A digital museum was recently launched on the Internet to document the activities of a disbanded semiofficial relief organization for former World War II sex slaves, who were euphemistically called 'comfort women.'</PARAGRAPH> <PHOTO> <TABLE WIDTH='250' ALIGN='RIGHT' BORDER='0'> <TR> <TD><IMG ALT='News photo' BORDER='0' SRC='../images/photos2007/nn20070928f2a.jpg' WIDTH='250' HEIGHT='188'/></TD> </TR> <TR> <TD><FONT SIZE='1'><B>A virtual museum recently opened on the Internet that documents the activities of the Asian Women's Fund, a disbanded semiofficial organization that disbursed funds to former World War II sex slaves. </B>KYODO PHOTO</FONT></TD> </TR> <TABLE> </PHOTO> <PARAGRAPH>The virtual museum, called The Comfort Women Issue and the Asian Women's Fund, aims to keep a record 'of our awareness of the comfort women issue and of our atonement project so that people can learn a lesson from history' even after the organization's disbandment in March, former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, president of the Asian Women's Fund, says on the Web page.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>The site at <A HREF='http://www.awf.or.jp' TARGET='_blank'>www.awf.or.jp</A> is in both Japanese and English.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>The first section, titled 'Japanese Military and Comfort Women,' provides descriptions of how women were forced to provide sexual services to Japanese officers and soldiers during the war and how they have lived since then.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>'Women at comfort stations were forced to render sexual services to many officers and men, their human dignity trampled upon,' the section says. The text is accompanied by numerous photographs, maps and illustrations.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Many comfort women chose not to return home after the war ended in 1945 'out of a feeling of shame and remained in a foreign land, staying there for the rest of their days,' it says.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Those who did go home 'suffered from physical disabilities and venereal disease . . . –

have lived for more than half a century after the war, suffering practically as much as they did during the several years they spent in military comfort stations," it says.

The museum also preserves the testimony of several former comfort women.

Born to a Korean father and a Japanese mother in Tokyo in 1921, Kimiko Kaneda went to Seoul for better employment and then moved to China, where she was forced to be a comfort woman.

According to her testimony, the desire to forget her pain drove her to opium, and she had to have a hysterectomy in her 20s because "as many as 20 men would come to my room from early morning."

Maria Rosa Henson, born in a Manila suburb in 1927, joined an anti-Japanese guerrilla group after being raped by three Japanese soldiers in 1942, but was arrested and forced to become a comfort woman.

"There was no rest, they (Japanese soldiers) had sex with me every minute. That's why we were very tired," she is quoted as saying. "They would allow you to rest only when all of them had already finished.

"Telling my story has made it easier for me to be reconciled with the past," she adds. "But I am still hoping to see justice done before I die."

Both Kaneda and Henson have passed away.

Other sections present how the comfort women issue came to light and the process of the establishment of the Asian Women's Fund as well as the history of its activities.

"Those who went to war knew, at least to some extent," about the comfort women, but "there was almost no awareness of the issue as a social problem," the site notes. "The victims were thought of only as people who were part of history."

However, "the decisive moment came when one victim, Kim Hak Sun, came forward in Seoul in the summer of 1991" under her own name to demand that Japan take responsibility, prompting a campaign in Japan mainly among women to support former comfort women and denounce Japan's wartime acts.

The campaign eventually led the government to launch research on comfort women and issue a 1993 statement by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono acknowledging the military's involvement "in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women."

The full text of the historic document is available both in Japanese and English on the site.

Given the growing public awareness over the comfort women issue, the government under Socialist Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, who later assumed the presidency of the Asian Women's Fund, decided to "promote projects expressing the atonement of the government and people to the former comfort women, and promote other projects aimed at the resolution of contemporary problems faced by women," leading to the launch of the Asian Women's Fund in 1995, the site says.