Bearing Witness: World War II “Comfort Women” Stations
Warning: This episode features the difficult topic of sexual slavery during World War II.
Producer Willa Seidenberg talks with recent graduate Hanyu Chen about her thesis, “Our Bodies, Their Battlegrounds”: The Conservation of Comfort Stations in China. Before and during World War II, the Japanese Imperial Army forced women and girls into sexual slavery for the military in its occupied territories. Their captors called them “comfort women” and their prisons “comfort stations.” Two of the few remaining former comfort stations are in Hanyu’s hometown.
In this episode, Hanyu discusses how the “comfort women” system developed, why these crimes took so long to reach the public eye, and why conserving the few former stations is critical to reclaiming these women’s stories.
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One of the First Comfort Women Stations in Shanghai (http://world.kbs.co.kr/special/kfuture/chinese/women/truth.htm). 
A Temporary Comfort Station in Yangjiazhai, Shanghai, 1943 (http://www.williamandrewsbooks.com/PhotosofComfortWomen.html). 
Pregnant Park Young-Shim and Three Other Korean “Comfort Women” after They Were Liberated by US-China Allied Forces Outside Songshan, Yunnan Province, China, September 7, 1944. Photo by Charles Hatfield (https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/teaching-about-the-comfort-women-during-world-war-ii-and-the-use-of-personal-stories-of-the-victims/). 
Historic Photo of Nanjing Liji Lane Comfort Women Station. (http://www.guoxue.com/?p=34758). 
Park Young-Shim Visited 2 Liji Lane, Room 19, Where She Was Stationed, November 2003, (https://m.krzzjn.com/show-403-48698.html). 
“Hanazono Mineto,” the Historic Comfort Station Site in Zhuji. Photo by Xuemin Zhang. (http://www.shaoxing.com.cn/xinwen/p/2813856.html).
Featuring
Hanyu Chen is an architecture Ph.D. student at UCLA. In August 2022, she received her Master of Heritage Conservation degree from USC, where she started her research journey. Her research primarily focuses on vernacular architecture, women’s history, and heritage conservation. She is also a proud border collie sister.
Podcast producer Willa Seidenberg teaches audio journalism and podcasting at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, while pursuing a Master of Heritage Conservation degree at the USC School of Architecture.
A 20-year broadcast journalist and an inaugural fellow with USC’s Center for Excellence in Teaching, Willa founded Annenberg Radio News, the university’s radio news operation; and Intersections South LA, a reporting lab and community website for South Los Angeles.
With photographer William Short, Willa created two oral history/photo projects: A Matter of Conscience: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War and Memories of the American War: Stories From Viet Nam.
Want to know more about some of the ideas and places mentioned in this episode? Check out:
[Thesis] “Our Bodies, Their Battlegrounds:” the Conservation of Comfort Stations in China by Hanyu Chen
Peipei Qiu, Zhiliang Su, and Lifei Chen, Chinese Comfort Women—Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)
