US urges Japan to apologize for enslavement of 200,000 'comfort women'

from BBC NEWS

US lawmakers have called on Japan's government to formally apologise for its role in forcing thousands of women to work as sex slaves in World War II.

The symbolic and non-binding resolution was passed during a vote in the House of Representatives.

Up to 200,000 "comfort women" from across the Far East were part of Japan's military brothel programme.

Japan says it has shown sufficient remorse over the issue. A spokesman said the resolution was "regrettable".

Chief Cabinet Spokesman Yasuhisa Shiozaki told a news conference that Japan had "handled the comfort women issue with sincerity".

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had "clearly explained his views" on the subject during a visit to Washington in April, he said.

'Nauseating' denials

The resolution calls on Japan - one of the strongest US allies in Asia - to "formally acknowledge, apologise and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner" for the suffering of the women.

"Those who posit that all of the comfort women were happily complicit and acting of their own accord simply do not understand the meaning of the word rape"--Tom Lantos, House Committee on Foreign Affairs chairman

Earlier this month, a group of Japanese lawmakers demanded the US government retract the resolution, saying it was based on "wrong information that is totally different from the historical fact".

Tom Lantos, chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, described attempts to deny the use of sex slaves as "nauseating".

"There can be no denying the Japanese imperial military coerced thousands upon thousands of Asian women," Mr Lantos said.

"Those who posit that all of the comfort women were happily complicit and acting of their own accord simply do not understand the meaning of the word rape."

In 1993 Japan issued an official apology for the suffering of comfort women, acknowledging its involvement managing the brothels. But it was never approved by parliament and Japan has rejected most compensation claims, saying they were settled by treaties.

Mr Abe caused an uproar in March when he said there was no proof that the government or the military had forced the women into sexual servitude.

He later apologised, saying he felt sympathy for those affected.

The resolution comes at a difficult time for Mr Abe. On Sunday his ruling coalition suffered a crushing defeat in upper house polls, losing its majority and handing control of the house to the opposition.

He is facing pressure from the public and the media to step down, but the premier says he plans to remain in office and continue with an agenda of reform.

Japan's ruling party disputes 'Rape of Nanking' death toll

from the International Herald Tribune:

A group of about 100 lawmakers from Japan's ruling party claimed Tuesday that after a monthslong review they have determined the number of people killed by Japanese troops during the infamous "Rape of Nanking" has been grossly inflated.

Nariaki Nakayama, head of the group created to study World War II historical issues and education, said documents from the Japanese government's archives indicated some 20,000 people were killed — about one-tenth of the more commonly cited figure of from 150,000-200,000 — in the 1937 attack. China says as many as 300,000 people were killed.

"We conclude that the death toll in the Nanking advance was nothing more or less than the death toll that would be expected in a normal battle," Nakayama told a news conference.

...

Toru Toida, another member of the group, demanded that photos portraying the Japanese military in a negative light be removed from Chinese war memorials.

"We are absolutely positive that there was no massacre in Nanking," Toida said.

...

Nanjing suffered a rampage of murder, rape and looting by Japanese troops in 1937 that became known as "The Rape of Nanking," using the name by which the city was known in the West at that time.

Historians generally agree the Japanese army slaughtered at least 150,000 civilians and raped tens of thousands of women.

Nakayama's group is right of center within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, but many Japanese conservatives are disgruntled over what they claim are exaggerated stories of Japanese brutality during World War II.

Honors for Japanese diplomat who rescued 6,000 Jews from Holocaust

from The Independent: 'Japanese Schindler' who saved Lithuanian Jews is honoured

When Japan's Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko visited the
monument of Chiune Sugihara in Lithuania last weekend, many television
programmes back in Japan had to run stories explaining who this obscure
diplomat was.

It's obvious why the Emperor would be in London yesterday to dine with the Queen but who was Chiune Sugihara?

For years, few Japanese knew the incredible story of how the man
dubbed "Japan's Schindler" saved about 6,000 Jews from the Nazis during
the Second World War despite working for an ally of Germany. Unlike
Oscar Schindler, the German industrialist who turned against the Nazis
and rescued almost 1,100 Jews from the Holocaust, Sugihara had to wait
until just seven years ago for his bravery to be officially recognised.

Sugihara was the acting consul in Lithuania's temporary wartime
capital when he was ordered to abandon his post as the Germans advanced
in 1940. A fourth of the city's population was Jewish, mostly
prosperous and well integrated, and few were ready to believe the
horror stories from nearby Poland until it was too late to flee. By an
accident of history the mild-mannered diplomat - one of just two left
in the city - became their last hope for survival.

The crossroads in Sugihara's life came one night in July 1940 when
he woke up to find a group of desperate refugees outside his window
demanding visas to the Soviet Union. He decided to help but his
repeated requests to Tokyo for permission to issue the visas were
denied. Despite facing disgrace or worse for his family, Sugihara
decided to follow his conscience and sign as many visas as he could, in
defiance of his government.

Sugihara's courageous decision was all the more remarkable given his
background. From solid middle-class stock, he graduated from Tokyo's
elite Waseda University and served under the Foreign Ministry in
Japan's puppet state of Manchuria, one of the more brutal military
occupations of the war. A gifted linguist, he was once tipped for an
ambassador's post.

Yet this is the man who sat for almost a month from 31 July to 28
August 1940 painstakingly writing out 10-day transit visas by hand,
even enlisting his wife, Yukiko, to help him. By the time they boarded
a Berlin-bound train on 1 September 1940, still scribbling out the last
visa, they had saved about 6,000 people, including hundreds of
children. Sugihara's final act in the besieged city was to hand his
consular stamp to a refugee, who went on issuing passes.

Sugihara's reward for his heroism was dismissal from the Foreign
Ministry immediately after the war. Disgraced in Japan, he was forced
to eke out a living as a part-time translator and ended his life
working for a trading company with connections to Russia. He died in
1986 and his family had to wait until 14 years later for the then
Foreign Minister Yohei Kono to formally apologise.

More evidence concerning Japan sex slaves duirng WW2

Int this extremely cautiously worded article, BBC reports on new evidence concerning sex slavery at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army during World War 2. Of course, this isn't REALLY new. This material has been available for 60 years. Sadly, indifference over this subject has led to a repugnant historical revisionism denying Japan's culpability in this matter.

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | 'New proof' of Japan sex slaves:

Reports from Japan say documents have been found that suggest the Japanese forced women to work as sex slaves during World War II.

They come from the Dutch government archives and include the testimony of a 27-year-old Dutch woman from May 1946.

The Kyodo news agency says the documents show women were coerced into prostitution in occupied Indonesia.

Japan's PM Shinzo Abe had claimed no evidence existed to prove that women had been forced to work as sex slaves.

The documents are reported to have been found by a Japanese journalist investigating Japan's wartime crimes in Asia.

'Comfort women'

The Dutch woman's testimony says she had her clothes ripped off her by Japanese military police.

She says she was taken to a brothel and forced to work as a prostitute, despite her efforts to resist.

That testimony, it is claimed, was submitted to the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal as evidence of forced mass prostitution in Magelang, in what is now Central Java, in 1944.

Other documents are said to include further allegations that the Japanese forced women into prostitution.

Earlier this year Prime Minister Abe said that investigations had failed to find any documentary evidence that the Japanese authorities in wartime had issued orders to soldiers to coerce women into sex slavery.

He said though that he stood by a Japanese government apology to the women, known in Japan as "comfort women".

The journalist who found these documents says they contradict the prime minister's denial that the authorities were directly involved in coercion.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry says it is aware of his claims but has not seen the documents so cannot comment on what they might contain.

It says the Japanese government has investigated its wartime activities in Indonesia thoroughly and acknowledges and apologises for the country's wartime use of sex slaves.

Japan's fund for former sex slaves never achieved purpose

from The International Herald Tribune

TOKYO: Facing calls to compensate the aging victims
of its wartime sexual slavery, Japan set up the Asian Women's Fund in
1995. It was a significant concession from Japan, which has always
asserted that postwar treaties absolved it of all individual claims
from World War II.

But the fund only fueled anger in the very countries with which Japan had sought reconciliation.

By the time it closed as scheduled last month, only a fraction of
the former sex slaves had accepted money from the fund. Two Asian
governments even offered their own money to discourage more women from
taking Japan's.

The central problem was that the Japanese government had set up the
fund as a private one and made clear that the "atonement" payments came
from ordinary citizens. Critics inside and outside Japan saw the fund
as another tortured attempt by Tokyo to avoid taking full
responsibility for one of the ugliest aspects of the war.

"It was not directly from the Japanese government - that is why I
did not accept it," said Ellen van der Ploeg, 84, a Dutchwoman who was
taken from a prisoner of war camp in Indonesia and forced to work in a
Japanese military brothel for three months in 1944. "If you have made
mistakes in life, you must have the courage to say, 'I'm sorry, please
forgive me.' But the Japanese government to this day has never taken
full responsibility."

"If this were a pure government fund, I could have accepted it," Van
der Ploeg said by telephone from Houten, the Netherlands. "Why should I
accept money from private Japanese people? They were also victims
during the war."

The Japanese government has held up the fund as one way it has tried
to redress a past wrong, even as the U.S. House of Representatives is
considering a resolution that would call on Japan's government to
unequivocally acknowledge its role in the wartime sexual slavery, and
to apologize for it.

Of the former sex slaves who accepted money from the fund, most did
so secretly to avoid criticism. In the four countries where the women,
known euphemistically here as comfort women, were compensated
individually - South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and the Netherlands
- the women and their supporters were deeply divided over accepting the
money.

Even those who favored accepting the money said the fund reflected
an absence of moral clarity in Japan, an opinion that was recently
reinforced when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denied the Japanese
military's role in coercing women into sexual slavery.

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