Unweaving the accustomed silence

A study of comfort women using How We Disappeared by Jing Jing Lee (2020)

Datos Bibliográficos

ID15748877
AutoresN K Sandhya Devi (D A Pandu Memorial RV Dental College and Hospital, autor de correspondencia)
Año2025
Páginas1-17
Fecha de publicación2025-04-11
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Gender-Based Violence (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2398-6808 • E-ISSN: 2398-6816
EditorialPolicy Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1332/23986808y2025d000000080
OpenAlexW4409354063
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas22

The current study intends to illustrate the atrocities perpetrated against Singaporean women by the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War. These women were called ‘comfort women’ and their sole purpose was to comfort the soldiers and boost their morale. By employing the wartime rape arguments of Brownmiller (2005), this study uses Discourse Analysis to examine the novel How We Disappeared by Jing Jing Lee (2020). The research objectives include the employment of sexual slavery as a strategic weapon of war enabling compliance and control and demonstrates how their identities were re-defined, stripped of autonomy and reduced to mere symbols of conquests. Further, the study exemplifies the historical erasure of comfort women and the denial of justice. The study revealed that these women were multiply discriminated against before, during and after war through familial, national and international structures, leading to unprecedented trauma. The study found that their identities and autonomies were manipulated and annihilated to suit the prevailing political powers. However, despite being haunted by memories of war, some victims were able to transform from subjugation to assertion by breaking the historic invisibility and voicing their experiences

Aesthetics · Art · Silence · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving · Psychology