Author: Shigenori Tōgō, Minister of Foreign Affairs
Recipient: Teruo Hachiya, Foreign Affairs Manager, Government-General in Taiwan
Date: January 14, 1942
File: Miscellaneous Matters Concerning the Limitation and Regulation of Travel to Southern Territories (Including Occupied Areas) in the Time of the Great East Asian War
Location: Southern areas
Keywords: Overseas travel
Annotation by Hye-in Han, Ph.D. Researcher, Asia Peace and History Institute
Image link: http://wam-peace.org/ianfu-koubunsho/pdf/K-PDF/K_F_036.pdf
ANNOTATION
This is a reply from the Minister of the Foreign Affairs to the Foreign Affairs Department Director in the Government-General in Taiwan (no. 6) regarding the manager’s previous inquiry to the Minister(no. 10).
The Minister has sent a letter to the consulate office with an instruction to allow the overseas travel of people who are traveling for the purposes of opening or being employed at the military comfort stations, with the certificates being issued by the military, rather than being treated as part of consular business.
This document indicates that the “comfort women” traveling overseas were treated as military supplies and not as ordinary travelers since they were not issued the type of passports that were required to board commercial passenger boats heading overseas.
Therefore, the fact that such phrases as “... issuing passports is not desirable” and “... travel via military ship” have been crossed out means that it was implied and assumed in the instruction to permit the women to travel using the “certificates issued by the military.” The “comfort women” were not traveling on passenger boats, so they didn’t need the passports, and they were to travel via military vessel.
Sources:
WAM Collection (Foreign Affairs_016)
Collection of the Asian Women’s Fund, Vol. 1, p. 165-166
Sourcebook by Suzuki, Yamashita, and Tonomura, Vol. 1, p. 388
Sourcebook by Yoshimi, p. 142-143
Note:
The date of this document is indicated as January 13, 1942 which was the day it was drafted in Yoshimi's sourcebook. The date it was sent is January 14, 1942.
#Transportation #Taiwan #Foreign_Affairs
QUESTIONS FOR STUDENTS
Explain the following words to your students before asking them to read the annotation:
- Great East Asian War: the name Japan use to refer to World War II
After reading the annotation, please answer the following questions:
1. What kind of document is this?
2. Who wrote it?
3. What year was it created?
4. What was the historical context in East Asia during the time?
5. Where was it created?
6. What's the title of the document? What does the title tell you?
7. Who's the audience of the document?
8. Use one sentence to summarize the main idea of the document.
9. Based on the document, what issued the passport for people who traveled overseas to open or work at the military comfort stations?
10. Where "comfort women" treated as regular overseas travelers? Why or why not?
11. The "comfort women" deniers tend to claim that the government or military bears no legal or official responsibility for the "comfort women" victims. Based on this document, do you think the claim is defendable? Why or why not?
12. What other questions do you have for this document?
13. How/Where can you find the answers?
*Questions for Students section was designed by Jing Williams, Associate Professor of Social Studies Education at University of South Dakota.