and performing arts / Jung-Sil Lee
Western language doctoral dissertations on the Korean "comfort women" 1995-2004: An annotated bibliography / Frank Joseph Shulman
Assessing the transnational "comfort women" movement, 1992-2019 / Yangmo Ku
The roles of "comfort women" memorials in the U.S.: Continued activation of the spirit of house resolution 121 / Jung-Sil Lee