Wow, if it's all true, it's an incredibly terrible reality. Hopefully the Japanese people will step up and accept it -- and then, abolish it.

Japan has a history of rewriting history to cover up its wartime atrocities. Ask any Japanese kid about WWII and they'll be able to tell you all about the atomic bombs dropped by the US and how dreadful that was. Sadly, however, they won't offer any reasons.

What they won't be able to tell you, because the history books have glossed over it, is the aggressive war waged in south-east Asia and the Pacific in the name of Japanese militarism and imperialism, the wholesale massacre of Chinese civilians in Nanjing (and elsewhere), the attacks on Pearl Harbour, Malaya/Singapore and Hong Kong, the Bataan death march that led to the deaths of thousands of captured US soldiers, the Changi POW camp and the camps along the Burma Railway that led to the deaths of thousands of British, Australian and Dutch servicemen, along with thousands of Thai slave labourers, and the beheadings, and random bayoneting and shooting, the starvation of prisoners, and the general brutality involved in the waging of the war.

They can't tell you any of that stuff, and it is not the fault of the Japanese people, who are good people. It is the fault of their government, which over the years has just conveniently forgottten to talk about it.

I live in Australia, however, and there are people here who haven't forgotten. IMO, any nation that doesn't accept some measure of responsibility for its conduct is doomed to repeat the mistake, in one way or another.

It's time Japan fessed up and accepted full responsibility for its behaviour. Not to shame Japan or its people, as time can heal all wounds, but just so its people know that they never need go there again.

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." - Abraham Lincoln

Shari, this another great blog you have. I posted a comment on this topic to your other blog that I should have posted here (I didn't have it quite figured out, sorry) so I will paste it here where it belongs.

I love many, many things about Japan but they need to step up to the plate and start owning up to some past behaviors. Plain and simple. Until they do, their relations with their neighbors will always be strained and their reputation internationally will suffer. I can appreciate the "must not lose face" values that the Japanese espouse but there's honor in humility and truth as well. It takes a strong person with a deep sense of integrity to admit faults. I wish the Japanese government could see that. Continuing to deny what the whole world already knows (and has SOLID, irrefutable proof of--such as the comfort women and the rape of Nanjing, among others) makes the Japanese government kind of look like a bunch of ninnies. I feel sad about that. America, for all our faults, doesn't get off easy--why should anyone else. In our schools we teach our children about the Trail of Tears and years of oppression against blacks prior to the Civil Rights Movement. We teach these things--rather than hide them--because we believe we must face our past, own it and never forget it. By facing it, we can help ourselves never to repeat it. The Japanese would do well to learn this difficult but important lesson.

hahaha
There Korea women(ianfu) in 1940's was "Japanese". Because Japanese low applied them. And, In 1960 the Japan-South Korea agreement, the problem in the annexation age is final. It was completely solved. The South Korean comfort woman tells a lie, and a foolish yankee is cheated ..WWWWW

The South Korean is a liar, and the liberal yankee is average infant's intelligence.

This is for the fool who styles himself "fuck_ianfu".

I suggest you read comment #2 above by STM. Especially this line, which applies directly to you and all who think like you.

"IMO, any nation that doesn't accept some measure of responsibility for its conduct is doomed to repeat the mistake, in one way or another."

Quoted for truth and proven by your own remarks above.

BACKGROUND OF 'COMFORT WOMEN' ISSUE/ Comfort station originated in govt-regulated 'civilian prostitution' The Yomiuri Shimbun

Controversy over the so-called comfort women has been inflamed again. The U.S. House of Representatives has been deliberating a draft resolution calling for the Japanese government to apologize over the matter by spurning the practice as slavery and human trafficking. Why has such a biased view of the issue prevailed? The Yomiuri Shimbun carried in-depth reports on the issue Tuesday. The writers are Masanobu Takagi, Hiroaki Matsunaga and Emi Yamada of the political news department. Starting today, The Daily Yomiuri will carry the stories in three installments.


To discuss the comfort women issue, it is indispensable to understand the social background of the time when prostitution was authorized and regulated by the government in Japan. Prostitution was tacitly permitted in limited areas up until 1957, when the law to prevent prostitution was enforced.

Comfort women received remuneration in return for sexual services at so-called comfort stations for military officers and soldiers. According to an investigation report publicized by the government on Aug. 4, 1993, on the issue of comfort women recruited into sexual service for the Japanese military, there is a record mentioning the establishment of such a brothel in Shanghai around 1932, and additional similar facilities were established in other parts of China occupied by the Imperial Japanese Army.

Some of them were under the direct supervision of the military authorities, but many of the brothels catering to soldiers were privately operated.

Modern historian Ikuhiko Hata, a former professor at Nihon University, says the comfort women system should be defined as the "battleground version of civilian prostitution."

Comfort women were not treated as "paramilitary personnel," unlike jugun kangofu (military nurses) and jugun kisha (military correspondents). During the war, comfort women were not called "jugun ianfu" (prostitutes for troops). Use of such generic terminology spread after the war. The latter description is said to have been used by writer Kako Senda (1924-2000) in his book titled "Jugun Ianfu" published in 1973. Thereafter, the usage of jugun ianfu prevailed.

In addition to Japanese women, women from the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan, both then under Japanese colonial rule, and China, the Philippines, Indonesia and other countries invaded by the Imperial Japanese Army were recruited as comfort women.

Hata estimates that 40 percent of the wartime comfort women were Japanese, 30 percent Chinese and other nationalities and 20 percent Korean.

The total number of comfort women has yet to be determined exactly.

According to a report compiled by Radhika Coomaraswany of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 1996, there were 200,000 comfort women from the Korean Peninsula alone. The figure in the report was based on information Coomaraswany had obtained in North Korea. But this report contained many factual errors, and its quoted sources lacked impartiality. Foreign Minister Taro Aso rejected the figure of 200,000 as "lacking objective evidence."

The reasons cited for the need for comfort women and wartime brothels are as follows:

-- To prevent military officers and soldiers from raping women and committing other sex crimes in occupied areas.

-- To prevent venereal disease from spreading through troops who would otherwise contact local prostitutes who did not receive periodic medical checks.

-- To prevent military secrets from being leaked by limiting the women who provided sexual services to officers and soldiers to recruited comfort women.

Such a system and the use of wartime brothels generally are not limited only to the Imperial Japanese military.

The U.S. troops that occupied Japan after the war used brothels provided by the Japanese side. There was a case in which U.S. military officials asked the Japanese authorities to provide women for sexual services. During the Vietnam War, brothels similar to those established for the former Japanese military were available to U.S. troops, a U.S. woman journalist has pointed out.

Hata said: "There were wartime brothels also for the German troops during World War II. Some women were forced into sexual slavery. South Korean troops had brothels during the Korean War, according to a finding by a South Korean researcher."

(Mar. 31, 2007)

BACKGROUND OF 'COMFORT WOMEN' ISSUE / Kono's statement on 'comfort women' created misunderstanding

Directed at comments #8 & #9.

All this is irrelevant. What Japanese authorities did was wrong during WWII and they are unwilling to say it was wrong - to admit that they cruelly used women as sex slaves. All the rest is mere hand waving. For this there is punishment. And you are suffering that punishment now.

The truth is that the evil your nation visited upon the Korean women and others in WWII and before them is now been visited upon yourselves. You have created a culture of pornographic sex in which your own young women lust after the sexual slavery that your people imposed upon the colonial peoples under its rule.

Let's repeat the principle:

Any nation that doesn't accept some measure of responsibility for its conduct is doomed to repeat the mistake, the sin, in one way or another.

Your own sins are now visited upon yourselves, and your own young women in particular. This principle was enunciated by the G-d of Israel thousands of years ago. "There is no sin without punishment, and there is nor punishment without sin."

"He who says that the Almighty forfeits on sin, let his life be forfeit" [Masekhet Baba Kama (ed:50)]

Now learn and live. Ignore this wisdom, and your own women will continue to sacrifice themselves as whores to your men, and they will call it liberation. Your own sins will continue to be visited upon yourselves. You will see the justice of the G-d of Israel, Who created and rules the universe, a G-d you do not even recognize, visited upon you.

Your nation must do repentance. They must admit to the sin they committed and then resolve not to commit it again. They must make restitution to the women they hurt, to the degree that they are able. This must be done publicly. If you lose face with yourselves, that is part of the punishment you must endure.

But do it, and your nation will prosper by having faced doen and dealt with the truth.

Check this out and comment on it.

do u think the Japanese did good things ?

Think about
it's not a funny happened

If ur grandmother used as sex slaves of Japanese soliders

the slaves captured from Japanese when they play out side or when they got some water from the
lake

who knew that
who knew what happened to them


they sexed 30 or 15 soliders a day
and if the slaves got a problems in their body
the Japanese just killed them or put the very hot stuff to the women 's thing

i 'm not a good English speaker so i cant explain

The term "comfort women" is confusing an misleading. I believe that we should use the real words to describe such horrible system: Sexual slavery.
The first time I heard the term "comfort women" I was in Berlin, Germany. I always thought that military was about male bonding and brotherly love. That's the reason soldiers enjoy wars and killings so much. Why did the Japanese soldiers need 'comfort women.'
In the end of 20th century, there were many people worked togather in Berlin, asking Japanese government to apologzie formally--there were Korean, Japanese and Germans.
Yes, there are many Japanese do feel that their government should address the past war crimes during WWII formally. They are quite active in Japan and aboard. This year, the Women's Active Museum on War and Peace received the Pax Christi Peace Reward for their work in Japan--to address the sexual slavery issue and to educate the general public in Japan. The museum is locates in Tokyo.
There are many Japanese want to address Japanese government's role in the war crimes.
However, there are more people do not want to know they started the war against humanity. All they want to talk about are the 2 H-bombs and Japan is the only country that suffered during the war. In general, what I feel is that they are not interest in history and those Asian women (and their experiences) were not different from those happened in the Japan's past--may it be Japan in WWII and in the 18th century.
From what I

I don't know what the expected outcome of this is, oh...money. My grandfather was a POW for over 3 years...he got a dollar a day for each day he was a prisoner ...from Japan...nothing. Is that what you want a dollar for everyday of your service? And a better apology? As it has been mentioned, the man wasn't even alive at the time...and he apologized for those before him.
I don't believe in your cause and I really don't know I believe most of the "stories" Perhaps this confuses most of you...then we are even..because this issue is certainly full of unexplained things..like if asian women find itdihonorable to be prostitutes why are there still so many actively working? 1942...2007 and they are still working like gangbusters to "service" any American man they can get...then marry under whatever pretense necessary to move to the USA? And I'm fairly certain prostitution, forced or volunteered didn't start with the Japanese, I am sure the next target, oh...already happening, you'll attempt to sue the USA...most of our men from that time are gone, but do you really want our soldiers to take the stand and tell everyone who wants to listen to the millions of stories of how the prostitutes took the virginity of our boys? Many were...and then we can really bring to light some of the more unknown reasons many of our men were not allowed home...Black VD. Odd how we have yet to hear about that. The prostitutes who had it still worked, they needed money, and knowingly
contracted it to our soldiers...Here in America that is premeditated murder...but that I am sure doesn't count as a warcrime. Civillians who take part in war without government authorization are convicted here...the women who tied grenades and other explosives to their children to take out a few American soldiers have not been punished for the murder of their own children let alone the murder of our Americans. Take your apology and shut up... it's more than my grandfather got!!!!

This is not just some lower school fight.

This war crime should be recorded in every country's, espeically Japan's, history book.

Also, the reason why the Prime Minister of Japan, who wasn't even alive at the war period, has to apologise is because it was Japan that committed the warcrime, because this issue is now a political issue between two countries, and because this young Prime Minister Abe represents the country Japan.

Therefore, if, IF the Prime Minister of Japan(Abe) does apologise, it is not Shinzo Abe as a person that is apologising, it's Japan's government and it's country that is apologising.