US lawmakers caution PM Abe on ‘comfort women’ apology issue

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Ida Torres in Politics with 15 Comments
US lawmakers caution PM Abe on ‘comfort women’ apology issue

U.S. Representative Mike Honda and Representative Steve Israel have cautioned Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe about revising the 1993 apology over sexual enslavement during World War II. They say that this move will set back relations between Japan and the United States, as well as severely affecting relations with its Asian neighbors.

Honda, who spearheaded a 2007 House resolution that took Japan to task for forcing women from China, Korea, the Philippines, into sexual slavery, said that aging former “comfort women” are “still waiting for an appropriate apology” from Japan for what they suffered. In a letter sent by the two Democratic congressmen, they said that if Abe’s administration revises the 1993 apology, it “would have grave implications for the US-Japanese relationship”. It could also ignite unnecessary provocation with its neighboring countries and increase tensions with countries like China and South Korea, who are already on edge due to territorial disputes.

A 1993 apology issued by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono offered “sincere apologies” for the “immeasurable pain and suffering” inflicted on comfort women. Two years later the Japanese government issued a broader apology expressing “deep remorse” for their war actions. During Abe’s first tenure as Prime Minister, he made controversial statements about comfort women and called for a revision of the 1993 apology. His view is supported by a lot of conservatives who claim to this day that the women were not coerced into prostitution during World War II. Upon returning to office in December 2012, Abe said that they will be crafting a “future-oriented” statement on World War II, but refused to comment on the comfort women apology because it wasn’t issued by a prime minister, so it wasn’t in his purview.

[ via Inquirer ]

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  • Maung Tun Aung.

    Historians say Japan forced 200,000 “comfort women” from Korea, China, the Philippines and elsewhere to work as sex slaves in brothels run by the Japanese military during the war.
    Japanese war crimes occurred in China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and other Asian countries during the period of Japanese imperialism, primarily during the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. Some of the incidents have also been described as an Asian Holocaust and Japanese war atrocities.Looting,killing civilians and rape!!
    Nation did all the war crime and still trying to rationalize them should exterminate entirely from earth. US atomic bombs should drop all over Japan.

    • Banlas theway

      Totally agreed

    • Joe

      This is 2013; get the hell out of here with your backwards thinking. Japan should apologize, yes, but they should not be attacked.

      • Truth

        Joe, it already has apologized … many times and for stuff it never did.

        • Joe

          I needn’t remind you that your PM Shinzo Abe has been considering retracting those apologies recently..

          • Whirled Peas

            Personally, I think PM Abe should leave the Kono statement alone, but he has every right as PM to make his own separate statement about his vision for Japan. So before we burst a blood vessel trying to predict or criticize him before the fact, let’s just wait to see what really happens. And by the way, Abe has no intention of retracting the individual written and signed apologies and atonement funds already made to over 250 comfort women from 1995 to 2007. Best, WP

          • Truth

            Really? Is that what he told you over drink recently, or are you just repeating crap you read on the internet or in the foreign press?

            Times have moved on. Yoshida Seiji, the historian that put around the original 200,000 estimate has withdrawn that and admits there is no evidence to support such allegations.

            It’s taking some time for the rest of the world to catch up with the facts.

          • nipkilla592599

            Die painfully okay? Prefearbly by getting crushed to death in a

            garbage compactor, by getting your face cut to ribbons with a

            pocketknife, your head cracked open with a baseball bat, your stomach

            sliced open and your entrails spilled out, and your eyeballs ripped

            out of their sockets. Fucking bitch

          • Joe

            Why would I trust a Japanese historian on this matter?

        • antinip5929

          我希望你肢解和斬首

        • antinip5929

          我希望你肢解和斬首..

    • Whirled Peas

      ON COMFORT WOMEN. Only ignorant people keep repeating that Japan did not apologize for the comfort women! It is an inaccurate urban legend propagated by two dogmatic organizations — one in S. Korea, one in Taipei, Taiwan. The Japanese government indeed made a public apology in 1994 and then set up the Asian Women’s Fund to administer locating the comfort women, establishing a memorandum of understanding with the various countries, and offering a written apology, two million yen, and health services to each comfort woman, as well as archiving the extensive research on the issue. The Asian Women’s Fund existed for TWELVE YEARS (1995-2007) and ended with the Indonesian project.

      It is true some of the comfort women did not receive their apology
      and the money. BUT WHY? Because unbelievably two dogmatic organizations pressured the comfort women NOT to accept! (In Korea it was an NGO called the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, or “Chongdaehyop,” and in Taiwan
      it was the Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation. ) The Korean and Taiwan comfort women who said they wanted to accept were made to feel guilty and some even changed their mind under pressure of these organizations. Those who DID accept Japan’s apology and atonement
      money reported a great sense of closure and relief.

      Why did these Korean and Taiwanese organizations force comfort women to refuse the Prime Ministers written apology and the money? Because, their strategy to get compensation was to go through a legal battle via the courts, and if the comfort women took atonement money it might reduce their anger and weaken the court case. But even after the Asian Women’s Fund made it CLEAR to these organizations and comfort women that they could file a law suit AND also accept the apology and atonement money (money from the government and heartfelt donations of the people of Japan), these dogmatic organizations kept insisting the comfort women not accept! So it was all about keeping the anger stoked!

      In some cases the Asian Women’s Fund presented apologies and money to comfort women covertly and via go-betweens because some comfort women didn’t want others to know they were accepting! This is beyond sad!

      The court cases were eventually denied. So now don’t these dogmatic
      Korean/Taiwanese organizations feel any guilt that they cheated many
      comfort women out of the individual apology and atonment money and health and welfare services, which the government and Japanese people had earmarked for them?: Don’t they feel guilty to have denied the comfort women a bit more comfort in their old age? These dogmatist organizations want to perpetuate the myth that Japan didn’t apologize and didn’t compensate the comfort women, all to save their own faces and behinds, and again, to keep the anger stoked! And now the “Chongdaehyop,” is on a campaign to have comfort women statues erected in various places to “remind” the world that
      Japan has not apologized! More diversion from their own backward actions.

      I know all about mass organizing, and I’m not saying those
      organizations didn’t have some sincere people in them, but any
      organization working on behalf of others, such as the comfort women,
      MUST put the best interests of their clientele first, not their own
      hopes for glory. Back in the day, we used to call organizations that used their clientele for their own political agenda, “movement opportunists” and “poverty pimps.”

      • fe59295992

        hope you end up murdered.

  • stocktonabby

    Well, I feel sorry for the other countries. But it’s funny that the Americans get all their J (ap) women. Hahaha…u p-a- thetic people you. Karma is inconvenient.

  • Whirled Peas

    APOLOGY TO COMFORT WOMEN: Each comfort woman identified through Japan’s Asian Women’s Fund (1995-2007) was slated to receive a formal written apology from the Prime Minister, 2 million yen or more, and medical/welfare assistance. Unfortunately, some comfort women were forced NOT to accept Japan’s apology and atonement funds by organizations in their own country who put pressure on them NOT to accept! Here’s the text of the apology that each comfort woman was to receive:

    Letter from Prime Minister to the former comfort women

    The Year of 1996

    Dear Madam,
    On the occasion that the Asian Women’s Fund, in cooperation with the Government and the people of Japan, offers atonement from the Japanese people to the former wartime comfort women, I wish to express my feelings as well.

    The issue of comfort women, with an involvement of the Japanese military authorities at that time, was a grave affront to the honor and dignity of large numbers of women.

    As Prime Minister of Japan, I thus extend anew my most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women.

    We must not evade the weight of the past, nor should we evade our responsibilities for the future.

    I believe that our country, painfully aware of its moral responsibilities, with feelings of apology and remorse, should face up squarely to its past history and accurately convey it to future generations.Furthermore, Japan also should take an active part in dealing with violence and other forms of
    injustice to the honor and dignity of women.

    Finally, I pray from the bottom of my heart that each of you will find peace for the rest of your lives.

    Respectfully yours,
    Ryutaro Hashimoto
    Prime Minister of Japan

    (Subsequent Prime Ministers who signed the letter are: Keizo Obuchi, Yoshiro Mori and Junichiro Koizumi)