07 Jun It cannot be said that people in Japan were completely unaware that there were comfort women during wartime
Those who went to war knew, at least to some extent, that they existed. But there was almost no awareness of the issue as a social problem. Beginning around 1965, those interested in Japan-Korean relations generally knew that there had been comfort women, and that their experiences were the cruelest outcome of Japan's colonization of Korea. But the victims were thought of only as people who were part of history.
When a campaign for girls to join a girls volunteer labor corps (during the war, girls were mobilized to work at factories mostly munition industries) was launched in Korea in 1943, toward the end of the war period, the rumor spread that corps members would be forced to become comfort women. The Governor-General's office denied the rumors, saying they were being spread maliciously and intentionally without foundation, but this only caused people to believe the rumors even more.