Japanese officials helped procure wartime sex slaves, report claims

News agency says diplomatic dispatches contradict claims that so-called ‘comfort women’ worked willingly

The Japanese imperial army asked the government to provide one wartime sex slave for every 70 soldiers serving in China in the late 1930s, according to dispatches that offer evidence of official involvement in the recruitment of women to work in military brothels.

The dispatches from Japanese diplomatic missions in China include requests to the foreign ministry in Tokyo to provide “comfort women”, Kyodo news agency reported. The term was a euphemism used to describe tens of thousands of women from Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines and other countries who were forced into sexual servitude before and during the second world war.

Related: 'Comfort women': anger as Japan paper alters description of WWII terms

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