In his March 1 memorial presidential address, President Lee Myeong-Bak took a direct aim to the Japanese government and said:
“For the two countries [Korea and Japan] to intimately cooperate as true companions, the true courage and wisdom not to avoid the historical truth is necessary above all. In particular, among many current issues, the Comfort Women issue is a humanitarian issue that needs to be concluded quickly. The grandmothers, who carried their pain in their hearts, are well past their late 80s. If they pass away without resolving the burden of their hearts while they were alive, it is not the case that all problems will disappear; rather, Japan will forever lose the opportunity to resolve this issue. This is why I urge the Japanese government to take a more active posture.”
This is about as direct as diplomatic languages get, I would think. Separately, President Lee also sent surviving Comfort Women gifts and a letter, which said he spoke only about the Comfort Women issue to the Japanese Prime Minister in the summit meeting held last December.
Earlier in his administration, Lee was not particularly pressing on the historical issues with Japan. But according to Dong-A Ilbo, the turning point for Lee came last May. Although Lee visited the tsunami-ravaged areas of Japan to deliver Korea’s good will and material support, the Japanese government notified the Korean delegation that the Prime Minister intended to raise the claim that Liancourt Rocks were Japanese territory in the summit meeting with President Lee. Although the issue was not actually raised in the summit meeting, President Lee reportedly was bitterly disappointed.
In the meantime, Korean government is gearing up to make the arbitration claim under the Basic Treaty if Japan’s silence on this issue continues. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs formed a task force dedicated to this issue last September, and the task force reportedly created a short list of arbiters to choose, as well as attorneys to represent the Korean side. The National Assembly backed this effort by budgeting more than double the amount that the executive requested on this issue.
I usually do not have too many kind words to say to President Lee, but on this issue at least I believe he is playing it just right. If he can resolve this issue before he steps down by the end of the year, it will be an achievement of lasting significance.
{ 106 comments… read them below or add one }
Not gonna happen. Because japanese people lack balls to acknowledge what they’ve done. They can be sorry about it, but they will never admit it.
As long as Korea keeps demanding one, no apology tendered by the Japanese in response will ever be perceived by Korea as “sincere”.
If Japan makes an apology, will they have Korea sign an agreement saying that the matter is closed? Will said agreement have an “okay, no, this time we mean it, really” clause?
@Sperwer
So, if I piss on your face, say I’m sorry, then go around and say “Man, pissing on Sperwer’s face sure was pretty fun.”, then apologize for that, then go around and say “Oh, his face was dirty anyway. I helped him by washing his face with sterile liquid.”, then apologize…
Am I being sincere in my apologies? More importantly, would you be considered an unreasonable, bitter little angry idiot for being pissed at me?
Res ipsa loquitur!
Granfalloon #3, good point. Judging by the level of agreement among the political parties in Korea, I doubt that it would be very easy to have the leaders of Korea come to an agreement on what would be considered an acceptable apology.
I’m new to the Korean political scene so I don’t know–have any of the recent requests/demands from Korea for an apology (and compensation) been specific about what would constitute a sincere apology?
@6
Not to mention that the resulting disppearance of this issue removes from the korean political bag of tricks one of the very few and an especially powerful lightning rod of intra-societal solidarity with which all korean politicians can prestidigitate regardless of their ideological stripes
Not to deraiil the topic, but why does one never hear anything about Chinese comfort women? I’ve read that there were some.
Jews never shut up about the holocaust, and they’ve gotten tons of sincere apologies and reparations and the like. The Koreans at least have the excuse that the Japanese arguably haven’t been all that sincere or apologetic.
The commentariat response on this issue, time and time again, never ceases to amaze me. It is as if they have no moral compass. This is one of the most heinous war crimes in World War II, and they think Korea is the bad guy.
The issue is not an apology. But then again, as long as you get to shit on Korea’s attempt to vindicate historical justice, it doesn’t matter what the issue is, right?
You mean, you have to be taught what constitutes a sincere apology?
and there you have it ladies and gentlemen!
Sex slaves are in S. Korea NOW, why doesn’t LMB speak out about that? He can actually do something about it, but that would require him to get his hands dirty. Pointing your finger at someone else asking them to do something about something that took place decades ago only looks like you’re doing something among Koreans while wearing white gloves.
LMB should take a drive down to Pusan and celebrate while thinking about the road on which he travels.
As I see it, I’m shitting on Korea’s attempt to reneg on a contract that they signed. But, poTAEto, poTAHto. Unless said contract had some clause that renders it invalid if one side finds it emotionally unsatisfying. In which case, comment withdrawn.
#7,
I was thinking the same thing…not to belittle the question (I certainly do believe the Japanese owe an official apology…let the Emperor make it, after he’s done with the heart surgery recovery….it’s not like he’ll be voted out), but wouldn’t taking this whipping-post issue away force politicians to focus on real issues? I think you’re right.
#10,
One of the most heinous…if you’re going to assign a rank, wouldn’t it be in the top 20, with most/all of the first 10 resulting in death? Again, I don’t mean to belittle, but surely there’s some loss of scale there.
TheKorean #10 wrote: “You mean, you have to be taught what constitutes a sincere apology?”
1) As long as you have made about me: If I am expecting an apology, but the other side keeps screwing it up, then at some point, if I really want the apology, then I will be damn specific about what it is that I want.
2) Saying you want a “sincere” apology without defining what that is or what it is you want allows people demanding an apology to keep moving the goalposts.
3) When I am prime minister of Japan then I will ask the National Assembly of South Korea to send me a one-page letter explaining to me in advance what would constitute an appropriate apology from Japan to Korea. That should keep South Koreans fighting among themselves for quite a while, with the various sides denouncing each other for not demanding more, boycotts against the various drafts of the letter, demands for a national referendum on the letter, etc.
4) Oh! To answer your question, yes, I need to be taught what constitutes a “sincere” apology to be made by someone who had nothing to do with the issue at hand.
5) “Sincere apology.” Here’s an essay from 1985 by Thomas Sowell translating political rhetoric that has been turned into a short YouTube video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaouMZGICcc
@10
Oh, and btw, stop flattering yourself with the supposition that I regard you as in any way representative of Korea – well, except of some of its more regrettable features
@15(5);
Nice; a good reminder to reread Orwell on Politics and the English Language. Thanks
Japan doesn’t give a dime what 2mb said. Japan knows it will have to apologise, be it 10, 50 or 100 years later. They will only do so, when it has the resources to compensate to the generations impacted. Therefore the apology will never ever be sincere, but always based on its on national interest. At this stage, Japan has bigger things on the agenda.
It is right move to keep the pressure on.
FYI, Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a page on the issue titled “Recent Policy of the Government of Japan on the Issue known as “Comfort Women” at: http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/women/fund/policy.html
Because they were victimized by Japan.
Move on.
There were plenty of crimes committed by the Japanese during WW2, and many of them have never been acknowledged. I live very close to a memorial for the Centuar, an Australian hospital ship sunk by the Japanese off the coast of QLD in WW2 that killed hundreds of nurses. The Japanese never apologized.
Does it worry me? No. Why?
Mostly because they’ve already paid the price for their crimes, a hundred-fold. Justice was done. Also, the young Japanese of today are not the same as their grandfathers, and I’m not sure it’s right to hound them for crimes committed by other people 65 years ago.
I think Korea should remember, and should teach young Koreans about what happened, but should move on. They’d win a lot of fans in the international community if they did.
Just a theory: Could it be possible that because Japan was totally destroyed and beaten (including being nuked twice) by the Allies, those of you who are from the former Allied countries are more forgiving and ready to move on with life?
But for Koreans, they were liberated as merely a byproduct of Japan’s defeat and in the aftermath of WWII it was Korea, and not Japan (unlike what happened to Nazi Germany), that was partitioned. This may partly explain the ongoing resentment Koreans may have against Japan and their sensitivity to issues related to the Japanese occupation. There is only so much that this generation of Japanese can do to atone for their country’s past crimes, but they can start by not provoking Koreans over Dokdo or by their leaders visiting Yasukuni shrine, etc…
What’s also galling to Koreans is that the Korean War was the stimulus to kick-start Japan’s post-war economic development. This is not to say Japan wouldn’t have become prosperous without the Korean War, but Korea’s misery certainly was a boon to Japan and its industrial revival.
@23. How childish. I wonder if the Vietnamese resent Korea for the same reason – not to mention direct ROK participation.
#24- Korea never occupied Vietnam or colonized it, nor was Korea involved in Vietnam’s partition. Korea was partitioned as a product of Japan’s annexation/occupation, and partition resulted in the Korean War. BTW, I don’t subscribe to the Korean Leftists’ (and also Bruce Cummings, I believe) assertion that the US is at fault for Korea’s partition — after all, far better to have half a country that’s rich and free than to have one whole one tha’s oppressed and poor (if the Soviets took all of Korea, as the commies wished). I am saying there are events, resentments, and feelings that arose as a direct result of Japan’s annexation of Korea.
@22
Your first query imo is groundless speculation. Your second has some legs insofar as it implicitly recognizes the shame that seems to possess Korea about its complete uninvolvement as any kind of effective force in its liberation and the added (but unjustifiable) fuel this adds to its already incendiary resentment against wrongs for which Japan should (and in fact, is) justifiably held responsible ( regardless of Korea’s obsessive concern with the sincerity of Japanese apologies or its unwllingness revoke the speech rights of and silence the wingnut rightists).
@25
You expressly referenced korean resentment at Japan’s having benefitted as a supply depot for the korean war, a situation that was exactly replicated by korea having similarly benefitted from the vietnam war.
characteristic #22, could be. In that case, based on your theory, it may be that Korean political leaders and vocal citizens will never accept as “sincere” an apology from Japan because of that history.
#26 – that’s why I said it was just a theory, but I wouldn’t say it’s completely groundless. You wouldn’t be even a bit magnanimous to someone (even if he started the fight) whom you’d just beaten to a pulp?
#27 – yes, that’s right — Korea, like Japan, benefitted from someone else’s misery. But that’s where the similarity stops. Korea’s partition and the Korean War are inextricably linked to Japan’s occupation. Korea had nothing at all to do with Vietnam’s colonization and partition following independence.
http://news.tv.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2012/03/01/2012030101426.html?newsmain_text
I don’t know. By calling Korea a strange nation which is represented by “prostitutes” on the cover of a magazine on 1st of March, people like Kuroda, the bureau chief of Sankei Shimbun in Korea (so-called 망언제조기 妄言製造機 because he does this often) make it very heartfelt with their apologies. Although I myself have ambiguous feeling about the comfort women issue, this sort of thing from Japan seems to show how grown up and mature Japan is.
#28 – Unfortunately, that seems to be the case, short of the Japanese Emperor begging forgiveness on all fours… I think it requires both sides to be mindful of each other. Korea should move on — not forget what happened but realize it’s been nearly 70 years since WWII ended. Japan — not provoke Koreans on the matter of Dokdo, or denying what happened.
Sorry, I meant “both sides to be mindful of each other’s feelings.”
#15: Good one. You ever come out for a beer on Friday? You’d be a good guy to have around at Broughton’s some evening.
I mean, politics aside, I am sure those grandmas would be very pleased by this, to be labeled thus by the very person who looks old enough to be not that far in age from actually being there during the times.
However, I am always indeed amazed by the Japanese perception of the WW2 in their popular culture (especially in their morning dramas with that voice-over who tells how hard it was for the everyday innocent Japanese folks), especially since I’d lived in Germany, where whole TV industry would collapse if they had no Nazies/DDR to make documentaries about.
Why amazed you ask? I don’t know. I guess it’s because I would like to agree with 90 percent of the comments here that Japan is mature and has done enough self-examination and historical investigation into its own doings and it’s just the immature jealous neighbours with their baseless demands for things, but to find this is not so is quite disheartnening, as they could be the pillar of maturity in Asia. Tant pis.
#20 I agree exactly.
Get over it and move on.
The Japanese have already paid the price for what they did – it’s history.
Where did the money come from to build Posco?
Why aren’t the Koreans angry at the USA for letting the Hirohito and his brother Prince Chichibu, his cousins Prince Takeda and Prince Fushimi, and his uncles Prince Kan’in, Prince Asaka, and Prince Higashikuni off without being tried for war crimes.
The “comfort women” would not have happened without orders from them.
You mean, the contract that flatly contravenes jus cogens, negotiated and entered into by an illegitimate dictator who was formerly an officer of the Imperial Japanese Army, who did not even know the existence of the Comfort Women issue, without the consent of the people whose rights he signed away for less than a penny on a dollar?
Spurious. It is not as if Korea wants the current generation of the Japanese to be punished and imprisoned as if they themselves committed the crime. All Korea wants is the current generation of Japan to acknowledge that this happened, that it was wrong, and compensate those who suffered at the hands of their government.
Why stop there? Why care about the elderly in Korea, when we could all focus on finding cure for cancer? Why care about Korean women getting trafficked to China, when we could all focus on infant mortality in the world? How dare we care about more than one issue at a time?
In other words, an “apology” for you is like a nuclear launch sequence, where as long as the other side goes through all the right motions in the right order, even if without any genuine regret, contrition or recognition of the wrong, your forgiveness will be activated. For such stance, the NGO that represents the former Comfort Women has long had a precise list of demands.
I see that you still have a bit of a ways to go in your readings on postwar Japan.
This would be nice:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/may/18/queen-ireland-apology-britains-actions
But it’s probably never gonna happen between Korea/Japan.
Indeed I do, although I do not feel like my moral compass has to be contingent upon that. At any rate, if you have time, I would appreciate a further exposition of your thoughts.
who care about japan’s apologies when there’s yasukuni, 99 cents, and distorted history books?
btw, comparing the deaths of millions of asians to the deaths of a couple hundred (caucasian) nurses shows the man’s true colors. perhaps he should work on a an apology to the koori.
from: http://www.jpri.org/publications/workingpapers/wp77.html
“Contemporary Japan is deeply divided over the comfort women issue.
In a 1997 opinion survey, a slim majority (50.7 %) replied that Japan should apologize properly to Asian countries and the victims.
..five of the eight middle-school history textbooks approved for use from the year 2002 do not mention military comfort women.”
Here’s a question.
If only 50% of Germans thought that Germany should apologize to Jews for the Holocaust, and five out of eight German history textbooks did not even mention the Holocaust, should Jews be mad at Germany?
For many years, Japanese history textbooks have been whitewashing Japan’s WWII war crimes, including the issue of “comfort women”. (in a so-called attempt to “boost the self-confidence” of Japanese)
I know that these textbooks are having the desired effect, b/c I’ve met quite a few Japanese online who deny that Japan did anything bad in WWII. They deny the Nanjing Massacre ever took place, and they say that “comfort women” were simply prostitutes who volunteered to serve the Japanese military for pay.
(And of course, they make matters worse by declaring that Dokdo is Japanese territory.)
Japan claims that they’ve apologized for the “comfort women” on numerous occasions, but the fact is the Japanese parliament never even voted on an official apology statement.
The Japanese ultra-right wing nuts keep loudly yelling that the ex-comfort women are all lying and that they were all just prostitutes, but the Japanese govt or society never even tries to shut them up.
Is this really how an apologetic nation would behave?
CMH @#14,
Well, most of the comfort women did die during WWII.
(From Wikipedia.org: “Approximately three quarters of comfort women died, and most survivors were left infertile due to sexual trauma or sexually-transmitted disease.”)
It’s estimated 50% of the comfort women were Korean. (out of a total of about 200,000)
They were treated very harshly by the soldiers, and many died due to disease (or just being massacred; when Japan started losing WWII and Japanese units were retreating hastily, comfort women were often massacred and dumped in mass graves, along with the many Korean laborers..)
Still don’t see how Korea’s past leadership issues are Japan’s problem. Really, what SHOULD have Japan done? “Oh, this Park guy is not very popular. Let’s refuse to negotiate with Korea on past wrongs. Surely, the Korean people will see that we are refusing for their best interest.”
Reading comprehension, pawi. I said it didn’t concern me, because justice was done.
PM says sorry.
theKorean,
The demands you listed are actually fairly reasonable, I’ll give you that, assuming none of them have already been met. But I also think that the issue probably a bit more complex and murky than the Korean Council will have us believe. Not that Japan is any better.
Problem is that many Koreans don’t seem to care about the issues at all. The elderly poverty issue could be solved very quickly, if there was the will to do so. Yet comfort women attracts endless, vociferous outrage. I’m sure you are genuinely concerned for the remaining comfort women, but I question whether their welfare is the primary motivation of most.
I’d put money on the fact that within a block of the comfort women protests, where people pour sympathy on the plight of these women (and they deserve sympathy) there will be a 90-year-old polishing shoes or collecting garbage, or living in a shanty not suitable for a dog. That annoys me.
Granfalloon @#44,
Well, the first Korean “comfort woman” to come forward and speak out about her experiences (Ms. Kim Hak-Sun) did so in 1991.
Before that, I don’t know if Koreans (except for the comfort women themselves) even knew about the issue.
Prior to the 1990s, Korea was very conservative regarding sex, so none of the ex-comfort women dared to speak out. (fearing that they would bring shame to themselves & their families and/or be ostracized)
(In fact, many comfort women never even returned to their home countries after WWII, b/c their shame was so great.)
It’s only after the Korean women’s rights movement began in the late 1980s that the atmosphere began to change so that the comfort women could speak out about their experiences.
So how could the 1965 normalization treaty have encompassed the “comfort women” issue?
thekorean#37:
1) Thanks for the list of demands from that NGO. I hope you’ll be part of the committee drafting the one-pager for the Japanese prime minister.
2) Would anyone happen to know how many of the 7 demands have been met so far? I recall reading that they first issued that list of demands in the early 1990s.
3) That NGO says they raised 43,000 million won from citizens and the Korean government. Would anyone happen to know, in comparison, how much money the Asian Women’s Fund raised to give to Korean women who were comfort women?
4) Demand #4 is “Make legal reparations.” While I question if Japan’s current leaders who weren’t even alive during WWII could make a “sincere apology” or express “genuine regret,” I am on board with reparations for people oppressed by government, as I said in 2008.
But “legal reparations” sounds a bit vague within this list. The representatives for comfort women who raised 43 million won here have had 20 years to come up with a yen or won amount, patiently waiting as the women die off. By not naming an amount, they can reject any offer coming from Japan as being inadequate without naming their amount in nuclear launch sequence.
5) Demand #5: “Punish those responsible for the war crime.”
Another fine demand. Of course, as many have pointed out, most of those responsible are long since dead, old, feeble, perhaps even too senile to remember what they did.
Wedge #33: Cool. But I’m one of those tough guys who likes sweet cocktails, so I hope they have something on the menu.
#41 Pawi – still talking trash as usual…
First… stop using bad language towards the “First Indigenous Peoples of Australia.
STOP saying “the koori”. You are insulting them.
You SHOULD SAY…. “The Koori peoples..” they are the tribe of Indigenous Peoples of Australia who occupied the south-eastern part of Australia.
There are many other Indigenous people of Australia, such the “The Murray Peoples” who occupied the north-eastern part of Australia.
saying.. ” should work on a an apology to the koori” is exactly the same as saying ” should work on a an apology to the korean”… it just sounds racist.
Secondly – the apology has already been given.
http://www.news.com.au/national/pm-moves-to-heal-the-nation/story-e6frfkw9-1111115539560
or
http://articles.cnn.com/2008-02-12/world/australia.text_1_stolen-generations-prime-minister-kevin-rudd-indigenous-peoples?_s=PM:WORLD
as usual, the Indigenous people of Australia, received the apology but, it wasn’t enough…..
So, even after an apology was given, the Indigenous people said, an “apology was no good WITHOUT compensation “MONEY”…
as I said on a previous post, my family is Koori, my great-great-great-great-great Grandmother was a Koori princess from the Pangerang people of the Goulburn Valley and the Thooloolagong people at Ullupna Island near Strathmerton – known as the Kookaburra people.
I grew up with 1000′s of cash always given to my family and other Indigenous Australian families for all sorts of things, such as free doctors, free dentists, free lawyers, free university, free everything!
Even if Japan did offer a formal apology to the comfort women, I am sure the same thing will happen.
Korean people will then say that ” said, an “apology is no good WITHOUT compensation “MONEY”…
and that is why Japan refuses to offer a formal apology.
Japan knows it has already paid the money – and doesn’t want to have to pay again.
It is insulting to reduce the “comfort women” issue into “MONEY” compensation like paying for prostitues. Without full recognition of the history of systemic sexual crimes in the Japanese military and government level, Koreans ain’t gettin properly apologized.
wow millions of comfort women were murdered, who knew about this, why did nobody tell us this before?
yeah, because the evil of murder and torture is all about the numbers
@48. Someone there last night was doing creme d’menthe shots
I remember reading somewhere that Japan agreed to compensate the remaining Dutch comfort women last year or so. However, I can’t seem to find that news anywhere… Does anyone remember this?
http://www.investigalog.com/otros/the-international-debate-over-japan%E2%80%99s-stance-on-comfort-women/
What Japan should have done is not to have kidnapped these women and made them sex slaves.
Search Naver on 독거노인 and you will see plenty of efforts attempting address elderly poverty.
Vicissitudes of capitalism, however ugly, versus years of living in terror and sexual enslavement followed by decades of silence, mocked by their past violators and uninformed-and/or-morally fucked passers-by as prostitutes who are only after money (as if they need it!). I know what I am more annoyed by.
In the historical context, it is not. “Legal reparations” means a reparation that acknowledges the criminality of Japanese government’s involvement in organizing and maintaining the Comfort Women system. Japanese government absolutely refuses to do this, and that is the crux of the issue.
@TK:
Apparently I’m unable to get on to the cloud network to care of some work. So I guess that frees up a bit of time for me to try and briefly respond to your statements.
Of course not. But I think you could try and take on some more nuanced views after a more serious reading of postwar Japanese history. Which leads me to addressing this:
One of the things that I think needs to be stressed to you is that Japan’s memory of this era is best understood as a fragmented domestic political culture of special interests. The inability of the Japanese government to address the question of war responsibility in a totally forthright manner is a natural consequence of this fragmentation. You seem to be wanting something unitary, clear cut to be there. Or more bluntly put, that there’s something sinister, rotten at the heart of it all. But the fact of the matter is that’s not the case. Whether you are aware of the work or not, Franziska Seraphim’s War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2005 lays this out pretty well.
I’m not asking you to dispense with your outrage over this issue. But I do ask you at the very least to try and come to grips with where the other side is coming from.
Addendum: In an article about how Japanese women have gone gaga over Korean men, I found this little tidbit interesting:
At any rate, wish me luck in logging in.
The Korean wrote:
Korean fathers sold their daughters. Korean women sold themselves. That means that most Korean comfort women were probably either indentured servants or prostitutes, not slaves. “Comfort women” were recruited by Korean newspaper ads and by other Koreans. There is no hard evidence that the Japanese government kidnapped Korean women. On the contrary, there are newspaper articles from that time frame talking about Japanese authorities cracking down on such kidnappings. Korean and Japanese pimps should be blamed for the kidnapping, not the Japanese government.
Even after Korean liberation, the indentured servant system continued in Korea, at least, into the 1980s, and women were forced to work as prostitutes under that system. Women were also still being kidnapped to work as prostitutes in the 1970s and ’80s.
Therefore, if you think it is fair to say that Japan kidnapped women and made them sex slaves in the early 1940s, then it would be fair to say that Korea continued to kidnap Korean women and make them sex slaves in the late 1940s and the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s.
2010년 한일병합 100년을 맞아 두 나라 국영방송인 NHK와 KBS가 실시한 국민의식 공동조사 결과 한국인이 가장 먼저 떠올리는 일본인이 일제 초대 총통인 이토 히로부미(伊藤博文)인데 비해 일본인이 가장 먼저 떠올리는 한국인은 배용준이었다. 한국인들이 한일관계 개선의 중요한 과제로 독도문제와 역사인식 문제, 식민지배 보상문제 등을 꼽았는데, 일본인은 정치적 대화·경제교류 ·문화스포츠 교류를 꼽았다. 지금의 한일관계를 긍정적으로 평가한 답변도 한국인은 39.2%인데 비해 일본인은 62.1%에 달했다.
yeah, i find it interesting too. it says koreans ain’t ever done shit to the japanese. is that what you found interesting?
ps gerry admitted to maintaining a ho in 1970s korea. keep that in mind, folks.
gbevers @#57,
http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/women/fund/policy.html
“RECENT POLICY OF THE GOVERNMENT OF JAPAN
ON THE ISSUE KNOWN AS “COMFORT WOMEN”
April, 2007
“The Government of Japan had been conducting a thorough fact-finding study on the issue known as “comfort women” since December 1991 and announced its results in July 1992 and in August 1993.
Public documents found as a result of such study are now open to the public at the Cabinet Secretariat.
On the occasion of the announcement of the findings in 1993, then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono released a statement and expressed in it sincere apologies and remorse, recognizing this issue was, with the involvement of the military authorities of the day, a grave affront to the honor and dignity of a large number of women.
The Government of Japan has since expressed its sincere apologies and remorse to the former “comfort women”…”
No. Just the difference in perceptions after all the back and forth that occurs between the two countries. Moreover, I would’ve thought it would’ve been North Korea stuff that would’ve topped the list when asked about Korea.
i hear ya, charles.
Right. I’m doing that.
No, I really just want to fucking understand where they are coming from, because it is just utterly incomprehensible. I refuse to believe that Japan as a whole is rotten at the heart. My experience with Japan has shown me nothing of that sort. The Japanese people are reasonable people with fine moral sensibilities. This is why I keep posing the question — what the hell is the thought process of denying the criminality of this obviously criminal act?
thekorean #62–”This is why I keep posing the question — what the hell is the thought process of denying the criminality of this obviously criminal act?”
Examining the thought process of an entire nation going back over decades or perhaps even centuries to explain a single question…
Not saying it can’t be done but it seems you will be as successful as a dog chasing its own tail. Even if your favored theory turns out to be correct, what would you do with it?
I think the policy referenced above indicates that the inherent wrongness of this act had been accepted by the Japanese.
The issue that remains, is whether reparations have, or if not, should be made.
No, Japan has not properly apologized yet.
A proper apology would have to come from the Japanese Prime Minister himself, and/or the Japanese Parliament.
If you’re still in doubt as to whether Japan has properly apologized yet or not.. Consider U.S. House of Representatives Resolution 121, which was passed in July 2007.
This was a resolution that criticized Japan on the “comfort women” issue and called for it to properly apologize to its victims, as well as properly teach Japanese students about the issue.
The interesting thing about this resolution is that it was sponsored by Rep. Mike Honda, a Japanese-American.
So… if Rep. Honda didn’t think that Japan had properly apologized for its crime, how much more so would Koreans?
You should also note that Japan lobbied hard against U.S. House Resolution 121, warning that “it could harm relations between U.S. and Japan”.
And it didn’t react well, when the resolution was passed.
From the New York Times of Wednesday, 1 August 2007, p. A3
“Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed some irritation on Tuesday at the resolution approved by the House of Representatives in Washington that calls on Japan to acknowledge its wartime sex slavery. His reaction indicated strongly that the Japanese government would not offer surviving victims an official apology.
“The resolution’s approval was regrettable,” said Mr. Abe, who caused a furor in Asia and the United States in March by denying that the Japanese military had directly coerced women into sex slavery in World War II.”
So… do you still think Japan is sufficiently apologetic about the “comfort women” issue?
Rather confused by your muddled response, since I made no mention of an apology whatsoever.
jk6411 you wrote in #59
but now you are saying they haven’t apologized yet…?
Oh, no! Not this one again. *sigh* Even before reading the post I knew what the comments would be like.
YOTD @#68,
That was the statement of the Japanese Foreign Ministry, not my words.
The fact that we hear despicable bullshits on the issue like the one gbevers spewed up there from Japanese politicians, who do so in a shell of public disinterestedness, is why most Koreans don’t believe a genuine apology has been made.
A punches B in the face.
A apologizes to B
A makes jokes about how funny it was when B’s face started bleeding.
A apologizes to B about making that joke.
A jokes that B should be grateful, since A punching B must have been an exciting experience for B’s boring life.
A apologizes to B about making that joke.
B doesn’t accept the apology, saying that A isn’t sincere.
C walks by and tell B that he’s being irrational since A apologized so many times already.
I predicted back in 1998 that Korean representatives for former comfort women would fight AGAINST accepting an apology from Japan down to the last living former Korean comfort woman. My argument then is pretty similar to what it is today: Raise money so those women could live their final years in luxury, the apology should be secondary to that.
When I wrote an article back in 1998 about this, there were 157 Korean comfort women reportedly still alive, at that time they were reportedly living in abject poverty–and were discouraged by the groups allegedly representing them from taking money from the Asian Women’s Fund. Kim Hak-Sun, the first comfort women to step forward with her story in 1991, had just passed away, and her funeral procession was re-routed to pass the Japanese embassy, one last shot at scoring cheap political points.
nayaCasey @#72,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/koreas-comfort-women-the-slaves-revolt-814763.html
BumfromKorea wrote (#71):
What bullshit did I write, Bum? Why can’t Korea provide evidence that the Japanese government kidnapped Korean women to work as sex slaves? Also, if the “comfort woman” system were so hated in Korea, why did the Korean government continue it after liberation, including referring to the women servicing UN personnel as “comfort women”? Why was their no stigma attached to the name? Where are the post-liberation newspaper articles denouncing the Japanese government’s kidnapping of Korean women to be sex slaves? President Rhee hated Japan, so why didn’t he use Japan’s wartime comfort women system as part of his fervent anti-Japanese propaganda campaign in the 1950s? It makes no sense.
Korea has clearly lied about the history of Dokdo in an attempt to demonize Japan and lay claim to Japanese territory, so I would advise that people take what Koreans now says about Japan’s kidnapping of Korean women to be comfort women with a big grain of salt.
#74,
Not only are you continuing to show that you hate the one you love(d), you’re sounding like a Fox News anchor. Sorry, Gerry, but you’re becoming a bitter man, and it’s not pretty. Stopping going off of the deep in in print would be a start in rehabilitation (no camps for you, sir), but that screed portrays you as distinctly mean-spirited.
When did Japan joke about the comfort women? (teenagers on internet forums don’t count)
Becoming? He’s been bitter for some time.
I’m on the record as wishing Korea would stop hounding modern Japan about the 1930s and 40s. Having said that, the fact that you can’t find moral fault in Japan annexing Korea at all is pretty fucking weird, to say the least.
Yes, many Koreans procured Korean prostitutes for the use of Japanese soldiers. This is why the issue lay dormant for so long. But does this absolve Japan of ethical and moral responsibility for the issue? Of course not. The fact is that Japan deliberately pitted Koreans against Koreans as a tactic of colonial rule. They used Korean pimps to procure Korean working women for the use of their soldiers, and they installed Korean police to keep order in the towns and cities. This meant they were less visible themselves. But they were still in the background pulling the strings, and the overarching crime of subjugating a sovereign nation and using their men and women is no less appalling because of it.
Cactus wrote (#75):
As usual, Cactus, you provide no answers to any of the questions I asked nor even attempt to explain your ignorant leap in logic.
If people are going to claim that Japan kidnapped Korean women and forced them to be sex slaves, then why is it bitter to ask for proof of such a claim? If tens of thousands of Korean women were “kidnapped” and forced to be sex slaves, then where is the proof, and why wasn’t that big news after liberation?
How does my asking these questions show hatred for my former Korean wife? Unlike many of my contemporaries in the US military in Korea, I did not marry a Korean prostitute or a former prostitute. And even if I had, what relevance does it have to my request for proof that Japan had a policy of kidnapping Korean women to be sex slaves?
If someone were to call you a child molester, Cactus, would you also think I was bitter if I asked your accuser to prove it?
Obviously you think the Japanese government did kidnap Korean women to be sex slaves, Cactus. Why do you think so? Show me some proof.
Hi Gerry
It’s been a while. In all likelihood, some of the comfort women began their work as prostitutes voluntarily, if not willingly. And others were tricked into it or sold into it by other Koreans. Now, I have some questions for you. Questions that I think are often forgotten in discussing this issue. Bear in mind that these questions relate only to voluntary prostitutes, not to women sold or tricked into it.
1) should a woman who voluntarily becomes a prostitute have the right to refuse a customer on any grounds?
2) should such a woman have the right to only service a certain number of customers on any given day?
3) should such a woman have the right to quit that job whenever she feels like it? (further, if she is moved from her place of residence to another location to work, should she have the right to, upon quitting, be given transport back home?)
4) should such a woman have the right to receive reasonable compensation for her work?
5) Should countries take advantage of military and industrial superiority to annex a weaker neighbour for their own advantage?
6) Would you have hot, gay sex with a dolphin in a pool filled with pepto-bismol if you knew it could have prevented 9-11?
***
Jeffrey Hodges.
gbevers,
The Japanese authorities destroyed most of the documents and records pertaining to “comfort women”. They did this, in order to avoid war crimes prosecution.
However, Japanese researchers did find a few surviving documents.
They concluded, from these documents, as well as testimonies of ex-comfort women and surviving Japanese soldiers, that “the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy were either directly or indirectly involved in coercing, deceiving, luring, and sometimes kidnapping young women throughout Japan’s occupied territories.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women)
Japan, being a major world power, of course tried to keep its involvement with “comfort women” secret from the eyes of Western nations. They tried to be invisible as much possible; they made their local henchmen do the dirty work. But the Japanese military authorities were clearly behind the whole operation.
Also, these women weren’t always kidnapped at gunpoint. (though that may have been the case in the later stages of the war when Japan was desperate for the women)
They were often recruited for “factory jobs”, or promised other good jobs overseas. (Japanese authorities were smart.)
If you want to read a book about the subject, I suggest “Comfort Women”, by Yoshiaki Yoshimi.
Also, as I said before, the first Korean “comfort woman” to speak out about her ordeal did so in 1991. If the former comfort women are all lying, and all they’re after is money, why did they wait until they were elderly women, to speak out? The reason they waited so long is that it was very difficult for them to speak about their experiences.
Until they spoke out, Koreans did not know of “comfort women”.
(Also, you should note that the mortality rate of these comfort women was 75%, and many of the surviving women chose not to return to their home country after WWII, due to their shame.)
i would love to see these yahoos tell us black slavery was ok cuz blacks helped create it.
JK6411 wrote (#80):
Where is the prove that “Japanese authorities destroyed most of the documents and records pertaining to ‘comfort women’?
JK6411 wrote:
Give me a quote from the book. You read it, didn’t you? What did he give as proof that the Japanese military kidnapped Korean women to serve as comfort women?
JK6411 wrote:
If the Japanese had kidnapped tens of thousands of Korean women to be comfort women, how could Koreans not have known about it? How could Koreans not have known about “comfort women” when there were advertisements for “comfort women” in Korean newspapers?
JK6411 wrote:
Where is this record of mortality rates? Where is the study of surviving women who chose not to return home? Were the women ashamed of being comfort women or ashamed of being kidnapped by Japan?
Again, you are not showing me any proof. You are just making claims.
Hi Gerry, did you see my questions above at #78?
“The Japanese people are reasonable people with fine moral sensibilities. This is why I keep posing the question — what the hell is the thought process of denying the criminality of this obviously criminal act?”
Oh well, that one is easy to answer, because the Korean people are irrational people with no moral sensibility whatsoever ?
But please, japanese having “fine moral sensibilities” is so cliché…
Reading the hojusaram entry, I came to know the tragedy of the AHS Centaur, which appears to me to have a little bit in common to the topic of this post.
The Wiki entry says the case was used, ascribing it to a deed of a Japanese submarine, to mobilize Australians to the War on Japan, and lead to, among others, sinking of 9 Japanese counterparts in retaliation.
As a result of extending search work, Australians found and took numerous pictures of the Centaur lying 2000 m deep at the bottom of the sea in January 2010.
The Australian government (military) has apparently chosen not to publicize the findings much for the peace of the two nations.
“i would love to see these yahoos tell us black slavery was ok cuz blacks helped create it.”
Well actually there was more slaves in africa (black slaved by black and black slaved by arabs) than in america, well african countries never apologized one another and now they don’t give a single f about it. They do it in Europe because it’s easy.
jk6411 #73, thanks for the quotes.
1) Politicians often engage in symbolic actions so Honda’s resolution fit in quite well with that type of approach.
2) The quote from the person at the house of sharing makes it sound like the comfort women he is quoting are also more into symbolism, making it unlikely the Japanese can ever really make a “sincere” apology. Either the memorial wouldn’t be big enough or the compensation would be rejected as inadequate or some Japanese official would say something that would allegedly nullify a vote by parliament or the prime minister. Because, as you quoted, the women don’t want the crimes to be forgotten after they are gone.
I found a piece I wrote in 1998 about the comfort women.
A few highlights:
1) The Japanese government didn’t admit any involvement until a Japanese researcher published government documents in 1992 demonstrating involvement by the Japanese government.
2) The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery (Chongdaehyop) did their best to undercut the Asian Women’s Fund by pressuring comfort women not to accept money from AWF and the Korean government denied AWF representative Usuki Keiko to re-enter South Korea.
3) Usuki had been publicizing the comfort woman issue for more than 15 years, even coming to Korea in 1982 to do research about the comfort women, almost a decade before the South Korean government showed any interest in the topic. She published Contemporary Comfort Woman in 1992 and was the leading figure in the Association for Clarifying Japan’s
Post-War Responsibility.
4) Advocates for the comfort women made it less likely that Koreans would contribute to help the women because they have kept the focus on what Japan should do. That meant engaging in symbolic political actions that doesn’t help the women.
5) Most of the revelations concerning the comfort women have been uncovered by Japanese and Korean individuals who did not wait for government action. The Korean government did not publicly mention the comfort women issue until 1990, long after books and articles had been published in Japan in the 1970s and in Korea in the 1980s.
6) Somehow, it isn’t surprising considering that Chongdaehyop has alienated potential allies in Japan; has worked tirelessly to obtain meaningless statements of support from international bodies; and unwittingly convinced Korean citizens that they don’t need to help
the former comfort women until the Japanese have done
so.
Hamel wrote (#78):
You seem to be agreeing with me that there is no objective proof that the Japanese government kidnapped Korean women to be sex slaves. Even Koreans have admitted there is not such proof, including Seoul University Professor Ahn Byong-jik (안병직), who was part of fifteen Korean scholars who interviewed forty former Korean comfort women between July and December of 1992.
Mr. Ahn’s group managed to locate only 40 of 55 comfort women known to still be alive. Of those 40, only 19 were judged to be reliable, and of those 19, only 4 claimed to have been coerced, and of those 4 there were problems or inconsistencies with their testimonies.
The following is from a December 6, 2006 MBC TV News interview with Mr. Ahn. The relevant part of the video starts from about 5:22.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ6qQ8M6rCg
There seems to be problems with posting to The Marmot’s Hole. My above post (#88) did not come out the way I posted it. For example, I provided a Korean language transcription of Mr. Ahn’s comments along with a translation and only one link to the video, but I am showing 5 links to the video and no transcription. Is anyone else having problems posting?
gbevers,
“It is well known that the government systematically destroyed official documents at the end of the war, and this has made it possible to maintain that no evidence of its participation exists.” (Yoshimi, “Comfort Women.” p.34)
“I found six pieces of evidence that had survived the destruction of documents and was able to publish them in the newspaper.
Why were these materials, which we would expect to have been destroyed, still extant? They were among a group of documents written prior to 1942 that had been stored in an underground warehouse in Hachioji to protect them from the U.S. air raids. They were scheduled for incineration in the final days of the war, but the arrival of the Allied forces preempted that plan…” (Yoshimi, p.35)
“Since the discovery of these documents, many people have labored energetically to dig up more materials. I published a collection of these materials that contradicted the conclusions of the government’s first survey of materials. In 1993 I participated in an independent survey of documents sponsored by the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan’s War Responsibility that resulted in the discovery and publication of sixty-two additional documents.”
“The public announcement of the first six pieces of evidence had a profound impact. On January 12 [1992], the day following the publication of the documents in the newspaper, then Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Koichi publicly acknowledged the Japanese military’s participation in organizing the comfort station system. On the 13th, he announced talks on formulating an apology. On the 17th, then Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi, who was visiting Korea, officially apologized at a meeting of top Korean and Japanese leaders.” (Yoshimi, p.35)
“WHAT DID THE GOVERNMENT ACKNOWLEDGE?
After these announcements, the government conducted a limited survey of official documents and hearings with some former comfort women from South Korea. The government announced the findings of its inquiry on August 4, 1993. In that statement, the government acknowledged the following facts:
1. The Japanese military was “directly or indirectly involved” in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and in the transfer of comfort women.
2. As for the “recruitment” of the comfort women, “in many cases they were recruited against their own will, through coaxing, coercion, etc.” and “at times administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitment.”
3. “They lived in misery at comfort stations in a coercive atmosphere.”
4. The “recruitment,” transfer, and control of comfort women born on the Korean Peninsula were conducted “generally against their will, through coaxing, coercion, etc.”
5. The issue of military comfort women is “an act, with the involvement of the military authorities of the day, that severely injured the honor and dignity of many women.”
6. To the former comfort women, “the government of Japan would like to take this opportunity once again to extend its sincere apologies (owahi) and regrets.”
(Yoshimi, p. 36)
Gerry, these are the statements of the Japanese government. Whether you want to believe them or not is up to you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women#Treatment_of_comfort_women
“Approximately three quarters of comfort women died, and most survivors were left infertile due to sexual trauma or sexually-transmitted disease.[37]”
http://cpcabrisbane.org/Kasama/Archive/FelicidadDeLosReyes.htm
“about 200,000 Asian women were forcibly drafted into sexual servitude by the Japanese Imperial Army.”
“About 60,000 comfort women survived the War..”
http://www.awf.or.jp/e1/facts-12.html
“The Pacific War ended on 15 August 1945, but Those comfort women who suvived could not return home easily. It is known that many women gave up the idea of returning to their home out of a feeling of shame and remained in a foreign land, staying there for the rest of their days. Among those Korean women taken to China who remained there after the war some returned to South Korea only in 1990s.
In many cases, those who returned home were suffering from injuries and went through life miserably, unable to forget past cruelties. Many suffered from physical disabilities and venereal disease, and were unable to bear children. Others could not marry. And those who did eventually marry often had to conceal their past..”
#88,
Seoul University Professor Ahn Byong-jik (안병직) is famously pro-Japanese.
JK6411 posted:
The fact that Japan burned documents at the end of the war does not mean that they were trying to hide evidence of the Japanese military kidnapping Korean women to work as comfort women. In my job in the US Navy, we burned secret and confidential documents all the time. If the Japanese were kidnapping Korean women to work as comfort women, why didn’t the Korean public know about it? Did the Japanese burn all the Korean witnesses, as well?
JK6411 posted:
The most significant document Yoshimi found was a March 4, 1938 document to army Genenerals in northern China warning them not to use unscrupulous brokers to recruit comfort women. The document was not evidence that the Japanese military were kidnapping women, but that they were trying to prevent such kidnappings.
JK6411 posted:
The part in #2 that said “at times administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitment” was a referrence to war crimes committed by some Japanese military personnel in Java. It had nothing to do with Korean women. Those five Japanese soldiers were punished as war criminals.
Regarding #4, a Japanese ministry official confessed the following:
As I mentioned earlier, in regard to Korean comfort women, there were problems and inconsistencies with the four Korean women who claimed coercion. For example, the first Korean women to speak out, Kim Hak-sun, first told her story as follows in a August 15, 1991 article in the Hankyoreh newspaper:
By December 1991, in her lawsuit complaint, Kim Hak-sun had changed her story as follows:
Then, Kim Hak-sun changed her story again in July 1992 when interviewed by South Korean scholars, which included Seoul National University Professor Ahn Byong-jik.
Why was Ms. Kim’s story to the Korean scholars different from the one she gave earlier in her lawsuit compaint?
The 1993 Kono statement was criticized because it was not based on hard evidence. It was designed more for appeasement, which was a big mistake because it did not appease anyone. It simply added fuel to unsupported accusations. That was why Seoul University Professor Ahn Byong-jik said in 2006, 13 years later, that there was not even one piece of documentary evidence to support claims that the Japanese military kidnapped Korean women to be comfort women.
Research how Japanese government is treating her own people afflicted from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, then you can have an insight on how Japanese government treats other embarrassing issue like “comfort women” and “war crimes.”
http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/
Gerry #90
Do you really believe that, Gerry, or are you just saying it to stir the pot? Because it is a gross mis-reading of my comment, and putting words into my mouth that I wouldn’t utter.
gbevers @#94,
Mr. Bevers,
First of all, I think you’re spending way too much time and effort in your personal vendetta against Korea.
As for historical documents:
“In addition to the fact that many documents were destroyed at the end of the war, many of those that remain (police records, documents of the Department of Overseas Affairs and Home Ministry relating to the colonies, the huge collection of diaries of officials and personnel accompanying the military held by the Defense Agency, materials relating to the war crimes trials held by the Justice Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, Welfare Ministry documents relating to demobilization and support) have not yet been made public. It is my hope that the government will declassify these documents immediately, but currently, we only have access to the tip of the iceberg.” (Yoshimi p.39)
I hope that the Japanese govt will soon declassify these documents. (but I’m not betting any money that they will.)
As for the Korean women being kidnapped:
I’m not sure how often the Japanese authorities resorted to kidnapping as the way of procuring the women. Kidnapping at gunpoint was obviously the most extreme method.
Most women were deceived into becoming “comfort women”. (The women were told that they would be working as nurses, waitresses, doing menial tasks, cooking, cleaning, etc. But when they got to their destinations, that’s when they found out the truth.)
The women were tricked. Is that so hard to believe?
The Japanese authorities had trouble finding enough women by conventional means, so they resorted to trickery and in some instances force.
(And it wasn’t just in Korea. Japan used the same strategies throughout its colonies.)
(And let’s not forget that some of the “comfort women” were girls as young as 11 or 12 – they even tricked children into it.)
If the girls were tricked into it, there obviously wouldn’t have been any “witnesses”. The girls themselves were unaware of what they were getting into. They were shipped away to a faraway land, and they were never heard from again.
“In police interviews, at customs checkpoints, and in initial medical examinations for sexually transmitted diseases it was often clear to Japanese officials that the women were terrified, ignorant of what sort of “work” they would be doing, and sexually inexperienced.” (Yoshimi, p. 11)
“..the coercion used to round up and enslave comfort women was an acknowledged aspect of the comfort station system, pervading its operation at all levels.”
“..young women, who usually had little education and few economic prospects, often found procurers’ false offers of good jobs irresistible.” (Yoshimi, p.12)
But why are you fixating so much on the method by which these women were procured?
Regardless of the method by which they were brought into the system, the women all suffered the same fate.
Even the prostitutes who volunteered to be “comfort women” had no idea of the brutal, inhumane conditions that awaited them. The conditions were so bad that three-quarters of the comfort women died. They were regularly beaten and mistreated, their bodies battered 30-40 times a day. When they got too sick and died, they were simply discarded. (And of course, they weren’t allowed to leave, or refuse anyone.)
Are you saying that such a treatment would have been perfectly okay if the women had volunteered for the job?
These women were completely dehumanized.
During WWII, the Japanese govt classified them as “war material”, the same as bullets, or lumber.
They were seen as objects, and treated worse than dogs.
That’s why the Japanese Foreign Ministry now says that the issue of “comfort women” was “with the involvement of the military authorities of the day, a grave affront to the honor and dignity of [these] women”.
If you still think that Japan didn’t do anything wrong to these women, and Japan doesn’t need to properly apologize to them, then you have no shred of decency in you.
JK6411 wrote (#98):
And what are you spending your time doing, JK?
JK6411 wrote:
So? The Japanese government has already said it cannot find any documental evidence that the Japanese military had a policy of kidnapping women to be comfort women.
JK6411 wrote:
Most? How can you make such a statement? Prove it.
JK6411 wrote:
The Japanese authorities or the agents the Japanese were using? What is your evidence for such a claim?
JK6411 wrote:
How can I forget it when I have never seen any evidence for such a claim? Why don’t you start providing evidence instead of making silly claims.
JK6411 wrote:
“The women all suffered the same fate”? Your claims do not jive with an October 1, 1944 report prepared by the United States Office of War Information, which interviewed 20 Korean comfort women captured in Burma.
The following are excerpts from the US military report:
Notice that there were no 12 year olds in the group.
The report said the girls worked six days a week. Wednesday was their day off. They also had a weekly physical exam. The report also said, “The girls were allowed the prerogative of refusing a customer. This was often done if the person were too drunk.”
Concerning the health of the women:
JK6411 wrote:
It was a war, so I am sure there were many intenses of atrocities and abuse on both sides, but I want to hear the truth, not stories cooked up to paint the Japanese and the conditions of the comfort women stations as being worse than they really were.
My comment is awaiting moderation. Could someone please moderate it?
Gerry, I think your reply to me at #96 must be in moderation too. I look forward to reading it when it comes out.
gbevers @#98,
As for Japan having trouble finding enough “comfort women”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women#Recruitment
“In the early stages of the war, Japanese authorities recruited prostitutes through conventional means.
In urban areas, conventional advertising through middlemen was used alongside kidnapping. Middlemen advertised in newspapers circulating in Japan and the Japanese colonies of Korea, Taiwan, Manchukuo, and China.
These sources soon dried up, especially from Japan.[17]
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs resisted further issuance of travel visas for Japanese prostitutes, feeling it tarnished the image of the Japanese Empire.[18]
The military turned to acquiring comfort women outside mainland Japan, especially from Korea and occupied China.
Many women were tricked or defrauded into joining the military brothels.[19]
The situation became worse as the war progressed..”
Remember that some of the comfort women were raped 30-40 times a day. Do you think that would have happened, if there were enough comfort women? There never were enough of them. That’s why the Japanese authorities had to resort to trickery and coercion to procure them.
(Do you really think that enough women would have volunteered for the job? Japanese were brutal occupiers, hated by the people that they colonized. Do you think a lot of women would have willingly become “military sex slaves” for the Japanese soldiers?)
As for the Burma comfort women:
The U.S. report you cited says itself that “They lived in near-luxury in Burma in comparison to other places.”
Yes, let’s just look at the exception and not the rule.
Let’s forget that comfort women in general suffered a 75% mortality rate. Let’s forget that even most of the survivors were left with STD’s and permanent injuries, unable to marry or conceive.
I don’t know why you keep insisting that these women were just prostitutes who had it good working for the Japanese military.
Even the Japanese govt acknowledges that these women lived in miserable conditions, and that they were robbed of all their human dignity.
As for the many under-age comfort girls:
You can find out about them on your own.
Finally.. I would like to say, that your stance on the “comfort women” issue is precisely that of the Japanese ultra-right wing groups.
There are too many voices such as yours.
This is exactly why the former comfort women feel that they’ve never been properly apologized to.
(And why in 2007 the U.S. House passed Resolution 121, calling upon Japan to properly apologize to the “comfort women” and properly educate Japanese students about the issue.)
JK6411 wrote (#101):
The two ads for “comfort women” on the Wikipedia page to which you linked were in Korean newspapers for July and October 1944. The was late in the war, not early in the war. This is how the October 27, 1944 ad read:
At the time, there were “regular comfort women” and “military comfort women.” Regular comfort women serviced civilians and military comfort women serviced soldiers. Everyone knew the duties of military comfort woman, especially by 1944, and the ad very clearly said they were looking for “military comfort women” and that the women would be going to a “comfort woman station.” The ad was very straight-forward, with no tricky language.
As we know from the report on the Korean comfort women in Burma, comfort women who had paid off their debts were allowed to return to home in 1943. If the Japanese were so hard up for comfort women that they were kidnapping them, then why would they have allowed the women who had paid off their debts to return to Korea in 1943?
JK6411 wrote:
If a woman was working against her will, then it would be considered rape, but almost anyone who would have answered that October 1944 would have been going there of her freewill to make money. Also, the US military report on the Korean comfort women in Burma said that the women had “the prerogative of refusing a customer,” which means they were not being raped, at least at that Burma station.
JK wrote:
Who did the study and when? How would they have known how many comfort women died, were left with STD’s, or had permanent injuries? The comfort women was not even an issue in Korea until the 1990s.
JK6411 wrote:
I didn’t say that. Again, you are just making stuff up.
JK6411 wrote:
In other words, you have no proof of your claim that 11- and 12-year-olds were working as comfort women.
JK6411 wrote:
Why? Are they also asking for people to prove their claims?
gbevers @#102,
As for the many under-age comfort girls:
“The 1st Infantry Regiment of the Taiwan Army stationed in Xian District in Guangdong Province.. dispatched the wife of the operator of its exclusive comfort station to Taiwan, where she gathered six underage girls and forced them to come back to Xian District. Two of the girls brought back were just sixteen years old; one was eighteen, and another was fifteen. The two youngest girls were a mere fourteen years old.” (Yoshimi, p.65)
“In the case of Taiwan as well, the fact that half of the women rounded up were minors is important. As in Korea, many women in Taiwan were led off under false pretenses.” (Yoshimi, p.117)
“In the Philippines, large numbers of former comfort women have gone public with their stories. ..an extremely large number of women were forcibly seized by the Japanese Army. According to the “Written Complaints”, almost all of the forty-six victims were forcibly seized by the Japanese Army. The youngest among them was ten years old, the oldest was thirty, and a total of thirty-three were minors.” (Yoshimi, p.126)
http://www.bookmice.net/darkchilde/japan/comfort.html
“According to the book Comfort Woman: A Filipina’s Story of Prostitution and Slavery under the Japanese Military, 1999.. the average age of the women in the stations was less than 18 years old, and their age ranged down to 10 years of age.”
“Though there were exceptions, as a rule, Japanese comfort women were adult prostitutes, while the vast majority of comfort women from other Asian countries (the colonies or occupied territories) were minors or were adults who had not been prostitutes.” (Yoshimi, p.206)
“In the cases of Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese, Southeast Asian, and Pacific island women, we have already seen that there were many instances of rounding up minors, placing people into debt servitude, duping them, rounding them up forcibly, and forcing them to serve in comfort stations against their will.” (Yoshimi, p.207)
As you can see, there were plenty of instances of under-age girls being forced into the “comfort woman” system.
You can find more examples if you search on the Web.
(BTW, did you really not know?)
I was gonna say something in this tread, but I think I’ll just save it. It’s not like this subject is not gonna be discussed again at some point in the foreseeable future on this blog.
Exactly what sort of evidence are you searching for, Gerry?
Rape is a hard thing to prove the next day, let alone 60 years later. In the majority of cases you can only really rely on testimony, because the crimes take place behind closed doors, and women are often loath to come forward because of shame.
Nor would the Japanese be advertising the fact of their crimes. Were you expecting to find articles in the Imperial Japanese newspapers expounding the number of women who had been gang-raped by their boys? Maybe a newspaper ad from the day inquiring if any natives would like to get rogered by a battalion for free?
Murder, torture etc. is easier to prove, because of the bodies that are left behind, and because of photographic and film evidence. The Japanese were also wont to boast about killing. Rape is a different story: it’s a shameful act, particularly if it gets back to the wife and family.
So on the one hand you have Japan wanting to hide evidence of rape, and on the other you have the victims wanting to hide evidence of being raped. What hope for proof?
There’s no doubt rape went on; it’s just a matter of to what scale. Personally, judging by the proven brutality of the Japanese soldier in other areas, such as the treatment of POWs, and by the contempt with which they held other races, I really doubt many of them would be too squeamish for rape. My bet is it happened very, very often.
But I actually think Korea probably escaped the worst of it, being away from the battlezones and the hundreds of thousands of front-line troops, not actively fighting back and killing Japanese soldiers, being held in higher regard than the Chinese and South-East Asians, the being favoured by a policy of integration, rather than conquest.
http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20120314000688
Headline: “Two more victims of Japan’s wartime sex slavery die”
There are now 61 left. There is still hope and demands for Japan to apologize. As I predicted many moons ago, the activists will keep their “non-negotiable demands” down to the last comfort woman.
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