The landscape, action, and documentary photograph as seen above presents the comfort women during the last months of World War II (August 27, 1945) inside a detention house on some part outside Manila playing mahjong. The identity of the photographer is unknown, however, it is likely that s/he belonged to the American forces basing on the following evidences: (1) The caption certainly reported for the American forces and at the same time, the picture has been preserved by the Bettmann Archives (located in United States), (2) Knowing that the picture was taken the last months after the war, the Japanese army was busy for the fights, thus, the photographer may have snuck in the detention unnoticed. As a result of this presupposition, the purpose in taking this is picture may be mainly to document the existence of (Japanese) comfort women in the Philippines and their lives under the Japanese forces. Taking a good look in the picture, it can be observed that the photo was lacking some details, especially on the colors in order to further understand their spaces in this picture. Yet, observing the activity in the photograph, the …show more content…
Some other possible sources of enriching the understanding of the ‘comfort women’ case are the transcripts of the trial for both sides in order to not only understand the legal issues involved and the structure embedded in these trials (i.e. the international legal system and the Japanese system of law), and the preserved photos taken of other ‘comfort women’ for further interpretation of the treatments of some other Japanese soldiers towards these