At the age of 19, Hwang Keun Joo was forced to stay in a "comfort station" for 6 years.

Up to 200,000 women were sexually enslaved by the Japanese military before and during the Second World War, many of whom were under the age of 20, with some as young as 12.

Survivors of the "comfort women" system are now elderly and unknown numbers have died, but many women have shown extreme courage in speaking out about their experiences and demanding justice.

Hwang Keun Joo

Japan's 'comfort women

' demand public apology

Now you want a witness to my rape? I am a witness. I am my own witness. I was the one raped. I was the one ruined.� Lola Julia Porras, held captive in a tunnel in the Philippines and raped by occupying Japanese forces in 1942 when she was 13 years old

As 15 August � the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII in the Pacific � draws near, hundreds of thousands of so-called �comfort women� are stepping up their demands for compensation and an apology from the Japanese government. So far, their appeals have fallen largely on deaf ears.

A sterile euphemism, the term �comfort women� belies the brutal humiliation suffered by women condemned to sexual slavery by their Japanese captors from the 1930s to the end of WWII. �I was taken to China when I was 16 years old and was there for 56 years,� says Lee Ok-sun of Korea, aged 79. She was abducted and taken to Yanbian, northeastern China, where she was forced into sexual slavery in a �comfort station�.

�The age range of the girls was from 14 to 17, and they forced us to serve 40 to 50 soldiers a day,� she says. �It was impossible to serve that many men, so I refused and was beaten. If a woman refused, they cut her body with a knife; some girls were stabbed. Some girls got diseases and died... It was a painful experience � there was not enough food, not enough sleep and I couldn�t even kill myself. I desperately wanted to escape.� Lee Ok-sun�s ordeal only ended three years later with the liberation of China in 1945.

The Japanese set up �comfort stations� wherever they were based during the course of the war. Their victims were Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Filipina, Malaysian, Dutch, East Timorese and Japanese. Women were brought to the stations often through abduction or deception; sometimes they were bought from their destitute parents. The majority of the victims were under the age of 20 and some girls were as young as 12.

Despite the widespread prevalence of what was essentially institutionalized rape, the issue of �comfort women� was ignored by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, set up after the war to prosecute Japan�s war criminals. Only during the Dutch military tribunal in Indonesia were prosecutions made. But these prosecutions were for the sexual enslavement of Dutch women only; similar crimes against Indonesian women went unpunished.

Humiliated and ashamed, �comfort women� survivors remained silent for decades before finally speaking out in the early 1990s. Many women were severely traumatized, many never married and many were unable to have children as a result of the torture they suffered. The Japanese government responded with the introduction of the Asian Women�s Fund in 1995. But the fund�s restriction to private sector donations has been seen as the government evading its responsibilities.

�I want justice � more than the money,� says survivor Lola Amonita of the Philippines. �I want a public apology from the Japanese government.�

Since 1992, Korean �comfort women� have been demonstrating every Wednesday in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul, South Korea, calling for justice. Show your support by joining the thousands worldwide who will be demonstrating in solidarity with them on 10 August. For more information, contact your local AI section.

I think the ways in how women are treated should be actknowledged and forgiveness asked. It is horride how we treat women.

But I think Japan like other countries should pay for past deeds and wrongs, so we can go into the future with less walls between us all.