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Senso Daughters

Senso Daughters

During World War II, 140,000 Japanese troops may have died in Papua New Guinea. Only 11,000 returned to Japan. Considered the 'Forgotten War,' neither the war nor its veterans received public recognition in Japan.

But SENSO DAUGHTERS (DAUGHTERS OF WAR) investigates another unacknowledged tragedy of that campaign: the army's mistreatment of New Guinean women and 'comfort girls,' military prostitutes conscripted believing they would clean and cook. Since women, excepting nurses, had no official military status, 90,000 comfort girls were shipped to battle sites as 'military commodities,' without names or identities, without records to be traced by.

As the women testify, even as Japanese who were there make startling denials, SENSO DAUGHTERS provoked considerable controversy in Japan because Sekiguchi, a Japanese, not only exposes a shameful episode in her nation's past, but indicts the culture which fostered it.

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