Visit this exhibition to learn more about issues related to “comfort women '' in East Asia during the World War II (WWII) era. Based on thesis research done by Scripps College senior Vicky Hsing*, this exhibition highlights the personal journey Vicky took to resurface this piece of history and what she discovered along the way.

The exhibition features:

• First-hand recollections of surviving former “comfort women” and medical professionals at three comfort stations established in mainland China and Taiwan by the Japanese army during WWII.
• A life-size gynecological examination table that was recreated using archival documents, museum objects and oral history interviews.

The phrase “comfort women issue” describes the systemic sexual enslavement and widespread cases of female sex trafficking during WWII. From the early 1930s through the end of the war,  hundreds of thousands of women of different nationalities and ethnicities were forcibly transported into comfort stations in Japanese colonies and occupied territories. Euphemistically called “comfort women,” these women were subjected to institutionalized sexual violence.

After 50 years of profound silence, the national redress movements in China and Korea brought forth an explosion of visual, textual and oral records regarding the comfort women issue. Beyond governmental documentation, how did the women recount their own wartime experiences? How can sexual violence on the WWII battlefield be connected to gender violence in the present? Using the comfort system’s gynecological examination table as a vantage point, the exhibition wishes to employ its materiality as a place to rethink connections between current Asian American studies and the transnational circuit of racialized, gendered and sexualized acts of violence. 

*Vicky Hsing's summer research for her senior thesis was funded by Scripps College’s Hsu Fellowship and Lori Bettison Varga Fund.

Exhibit Details
Inside the Asian Library (Honnold 3), The Claremont Colleges Library
(800 N. Dartmouth Ave., Claremont, CA 91711)
April 10, 2023 - September 1, 2023*
Exhibit on view during Library building hours

**Please note this is the correct end date; our calendar is limited to a 45-day window so the dates listed below will be updated as time goes on.

Questions?
Contact Xiuying Zou, Head of the Asian Library, by emailing xiuying.zou@claremont.edu or calling 909 607-4094.