(AP) Japan's Abe: No Proof of WWII Sex Slaves

[Eugene]

Japan's Abe: No Proof of WWII Sex Slaves

By KOZO MIZOGUCHI
The Associated Press
Thursday, March 1, 2007; 12:24 PM

TOKYO -- Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday there was no evidence Japan
coerced Asian women into working as sex slaves during World War II, backtracking
from a landmark 1993 statement in which the government acknowledged that it set
up and ran brothels for its troops.

Abe's comments to reporters came as a group of ruling party lawmakers urged the
government to revise the so-called Kono Statement, which states that Japan's
wartime military sometimes recruited women to work in the brothels with coercion.

"The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion," Abe said. "We have
to take it from there."

Historians say that up to 200,000 women, mainly from Korea and China, were forced
to have sex with Japanese soldiers in brothels run by the military government as
so-called "comfort women" during the war.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/01/AR2007030100578.html

[lebkuchen]

1. This Japanese PM won't last long, either

[maddezmom]

2. I'm not up to date on all the facts

but I can't imagine anyone lining up to be a sex "slave" :eyes:

[SemperEadem]

3. why? because he says so?

I would say that the women who were coerced into it would disagree. Is it because they're Korean/Chinese and therefore what they experienced is of no consequence to him?

[lebkuchen]

15. Yes, and also because

Japan is at least 4 decades behind the U.S. when it comes to women's rights.

[brentspeak]

4. Nations that don't own up to their past sins are at risk for engaging in them again in the future

It's like Turkey's national self-denial that its predecessors annihilated the Armenians.

[youngdem]

21. Or America's in Vietnam

[Phredicles]

5. Comforting to know we're not the only country run by a heartless moron.

I guess the testimony of thousands of the women involved doesn't count as "proof".:eyes:

[Demeter]

11. It Never Has Before, Why Should Now Be Any Different?

Equal rights my eye.

[Canuckistanian]

26. The ones that survived, anyways

And that doesn't include the ones who committed suicide rather than face the shame of a society that would reject them.

Or the ones that preferred to forget the whole episode and just remain quiet.

Or the ones that the Japanese just quietly "eliminated".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women

[LostinVA]

6. The hell with them -- and blessing upon the so-called "Comfort Women"

UGH.

Japan needs to own up to what they did in WWII. I'm tired of this same old Nanking/Comfort Women/POW excuses. It's disgusting and fascist. And, Hiroshima and Nagasaki do NOT negate the crimes they committed.

[heliarc]

12. Just as we Americans...

Should own up to our complicity in the traffic of sex workers during the Vietnam and Korea conflicts. This kind of Sex work was the very definition of "R&R" for a great part of these wars. This goes both ways.

[Shallah Kali]

25. Yes and it goes on today in 21st Century America some 50,000 women and kids each year

This is a world wide problem in addition to sex tourism.

[saigon68]

14. They behaved like subhumanoid types

Too bad they didn't invade

[HowHasItComeToThis]

7. NOW THEY JUST HAVE SEX TOURS TO P.I., THAI, CAMB, ETC

SICK PEOPLE.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

8. GOOGLE THE BUMS.....Results 1,660,000 for JAPANESE SEX TOURS.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=JAPANESE+SEX+TOURS&btnG=Search

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[heliarc]

35. I'm not sure that your characterization is fair

To blame the Japanese people as a whole for this is patently unfair and possibly classifies as bigotry. This denial of culpability comes from one Japanese leader, and the atrocity was conducted by soldiers who were whipped up into Fascist furors... They deserve the blame certainly. But to blame all of the men and Women of Japan with your statement is unfair and says more about your discriminatory views about the Japanese people than it does about the issue at hand.

American armies have participated in similar acts in Vietnam, and in Korea. There are cases of rape being tried (or not) against American soldiers and contractors in Iraq as well. Sex Tourism is also practiced by Americans in Asia and Eastern Europe. Seems to me that your singling out of the Japanese people alone ignores the real problem.

[krispos42]

9. Oh, did the last sex slave finally die recently?

:sarcasm:

Yeah, the Japanese have credibility on this issue. They spend how many decades quietly trying to remove the fact that they were involved in WW2? That they attacked Pearl Harbor?

The Holocaust deniers will use the same arguments once the last concentration camp surviver dies as well.

[donsu]

13. it's true - during and right after the war there were articles/photos,

movie news films. and later I think there was a book about them.?

[genie_weenie]

16. The Great Rewrite Strategy

Every nation and religion uses it, to wit:

America and the Native population
Turkey and the Armenian Genocide
Japan and Nanking and Korea
Christanity and the conquest of Europe
Islam and the Conquest of Asia Minor, Europe, Middle East

[otherlander]

41. I think America

might be getting better at telling the truth about the Native people. The schools- at least in my area- don't paint Columbus and the conquistadores as heroes anymore. They teach about the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears. Since 7th grade we've had class debates about different laws and how they affected the natives. It's probably a different story in the heartland, though.

[endarkenment]

17. One Word Suffices:

BULLSHIT

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[MrPrax]

24. And a little closer...

Globalization and the Sex Trade : Trafficking and the Commodification of Women and Children

"...The growth of sexual tourism over the last 30 years has entailed the "prostitutionalization" of the societies involved. In Thailand, with 5.1 million sexual tourists a year, 450,000 local customers buy sex every day (Barry 60). The now massive South East Asian sex industry began with the Vietnam war. The U.S. government stationed servicemen not only in Vietnam, but also in Thailand and the Philippines (Jeffreys), these last two countries serving as rear bases in the fight against the Vietminh. The resulting increase in local prostitution established the infrastructure necessary for the development of sexual tourism. The presence of the military created an available work force. More importantly the military presence also provided opportunities for contact with foreigners and the social construction, through pornography, of an exotic sexual image of young South Asian women. Government policies favourable to sex tourism contributed to the explosion of this industry. A decade ago there were 18,000 prostitutes in the service of the 43,000 U.S. servicemen stationed in South Korea (Barry 139). Between 1937 and 1945 the Japanese army of occupation exploited between 100,000 and 200,000 Korean women imprisoned in "comfort stations" (Barry 128). After the Japanese defeat, the Association for the Creation of Special Recreational Facilities, financed indirectly by the U.S. government, opened a first comfort station for U.S. soldiers. At its height this association exploited 70,000 Japanese prostitutes (Barry 129). Today these numbers have swelled and include women from the Philippines, Russia, and other countries in sex industries around the U.S. bases (Moon)..."

Sisyphe

Won't even bother with the gory details of what the US did to women in the Philippines after the 1898.

That's the kewl part of being history's winner of the moment -- one can stand in hypocritical judgment of the losers and feign moral superiority.

[damntexdem]

18. Somehow I suspect that this is not a case of his being an ...

Honest Abe. ;-)

[keroro gunsou]

20. *spews water on screen*

I was wondering when that pun was going to be made.

I've got some gamer buddies in Japan that I've met through my online gaming and they even say that Abe-san is an asshole. How he even got elected after Koizumi-san is a mystery. They sure didn't vote for him.

Japan's Diet is swinging back to the reactionary right, say my friends, and that is not a good sign. Abe-san has been described as the Japanese version of Bush, though slightly more intelligent, though that's not saying much.

[pokercat999]

22. That's like saying he's as smart as a box of rocks....

with a worm in it.

[BestCenter]

23. How smart is he compared to Blair? Or Howard? Or Harper? Or Berlusconi?

Just askin'.

[Irreverend IX]

27. The governer of Tokyo was already a fascist asshole...

He said something to the effect of "One of the biggest problems for our society is old hags. Women who continue living after losing their reproductive capability are useless and sinful." Japan's dominant political party, the "Liberal Democratic Party," has gotten steadily more reactionary over the years. Consider this: there was once a "Conservative Party" that denied all sorts of WWII atrocities and wanted to reestablish the Japanese Pacific Empire, but that party was actually absorbed into the LDP! Abe's election is just proof that things will get worse over there before they get better.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

38. Under a parliamentary system, you don't vote for the Prime Minister

directly; you vote for the party.

Abe's (and Koizumi's) party, the so-called Liberal Democrats (an inaccurate name, if there ever was one) have gerrymandered the election system so that it's hard for any other party to win. It's happened only twice since 1955 for brief periods. Instead, the LDP keeps getting re-elected, and the prime ministership is passed around among factions that are based on personalities rather than on ideologies.

But I completely agree that Abe is an asshole.

[scot]

28. No proof......

Outside of all the women that say its so!!

[Greyhound]

29. Japan's prime minister denies responsibility for wartime brothels

TOKYO: A denial by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that the Japanese military had forced foreign women into sexual slavery during World War II is a clear sign that the government is preparing to reject a 1993 government statement that acknowledged the military's role in setting up brothels and forcing, either directly or indirectly, women into sexual slavery...

...Abe, whose approval ratings have been plummeting over a series of scandals and perceived weak leadership, seemed to side with this group. A nationalist who long led efforts to revise wartime history, Abe softened his tone after becoming prime minister last autumn. In fact, he at first said that he recognized the validity of the declaration, angering his conservative base...

...Historians believe that some 200,000 women — Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese and Filipinos, as well as Japanese, Dutch and other European women — served in Japanese military brothels. For decades, Japan denied that its military had been involved, calling the brothels private enterprises and the women prostitutes.

But in 1992, a Japanese historian, Yoshiaki Yoshimi, outraged by government denials, went to the Defense Agency's library and unearthed, after two days of searching, documents revealing military involvement in establishing brothels...

...At the same time, many former sex slaves have stepped forward with their stories in recent years. Three testified in the U.S. Congress recently, saying that Japanese soldiers had kidnapped them and forced them to have sex with dozens of soldiers a day.

One of the two Korean women who testified before the U.S. Congress, Lee Yong Soo, spoke in Tokyo on Friday. "Japan says there was no force involved, that there were no comfort women — they say all sorts of things," Lee said. "But as a victim who was forcibly taken, as someone who lived through those events, I'm a living witness."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/02/news/japan.php

[Kagemusha]

30. I neglected to comment on this yesterday but I'll just say...

..this is purely Abe being an ass. This is a pet issue to him and he chooses to draw a line here, not because it has anything to do with good politics, but because it's just his desire to be an ass about it because he likes his version of the story better.

Though forcing women "indirectly" into sexual slavery well... that's getting a lot broader. The mere fact the army was there and constituted 'demand' that someone wanted to bring 'supply' to would count as indirect probably. It's still not good for the people involved but, it's a bit different when actual soldiers drag people at bayonet point, etc. I don't know how Abe turns something like that into a blanket denial though. Well, I don't think an honest look at history has anything to do with it. But this was known about Abe before he ever got considered to replace Koizumi so it's not like anyone should be surprised.

[Greyhound]

32. I'm wondering just how prevalent this move to "scrub history" is in Japan?

I've heard a few bits and pieces recently but wrote it off, like the holocaust deniers, as the nonsensical ravings of a few disturbed individuals. This latest story has caused me to wonder if it is, perhaps, more prevalent than I thought.

[Kagemusha]

40. Yes and no.

Among politicians, Abe is remarkable in that he only with great difficulty convinced people he would not say this when he first got to be PM, and now he is saying it just like people feared.

As far as the movement itself.. I'd say hardcore right wing conservatism in the US has more supporters percentage-wise, but they are vocal and have disproportionate influence in Japan, for reasons like the NRA: they're close to a single issue movement and keep pounding on one thing (or set of things).

The fact is, the government there can be extremely unpopular, in opposition to the vast majority of Japanese people, and blissfully chug along just FINE. Occasionally there threatens to be political change but something arises to dampen it and keep the threat down. So far, so "good" - no big changes.

Then they get this Abe neanderthal whose mask has finally fallen.

[keroro gunsou]

33. in the words of my esteemed grandmother:

"What a yutz."

Most of my Japanese gamer friends STILL don't understand how this guy got elected. Too ba the Japanese PM isn't elected directly through popular vote, for I think his ass would be grass when the women of Japan voted. If this is how he thinks of non-Japanese women (IE: the confort women), God only knows how he thinks of Japanese women and women in general.

Yeah, Japan does culturally lag behind in terms of women's issues, but they are improving, and putzses like Abe-san don't help matters.

[donsu]

36. what kind of voting machines do the Japanese use?

who counts their votes?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

39. Who needs voting machines when you have gerrymandering?

The LDP's strength is in the rural areas. After WWII, most Japanese were farmers, but the rush to industrialization caused a rush to the cities and a gradual depopulation of the rural areas. By rights, there is a need for massive redistricting, and if the electoral districts were redrawn to reflect current population patterns, the Democratic Party of Japan or the Socialist Party would probably win. Japanese cities often have Socialist or even Communist mayors.

But this gives the LDP every motivation to prevent redistricting.

As a result, the vote of a rural person counts far more than the vote of an urban person.

People know that the system is rigged, so voter participation is even lower than in the U.S.

A few years ago, I asked some fellow translators who had lived in Japan a long time whom they would vote for if they had voting rights over there. They all despised the LDP and thought it was thoroughly corrupt, but they said that the opposition parties were made up of well-meaning but ineffectual people, and that since no one but the LDP had governed for so long and worked alongside the powerful civil service bureaucracy that when other parties got in, they didn't know what to do.

The LDP is made up of cliques that are centered on personalities rather than ideologies. Back in 1985, when preparing lectures for a course on modern Japanese culture and society, I read a book on their governmental system, dated about 1973. It listed the names of the leaders of all the factions as of the writing of the book. Wouldn't you know--all the leaders of the factions had taken their turn as prime minister, all except the guy who died before his turn came up.

[Turbineguy]

31. That guy needs a visit from Poppy

who will puke on him.

[Eugene]

34. AP: Growing Chorus Slams War-Brothel Remarks

Growing Chorus Slams War-Brothel Remarks

By CARL FREIRE, Associated Press Writer

Friday, March 2, 2007

(03-02) 07:30 PST TOKYO, Japan (AP) --

Women's rights activists in the Philippines and lawmakers in South Korea on Friday
denounced comments by Japan's nationalist prime minister that there was no
evidence Japanese soldiers forced women into sexual slavery during World War II.

-snip-

"We will not allow them to deny it just like that," said Rechilda Extremadura,
executive director of Lila Pilipina, an organization of activists and former Filipino
wartime sex slaves. "For us, good or bad, it is your history. If you are a responsible
government, you are responsible enough to accept, acknowledge and be accountable."

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday said there is no proof the women were forced
into prostitution: "The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion."

His statement contradicted evidence in Japanese documents unearthed in 1992 that
historians said showed military authorities had a direct role in working with contractors
to forcibly procure women for the brothels, known in Japan as "comfort stations." The
remark also cast doubt on a 1993 Japanese government apology to the sex slaves.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/03/02/international/i073022S42.DTL

[Barrett808]

37. Sure, and the Imperial Japanese Army didn't destroy Nanking, either

In fact, there was no invasion of China.

There, simple.