ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the psychosocial conditions in which the comfort women's narratives are formulated, as well as their interactions with other traumatic narratives also searching for justice. In Taiwan, historians have estimated that around two to three thousand young Han women, mostly from poor socioeconomic backgrounds, were abducted to be "comfort women". In order to explore the psychosocial conditions allowing the construction of the comfort women narrative, undertook clinical anthropological fieldwork, from 2007 to 2009, alongside the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation (TWRF). In 1992, former "comfort women" made their first public appearance in a press conference held by lawyers and social workers of the TWRF. In 1995, the TWRF started a psychotherapeutic workshop to provide a meeting space for the women, hoping that they could develop a kind of sisterhood. It is clear that without the help of non-governmental organisation activists to co-construct "comfort women" narratives, the voices of Taiwanese survivors, nearly all illiterate, would never have been heard.
