The United States has called the "comfort women program" Japan's systematic enslavement of women for sexual purposes, according to a U.S. government report.
The description was included in a final report to the U.S. Congress by the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group in 2007.
In 2000, Samuel Berger, then National Security Adviser to President Bill Clinton, directed agencies to locate records held by the U.S. government relating to war crimes committed by agents of the Japanese government during the period 1931-45
The Interagency Working Group advised U.S. agencies to give particular attention to locating any records and materials related to the " 'comfort women' program -- the Japanese systematic enslavement of women of subject populations for sexual purposes."
The records and materials asked to be located include "development and use of chemical and biological warfare agents, especially the work of General Ishii, medical experimentation on humans, and Unit 731," as well as forced or slave labor.
The Japanese military contracted private vendors to set up "comfort stations" for its troops as early as in 1932, according to Researching Japanese War Crimes, a report published by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration for the Interagency Working Group in 2006. (Yonhap)