PM Menzies meets 'War criminal'and Post War Japanese PM Kishi in 1957
Japanese PM dashes sex slaves' hope of apologyTokyo
March 6, 2007 The Age
JAPAN will not apologise again for forcing women to act as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers in World War II, even if the US Congress passes a resolution demanding it, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said yesterday.
Mr Abe, elaborating on his denial last week that women were forced to serve as front-line prostitutes, said none of the testimony in hearings held last month before the US House of Representatives offered any solid proof of abuse.
But Mr Abe said he stood by a 1993 Japanese government apology that acknowledged the military played a role in setting up and managing wartime brothels and that coercion was used. This has disappointed many of his conservative supporters who shared his past criticism of the initial apology statement.
"I have to say that even if the resolution passes, that doesn't mean we will apologise," Mr Abe told a parliamentary panel, reiterating the government stance that the US resolution contains factual errors.
Historians say that up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea and China, served as "comfort women" in Japanese military brothels throughout Asia in the 1930s and 1940s.
Accounts of abuse by the military — including the kidnapping of women and girls for use in the brothels — have been backed up by witnesses and victims, as well as by former Japanese soldiers.
But prominent Japanese scholars and politicians deny direct military involvement, or the use of force in obtaining women, blaming private contractors for any abuses.
Last week, Mr Abeinfuriated South Korea when he questioned the extent of physical coercion used in recruiting the women.
"There is no evidence to back up that there was coercion as defined initially," he told reporters on Thursday, apparently referring to claims that the Imperial Army had kidnapped women for the brothels.
Yesterday, he said there seemed to have been some cases of coercion, by middlemen, but added: "It was not as though military police broke into people's homes and took them away like kidnappers."
The issue still threatens to sour US-Japan ties ahead of Mr Abe's expected visit to Washington in the northern spring.
In coming weeks Congress is due to vote on a non-binding motion introduced by California Democrat Michael Honda, calling on the Japanese Government to "formally and unambiguously apologise for and acknowledge the tragedy that comfort women endured at the hands of its Imperial Army during World War II".
Mr Honda, who is of Japanese descent, has voiced his alarm at efforts by some conservatives in Japan to withdraw or revise the Government's earlier admission of a state role in the brothel system.
Japan has refused to compensate former comfort women, insisting that all payout claims were settled in postwar treaties with its former enemies.
A fund launched by the Japanese Government in 1995 has been denounced by most of the victims as an empty gesture because it is dependent on private donations.
AP, REUTERS, GUARDIAN
Source: http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/japanese-pm-dashes-sex-slaves-hope-of-apology/2007/03/05/1172943356992.html
Japan PM denies WWII sex slavery
Norimitsu Onishi, Tokyo
March 3, 2007 The Age
PRIME Minister Shinzo Abe has denied that Japan's military forced foreign women into sexual slavery during World War II, contradicting the Government's longstanding official position.
Mr Abe's statement was the clearest so far that the Government was preparing to reject a 1993 government statement acknowledging the military's role in setting up brothels and forcing women into sexual slavery.
That declaration also offered an apology to the women, euphemistically called "comfort women".
"There is no evidence to prove there was coercion, nothing to support it," Mr Abe said. But he said he would stick by his pledge to parliament, made last October, that he and his Government would abide by previous admissions of Japan's responsibility for the suffering caused by its occupation of swaths of Asia.
Women's rights activists in the Philippines denounced Mr Abe's denial.
"We are enraged," said Rechilda Extremadura, executive director of Lila Pilipina, an organization of activists and former Filipino wartime sex slaves.
In 1993, the Government offered a "sincere apology and remorse" for the confinement of the women for sexual slavery, and acknowledged that the military "directly or indirectly" was responsible for maintaining these "comfort stations".
Mr Abe's remarks came as the US House of Representatives debated a resolution that would call on Tokyo to apologise for the military's role in wartime sex slavery.
The push for a resolution included Australian Jan Ruff O'Herne, who went to Washington to describe her refusal to submit to the Japanese soldiers who repeatedly raped her as a young woman in Indonesia.
In Japan, in keeping with a recent trend to revise wartime history, about 120 legislators from the governing Liberal Democratic Party want Mr Abe to alter the apology, which has become a pillar of Japanese diplomacy and a litmus test of its sincerity about atonement for war crimes. The legislators say there is no evidence the military coerced women. They plan to present a petition to the Government demanding a rewrite of the apology, which they consider a stain on Japan's honour.
Mr Abe, whose approval ratings have been plummeting over a series of scandals and perceived weak leadership, seemed to side with this group. A nationalist, he has long led efforts to revise wartime history.
Nariaki Nakayama, the leader of the 120, suggested the brothels were a simple business venture.
"Some say it is useful to compare the brothels to college cafeterias run by private companies, who recruit their own staff, procure foodstuffs and set prices," he said. "Where there's demand, business crops up," he said.
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