Black and white photographs faces of adult survivors comfort women

Sharing their stories and memories to educate the next generations. The Japanese military kidnapped thousands of young girls and women and forced them into sexual slavery. The testimonials that survive, both written and oral, are shocking. The women once under the control of the Japanese were moved around like cattle to wherever the Japanese Army was fighting.

By Alastair Tancred For Mailonline. South Korea has expressed doubts over a deal with Japan that was intended to end a festering dispute with Japan over Tokyo's wartime sex slavery. Seoul and Tokyo signed the agreement to settle the hugely emotional and decades-long issue with a Japanese apology and financial compensation to survivors. Mainstream historians say up to , women, mostly from Korea but also other parts of Asia including China , were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II. The plight of the sex slaves - euphemistically referred to as 'comfort women' - is a hugely emotional issue that has marred ties between the two Asian neighbours for decades. For many South Koreans it epitomises the abuses committed under Japan's colonization of the Korean peninsula. Korean women were forced by the Japanese to pack their belongings and become sex slaves.

Although international consensus has it that the Japanese people are unusually reluctant to face their own wartime past, this generalization has never been entirely true, as regular readers of The Asia Pacific Journal already know. Like human beings everywhere, since Japanese have debated the lessons of war and disagreed about its meaning among themselves. And, also like people everywhere, many Japanese regret both official policies and widespread individual behaviors of the past. They not only desire reconciliation with Koreans, Chinese, and other Asians, but also recognize that, as Japanese, they cannot dictate its terms. Some have already entered into cross-national dialogue about the war and the colonial violence that reached its crescendo during the war years.

Archive footage of the sex slaves — labelled "comfort women" — standing outside a brick house is first of its kind and will likely heap more shame on Japan. Grainy footage of sex slaves waiting to be freed after years of abuse at the hands of Japanese soldiers in World War Two has emerged. The bare-footed women can be seen in the black and white video standing outside a brick house — believed to be a military-run brothel at Songshan in China. Researchers uncovered the footage shot in following a painstaking two year investigation through archives to gather more evidence of sex slaves being used during the war. The Japanese military's use of sex slaves during World War Two is a controversial issue - with up to , women mainly from former Japanese colony Korea believed to have been forced into sex slavery.