GWANGJU, South Korea — Since 2000, Tsukasa Yajima has taken stark, poignant portraits of former sex slaves for Japan’s World War II military to assist the sector know about their painful historical past.

Now, the 51-year-old photographer from Japan unearths himself on the middle of a present scandal in regards to the remedy of the ladies, greater than three-quarters of a century after the top of the conflict, throughout which they have been compelled to have intercourse with Japanese infantrymen.

In the years after its founding in 1992, the House of Sharing, in Gwangju, South Korea, assumed the air of mystery of a sacred position, the place ​​politicians and scholars ​got here to fulfill dozens of former intercourse slaves, identified euphemistically as “convenience girls,” who had discovered safe haven there, together with the 4 recently in place of dwelling.

But previously two years, Mr. Yajima, who runs its world outreach program, along side six South Korean staff on the safe haven have accused managers of housing ​the ladies, all now of their 90s, in a substandard nursing facility​ whilst amassing thousands and thousands of greenbacks in donations to complement South Korea’s greatest ​and maximum robust ​Buddhist order, Jogye.

Although the ​donations have been amassed for the ladies’s welfare, ​little has been used for ​them, ​ Mr. Yajima and the opposite whistle-blowers stated. Instead, ​they stated, the managers stored the cash for Jogye to ​extend the ​safe haven right into a long term ​luxurious ​nursing house for individuals who can have the funds for to pay — as soon as the ladies dwelling there now have all died.

“It’s essential to keep the House of Sharing as a spot of ancient and academic worth​, as wartime sexual violence towards girls​ continues to occur ​in as of late’s global, in puts like Ukraine,” Mr. Yajima stated. “Their plan to show it right into a commonplace nursing house is a challenge of removing historical past.”

The whistle-blowing resulted in legal indictments​. Two former managers ​​are on trial on fraud, embezzlement and different legal fees​. The safe haven’s board contributors, together with some of the nation’s maximum distinguished Buddhist clergymen, have been fired for negligence. Angry donors have sued ​the House of Sharing, not easy their a reimbursement. Donations plummeted to $35,300 within the first six months of this 12 months, down from $1.9 million in 2019.

While they have got gained reward for his or her movements, Mr. Yajima and the opposite whistle-blowers have additionally needed to pay a value for what they uncovered.

The safe haven’s new and previous managers and folks with regards to them have filed dozens of defamation​ and different complaints towards the whistle-blowers, accusing them of spreading false rumors. ​

As a Japanese nationwide, Mr. Yajima has been a focal point of a lot of the backlash. The sexual slavery of so-called convenience girls is essentially the most emotional of the various ancient disputes that experience strained ties between South Korea and Japan, the 2 maximum essential allies of the United States in East Asia.

“Why ​the hell ​is a Japanese worker employed on this position for convenience girls?” ​learn a banner hung at the wall of a House of Sharing development the place Mr. Yajima labored. People with regards to the managers threw ethnic slurs at him, in keeping with the findings of a human rights middle. ​

Four of the seven whistle-blowers give up remaining month, complaining about harassment.

But now not Mr. Yajima, who has insisted on staying on​.

His ​marketing campaign has raised ​essential questions for South Korea, stated Lim Mi-ri, a professor at Korea University​ in Seoul​. Ms. Lim stated the ladies have been taken to​ meetings and​ protest rallies the place they have been ​handled as an inviolable image of ​Korea’s struggling beneath Japanese colonial rule​ and warriors for ancient justice​. But few requested how the ladies in reality lived in the back of the scenes.

“Yajima is among the uncommon activists I do know who interested by convenience girls as person people whilst the​ remainder of the​ marketing campaign tended to objectify them as sufferers and use them for a political time table or fund-raising,” Ms. Lim stated. ​

Mr. Yajima stated he ​turned into considering feminism and Japan’s colonial generation when he studied historical past at Waseda University in Tokyo. He started visiting the House of Sharing in 2000, first of all operating ​there as a translator and photographer from 2003 to 2006.

“In my footage, I attempt to display the ladies’s collective symbol as sufferers, but additionally the ladies as folks with personalities,” ​Mr. Yajima stated. “If you get to are living and consume with them as I’ve, growing a grandm​different and grandchild​-like​ dating, you get to peer issues that occasional guests can’t. People see them as heroic warriors. But when they’re amongst themselves, they may be able to additionally argue like kindergartners over ​issues like who was once given another sweet when donated items have been divided.”

In 2006, Mr. Yajima moved to Germany​, the place he persisted to paintings for the ladies’s reason. He helped prepare lectures and photograph exhibitions and invited some of the girls to percentage her tale. By the time he returned to the House of Sharing in 2019, what he noticed deeply bothered him.

When a​ lady fell from a damaged mattress, the managers refused to take her to the health center or purchase a brand new mattress, he stated. When the ​girls’s ​dwelling quarters have been renovated, their property have been stacked out of doors, uncovered to a monsoon rain. In a supervisor’s table drawers, the whistle-blowers discovered money donations from in a foreign country that weren’t ​correctly ​registered within the books.

An investigation by way of a joint panel of presidency officers and civilian mavens showed many of the whistle-blowers’ ​accusations and extra.

In its 366-page record, ​seen by way of The New York Times, the panel stated th​e House of Sharing had “mobilized” its convenience girls for fund-raising occasions whilst it denied them non-public outings. ​S​taffers emotionally abused the​m, threatening to “abandon them out in the street​.” The panel stated​ that the House of Sharing amassed $6.8 million in money donations between 2015 and 2019. ​But it most effective used $154,000 for the operation of the ​dwelling quarters the place the ladies “lived in a below-average nursing house facility​.”

“Collecting donations with a promise to make use of them for the relief girls, their welfare and their actions however now not the use of the cash for them is an act of defrauding the folks,” it stated.

​The House of Sharing has made “errors” and ​“violated” the rules governing donations, stated the Venerable Seonghwa, a Buddhist monk Jogye appointed in May to go ​its board of administrators.

But Seonghwa stated that the ladies have been getting sufficient monetary improve — $2,600​ ​a month​, in addition to a $10,810 annual scientific stipend — from the federal government. They had little use for the money donated from electorate, he stated. ​

And the plan to grow to be the ​safe haven right into a luxurious nursing house ​has been mentioned as an choice in a rustic suffering with a rapidly aging population. But the plan hasn’t ever been formalized, he stated. Seonghwa wired that the way forward for the safe haven will likely be made up our minds via consultations with the federal government.

“We are correcting issues now we have discovered and dealing laborious to take the most productive care of the relief girls till the remaining ​of them dies,” he stated​.

​During contemporary visits, the House of Sharing’s 3.4-acre compound appeared non violent. ​The bronze bust statues of former intercourse slaves greeted guests on the gate. ​ Its museum​ featured a sport of a so-called convenience station, a Japanese military-run brothel, the place the ladies have been compelled to have intercourse with ​dozens of ​Japanese infantrymen​ each day.

“I will be able to by no means overlook the conflict crimes of Japan,” reads the epitaph for Lee Yong-nyo, some of the 8 former citizens of the power buried in a memorial lawn. ​

At the middle of the compound ​was once a ​two-story ​development the place 4 of South Korea’s 11 surviving convenience girls​ have been spending their ultimate days. The choice of caregivers has been doubled to ten, bearing in mind round the clock provider for the ladies, ​ elderly 92 to 98​ — an development applied by way of the managers within the wake of the whistle-blowing. ​

But the ladies’s talent to call for higher remedy has atrophied, stated Heo Jeong-a, a​ former​ caregiver who joined Mr. Yajima within the whistle-blowing​.

Frail and struggling more than a few levels of dementia, the​ girls appeared most commonly oblivious to the turmoil engulfing their ​safe haven. During a up to date seek advice from, a Times reporter was once allowed into the ladies’s dwelling quarters and talked to a couple of girls who appeared extra cognizant than the others.

“I’ve meals, garments and a spot to are living ​right here,” sa​identification ​​Lee Ok-sun, 95, taken to China to paintings in army brothels when she was once 15 and who lived there till she was once introduced safe haven within the House of Sharing in 2001. “It assists in keeping me heat in wintry weather and funky in summer season.”

Such a solution didn’t marvel Mr. Yajima.

“They had this kind of laborious lifestyles in China and in different places that they are saying they’re OK with what they get,” he stated. “But they deserved the most productive care shall we supply, and now we have failed.”