Two months ago, State Assembly of New Jersey passed the Comfort Women resolution undoubtedly under the
aggressive
lobbying by the Korean American community. It was the third time
State Assembly adopted
the
resolution after California
and New York. Serious concerns
about the resolution have been raised in Japan
from those who have correct knowledge
about
"comfort women" which is often called "sex slaves" in U.S.
In 1993, Yohei Kono Chief Cabinet Secretary of the day announced the statement on the issue of
comfort women
as the results
of the study on the issue conducted by the Japanese
government. The statement acknowledged that
Japanese military
was
involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and transfer of comfort
women during
World of II, and the statement
has been widely regarded as the official statement of Japanese
government.
Today it is well known to Japanese people that the Statement involves serious incorrect descriptions
and moreover
the
Statement was issued by Yohei Kono on his own authority
without Cabinet decision. Nobuo Ishihara, Deputy
Cabinet
Secretary of the day, disclosed
in the interview of Japanese newspaper in 1997, that there existed
no evidence of coercion
in the results of the study of Japanese government and the Statement was
not based
on the facts.
The Statement was issued
based on the political intentions of Yohei Kono in a self-righteous
way.
According to a news report of Korea Joongang Daily, Jhon Thomas Shieffer former U.S. Ambassador
to Japan
delivered
his remarks, at the symposium on relationships between Japan and U.S. held
in Washington May 3,
that Japanese
government's intention to revise the Statement would
cause serious damage to the national interests
of Japan. I have serious
concern about
American's attitude toward the issue.
About the issue I found superior article in the web site of Dr. Kanji Nisho, emeritus
professor of University of Electro-
Communications, on the issue. The article given below
is fully copied from his web site
( http://www.nishiokanji.jp/blog/?m=20130421 )
The article will make you understand that
the story of comfort women is the one intentionally
forged by specific people
who attempt
to disgrace Japan and Japanese people,
and accusation against Japan is
groundless.
*******************************************************************************************
A Speech of Dr. Kanji Nisho, professor emeritus of The University of Electro-Communications,
at The Foreign
Correspondents’
Club of Japan
He expressed his serious concern about a resolution passed in the US Congress on July 30, 2007
that condemned
Japanese
people who were suspected to have exploited the “comfort women”
system of forced military prostitution
by the Government
of Japan, considered unprecedented
in its cruelty and magnitude, including gang rape, forced
abortions, humiliation, and sexual
violence resulting in mutilation, death or eventual suicide in one of the largest cases
of
human trafficking in the 20th
century
(excerpt from the resolution). He also told the audience
that this kind of
resolution and the similar ones passed in the
Senate
of the City of New York and the Congress of the State of
New Jersey are intolerable libels.
He talked about comfort women as follows; “There existed comfort women who had to
unfortunately sell their sex
due to poverty
or other reasons. However, Japan as a state has
never used its physical force
to force a woman
to sell the sex.
Moreover, the
story that almost 200 thousands of women were carried on trucks
near to the battlefield
is a preposterous one
and no one
could have found the evidence. If such incidents had happened in Korea,
many
rebellions should have happened.
Eighty
percent of policemen in Korea were Korean
compatriots. The first false
story has grown and built up combined with
the
misleading explanation made by the Japanese Government,
and in the result this misunderstanding has
caused wide
repercussions. I would like ask the US Congress and
Senate to reinvestigate closely
this matter and to rescind the resolution.”
He also criticized US and others as follows; “First of all, the United States and any other
countries are not entitled to
disgrace
Japanese people in relation to war and sex. Mr. Eiichi
Isomura, who was ex-professor of The Tokyo
Metropolitan University,
also the president
of Toyo University, and was the head of Shibuya Ward around
the end
of the World War II,
got called by
an officer of GHQ who ordered him to make up women for the soldiers
of the
occupation forces and finally he constructed
a facility called recreation center. That time
was such days when the
people suffered from shortage of foods
and a woman
sold her body even for a sheet of chocolate.
When the “comfort women” got become an international topic, Mr. Isomura told with repentance
that he had to
confess his
deep sense of shame in his deed to have driven women into a
circumstance where they had to
make
sex with American
soldiers. (The Sankei Sept. 17, 1994)”
He quoted a Mr. Miura’s story;
“Mr. Syumon Miura,
the president of The Japan
Art
Academy known as a moderate solid man, wrote “As far as a question
about army
and sex is concerned,
I hope that
newspapers write the fact that the American Army mobilized its military police
and
the Japanese policemen to close a
certain
part of a street and carried out medical checks for
sexual disease
of
all the women in the street where other woman than
a
prostitute was involved. Rapes were also happened.”
Almost all such incidents were shrouded in darkness. (The Sankei Aug.
2, 1996)”
He also talked about himself; “A scene that a Japanese comfort woman called “panpan” or
“only” in a showy dress
and makeup
walked under a GI’s arm was engraved in my mind’s
eye in my boyhood as if it were yesterday. The
number
of such Japanese
comfort women for American GIs reached about 200 thousand.” He also quoted a story
from a magazine;
“In a vulgar magazine
named Liberal posted a private paper telling a story of a young
woman
who had been taken to a special brothel. She was
robbed of her virginity on the
first day, and forced to sex
with at
least fifteen GIs a day who had just come back from the
battlefront. She became unable to stand up and finally
her facial appearance was changed
and looked like another person.”
The following is a quote from the same
magazine; “Yells, laughs and sobs of women were heard from every door. Some women
got ill or became insane
in a few months.
Such scenes were the epitome of what had happened in Japan for several
months. (Excerpt from
the November 1954 edition)”
He would require the American society and the Christian communities who are accusing
Japanese people to find
what their
fathers and brothers were doing in Japan. And he
said “You should be ashamed”. The following is
his comment on the
compensation; “The
Japanese government should claim compensation to the US counterpart.
Japan should not
pay any
compensation for the comfort women if the Japanese government has no intention
to
claim the same. Reciprocity, equality
and fairness should be the basic rules in the
international relationship.”
He talked about his suspect as follows;
“The US wants
to keep the image of Japan as a
country of atrocious and
inhumane people in order to justify its use of atomic bombs on
Japan and of massed air raids against Tokyo and
other cities.”
He also gave a comment about the recent incidents in the US; “Several resolutions that passed
in the federal,
states’, counties’
and cities’ congresses and/or senates are annoying and irritating
the conservatives of
Japan
(I am one of them) who are used
to be pro-American cooperating
the US anti-communism policy
after the
World
War II. There is a risk that Japanese people
who are falsely charged, hurt, smoldering, the frustration being
internally accumulated, will be finally pushed towards anti-America.”
He also talked about his observation as follows; “The worst thing is to exaggeratedly describe
the “comfort women”
issue
in order to adjudicate Japan on the same basis as that for Germany
that was governed by Nazi and committed
the Holocaust.”
He brought and introduced
to the audience copies of the front cover and the contents page of
an
important German
document
titled Prostitution, Homosexuality and self-destruction - Problems in German
sanitary
guideline, 1939-1945 Franz Seidler.
He said that it scientifically reported the
actual situations in Germany
that
carried out a complete state operated
prostitution
system, and abduction and detention of women. He also explained;
Racial matter was one of the
difficult things to deal with in
relation to prostitution under the Nazi governed Germany.
He continued; “If a German officer or a cadreman of Nazi has sex with
a Jewish woman,
he will be executed.
The west and the east European areas are different each other in every
aspect. The
state-regulated prostitution
was used in
Netherland and Norway, on the other
hand there was no such system in the east
European and the
Russian area. So the
German commanders at the front made up girls almost forcibly for prostitution.”
He continued
his
observation as follows; “Comfort women in German army have not come to
an issue due to the fact that
other
crimes committed by them were so huge and vicious that
they covered the comfort women issue. The tragedy of
victims in the
“army and prostitution”,
the oldest profession across the world cannot be treated in parallel
with the
Nazi’s crimes in
terms
of cruelty of criminal tools used by Nazi such as killing factories, sterilization
operations,
euthanasia etc.”
He gave his final keen observation; “It is so silly, laughingly funny to make noise exaggeratedly
over the “comfort
women” issue
of Japan in order to assume the war of Japan as same as
that of Germany and to treat Japan
that
has never
done the Holocaust
as badly as
Germany. Republic of Korea participated in the Vietnam War and left
7,000 to 20 thousands
of fatherless children.”
The following is a tragic but lofty story, at least for Japanese people, he told; “There was an
episode in the wartime
that a
Japanese army corps that had been driven into the front in
Yunnan of China passed over the Korean
comfort
women to the
American army corps
telling the women to survive. On the other hand the Japanese comfort women
chose death
for honor
with the soldiers. Japanese soldiers were fighting with the spirit of samurai (Bushidou).”