An
Open Letter to Shinzo Abe
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"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." - George Orwell "The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows." - Martin Luther King, Jr. |
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"You cannot survive if you do not know the past." - Oriana Fallaci "We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience." - George Washington |
WEB SITES
Comfort-women.org
A website to remember some 200,000 women who were used as sexual slaves by Japanese troops during World War II
LABAN! Fight for Comfort Women
Why Tell the Story
The Comfort Women relive their experiences every time they speak them. But they speak them so that history will know and understand and document these acts, they speak them so that we may be aware of the consequences of war, they speak them so that we may rise above these acts and never let them occur again.
BOOKS
Comfort Women by Yoshimi Yoshiaki (Author), Suzanne O'Brien (Translator)
In 1992, the historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi discovered incriminating documents in the archives of Japan's Defense Agency indicating that the military was directly involved in running the brothels (by, for example, selecting the agents who recruited)
The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War
by George L. Hicks
One of the ravages of war has always been rape, but in the 1930s and '40s the Imperial Japanese Forces made it systematic, forcing thousands of women into sexual slavery for their soldiers at highly organized "comfort stations."
A Gesture Life by Chang-Rae Lee
In his second novel Lee explores the atrocities of the Japanese military, particularly those inflicted on the "comfort women," who were forced to pleasure the officers and enlisted men, through the eyes of Doc Hata, a former Imperial Navy medic who becomes not a physician but a revered small-town medical supplier in upstate New York. But more than simply the horror, this novel explores how these atrocities along with unperformed acts of violence, make it impossible for him to feel joy and pain and love. What happens during World War II is not past, but lives on and has an impact on each one of Hata's post-war relationships.
Abe's
'comfort women' comments leave Congress puzzled,
discontent
"People who were there felt what Abe said today was actually weaker than the Kono statement," another source said. "It wasn't even clear to them what Abe was trying to say."
Even Japanese Organizations Support the Resolution
A voter movement that urges the U.S. House of Representatives to adopt a “comfort women” resolution is gaining momentum.
Mike Honda, US Congressman, 25/04/2007
Mike Honda is a Democratic member of the US Congress. A Japanese-American, he was put in an internment camp during World War II.
This Viewpoint is based on an interview conducted with Helen Vatsikopolous and broadcast on Australia Network's Asia Pacific Focus program on April 22, 2007.
Japanese
ex-soldiers call for
By Chisa Fujioka |
April 25, 2007
US
urges Japan to resolve WWII disputes with neighbors
Abe
apology over comfort women goes only so far
Article that references the Ad in the New York Times, also has dozens of comments about the issue.
Beyond apology, moral clarity
Urging Japan to apologize for war crimes is not enough. The US must confront its own role in ignoring Asians' suffering.
By Gi-Wook Shin
Abe only partly successful in defusing 'comfort women' issue
In recent years, the United States and Japan have asserted that their alliance in Asia is based on "common values, especially our commitment to freedom and democracy," as Bush said Friday. The countries are strengthening their military alliance even as Japan's revisionist views on history have deepened distrust in the rest of Asia.
"The notion of Japan as a robust democracy and a beacon of human rights in East Asia is something that Prime Minister Abe has been pushing," said Mochizuki, of George Washington University. "But the more he pushes on that, while leaving the comfort women hanging, it raises questions among American intellectuals about how truly democratic Japan is and how truly committed it is to human rights."
Japan's 'apology' of little comfort
* Peter Alford, Tokyo correspondent
* April 28, 2007
Mr Abe's first visit to the US since becoming Prime Minister in September has been overshadowed by his maladroit handling of the question of whether the Imperial Japanese Army was involved in forcible recruitment of the women who staffed its military brothels.
He was greeted yesterday by a protest demonstration by about 100 people outside the White House and a full-page newspaper advertisement that asserted that Japan had "never taken full responsibility for this crime, and it has never made a clear apology".
Protecting the Human Rights of Comfort Women
Mindy L. Kotler, Director of Asia Policy Point, a Washington, DC nonprofit research center that studies the U.S. policy relationships with Japan and Northeast Asia, writes that "The Comfort Women issue is not yesterday's problem. It is today's and, if it is not dealt with now, it will be tomorrow's problem as well. A multitude of vital U.S. interests are served by a definitive resolution of this moral issue still troubling the governments and peoples of Asia. It is also good for our very close ally Japan, as its government seeks long-overdue recognition of Japan's 60-year history of constructive, responsible and resolutely peaceful membership in the modern world community."
"People who were there felt what Abe said today was actually weaker than the Kono statement," another source said. "It wasn't even clear to them what Abe was trying to say."
Even Japanese Organizations Support the Resolution
A voter movement that urges the U.S. House of Representatives to adopt a “comfort women” resolution is gaining momentum.
On April 24, two days before Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Washington D.C., Chicago-based JPCL announced a statement that strongly supports a comfort women resolution. JPCL is a national civic group in America, whose aim is empowerment of Japanese Americans. JPCL is the first Japanese group in America that publicly supports such a resolution.
Comfort women - Japan's shameful legacyMike Honda, US Congressman, 25/04/2007
Mike Honda is a Democratic member of the US Congress. A Japanese-American, he was put in an internment camp during World War II.
This Viewpoint is based on an interview conducted with Helen Vatsikopolous and broadcast on Australia Network's Asia Pacific Focus program on April 22, 2007.
Japanese
ex-soldiers call for
apology to sex slaves
By Chisa Fujioka |
April 25, 2007
TOKYO (Reuters) - Ichiro Koyama, recalling words
from a fellow Japanese soldier who died two years ago, says Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe should offer a more sincere apology to women who
served in brothels
during World War Two.
Lei Guiying, Chinese woman who testified to wartime Japanese sexual slavery, dies
US
urges Japan to resolve WWII disputes with neighbors
The US President's top East Asia policy
adviser, Dennis Wilder, says
Japan should try to resolve World War II disputes with its neighbors
China and South Korea.
Abe
apology over comfort women goes only so farArticle that references the Ad in the New York Times, also has dozens of comments about the issue.
Beyond apology, moral clarity
Urging Japan to apologize for war crimes is not enough. The US must confront its own role in ignoring Asians' suffering.
By Gi-Wook Shin
Abe only partly successful in defusing 'comfort women' issue
In recent years, the United States and Japan have asserted that their alliance in Asia is based on "common values, especially our commitment to freedom and democracy," as Bush said Friday. The countries are strengthening their military alliance even as Japan's revisionist views on history have deepened distrust in the rest of Asia.
"The notion of Japan as a robust democracy and a beacon of human rights in East Asia is something that Prime Minister Abe has been pushing," said Mochizuki, of George Washington University. "But the more he pushes on that, while leaving the comfort women hanging, it raises questions among American intellectuals about how truly democratic Japan is and how truly committed it is to human rights."
Japan's 'apology' of little comfort
* Peter Alford, Tokyo correspondent
* April 28, 2007
Mr Abe's first visit to the US since becoming Prime Minister in September has been overshadowed by his maladroit handling of the question of whether the Imperial Japanese Army was involved in forcible recruitment of the women who staffed its military brothels.
He was greeted yesterday by a protest demonstration by about 100 people outside the White House and a full-page newspaper advertisement that asserted that Japan had "never taken full responsibility for this crime, and it has never made a clear apology".
Protecting the Human Rights of Comfort Women
Mindy L. Kotler, Director of Asia Policy Point, a Washington, DC nonprofit research center that studies the U.S. policy relationships with Japan and Northeast Asia, writes that "The Comfort Women issue is not yesterday's problem. It is today's and, if it is not dealt with now, it will be tomorrow's problem as well. A multitude of vital U.S. interests are served by a definitive resolution of this moral issue still troubling the governments and peoples of Asia. It is also good for our very close ally Japan, as its government seeks long-overdue recognition of Japan's 60-year history of constructive, responsible and resolutely peaceful membership in the modern world community."
BBC Radio on Comfort Women
Interviews with both Survivors and Japanese Officials
Ex-education minister: Japan's WWII sex slavery allegation based on fabrication
International Herald Tribune
TOKYO: Most of the women providing sex to Japan's wartime military were not slaves, but professional prostitutes who made a fortune on the job, Japan's former educ
World War II sex slaves lose in Japanese court
International Herald Tribune
TOKYO: In two landmark rulings, Japan's highest court rejected compensation claims Friday that had been filed by former wartime sex slaves and forced laborers from China but acknowledged that they had been...
US Congress Report Rebukes Abe Over Sex Slavery
Korea Times
A U.S. congressional report on Monday rebutted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's denial of coercion in the sexual enslavement of women during World War II, according to the Yonhap News Agency. The report...
US Congressional Report Rebukes Abe Over WWII Sex Slavery
Korea Times
A U.S. congressional report on Monday rebutted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's denial of coercion in the sexual enslavement of women during World War II, according to the Yonhap News Agency. The report...
Historians Find New Proof on Sex Slaves
Philadelphia Daily News
TOKYO - Evidence submitted to the post-World War II trials of Japanese war criminals shows Japan's military forced Asian women into sexual slavery during the war, historians said Tuesday, citing newly unearthed...
Historians offer fresh evidence Japan's military forced women to work in wartime brothels
San Diego
TOKYO - Evidence submitted to the post-World War II trials of Japanese war criminals shows Japan's military forced Asian women into sexual slavery during the war, historians said Tuesday, citing newly unearthed...
Japanese leader apologizes for WWII sex slavery
San Fransisco Chronicle
(04-29) 04:00 PDT Tokyo -- In his first visit to the United States as Japan's leader, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe quickly got on a first-name basis with President Bush and secured an invitation to the ranch in...
Japan denies compensation to sex slaves
Lexington Herald-Leader
TOKYO -- Japan's Supreme Court upheld a ruling Friday denying compensation to two Chinese women who were forced to work in military brothels during World War II. Backing a Tokyo High Court ruling, the Supreme...
Japanese court denies compensation to 2 former sex slaves
Houston Chronicle
TOOLS TOKYO - Japan's Supreme Court upheld a ruling today denying compensation to two Chinese women who were forced to work in military brothels during World War II. Backing a Tokyo High Court ruling, the...
Japan denies sex slaves compensation
The Tribune San Luis Obispo
By CARL FREIRE - Associated Press Writer TOKYO -- Japan's Supreme Court upheld a ruling Friday denying compensation to two Chinese women who were forced to work in military brothels during World War II. Backing...
Overcoming postwar mind-set
Satoshi Ikeuchi Special to The Yomiuri Shimbun
EXAMPLE OF THE KIND OF GARBAGE FROM REVISIONISTS
THAT WANT TO REWRITE/DENY HISTORY
(HEY SATOSHI IKEUCHI... OWN UP TO YOUR HISTORY!!! THIS WILL THEN ALLOW JAPANESE PEOPLE TO BE PROUD FOR WHO THEY ARE NOW/CAN BE, NOT ASHAMED OF IDIOT REVISIONISTS LIKE YOU!!!!)
Letter From China: In Asia, the past divides and alienates
Howard W. French - Published: March 8, 2007
Getting back to sanity - an article on why ACCURATELY remembering the past is important.
Japanese Prime Minister angers victims of wartime sex slavery
By David McNeill in Tokyo - Published: 09 March 2007
...But the issue has galvanised the Japanese right, who deny government involvement. "The women were legal prostitutes in brothels," Nobukatsu Fujioka, a revisionist academic, said. He is one of the leading figures in a movement that aims to overturn much of the accepted wisdom about what took place during Japan's rampage across Asia in the 1930s and 40s.
Twelve out of 18 members of Japan's cabinet belong to a political forum that wants to "rethink" history education and backs many of Professor Fujioka's views. His Society for History Textbook Reform has sold 800,000 copies of a revisionist history book that denies war crimes such as the comfort women and the Rape of Nanjing. Before coming to power, Mr Abe was one of the society's supporters.
Abe, Bush in Apology Farce
Apr.30, 2007
Japan Hit With Global Censure on Sex Slaves
Updated Mar.30,2007
Harvard Students Hear Testimony From ‘Comfort Woman’
Updated Apr.30,2007
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