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The U.S. House Committee on International Relations on Wednesday unanimously adopted a resolution on Japan's drafting of Asian women as sex slaves for the military during World War II. It urged the Japanese government to acknowledge responsibility for it and educate future generations about the crime against humanity. The Japanese government formally organized and entrusted businessmen with the enslavement of comfort women and committed gang rape, forced abortions, sexual abuses and human trafficking, the resolution says. It urged the Japanese government to publicly refute claims that the subjugation and enslavement of such women never happened.

Unanimous approval of the first-ever resolution on comfort women in a U.S. Congress committee, not by victims of the crime, reaffirms that Japan's forced mobilization of comfort women constitutes a historic crime that militates against all values. The resolution also contains a stern warning against Japanese attempts to distort history and evade its historic responsibility. The resolution reportedly stands a high chance of being passed by a plenary session of the House of Representatives. Non-binding though it perforce is, the resolution will help remind the international community as well as America of the atrocities Japan committed.

Particularly noticeable in the resolution is the clause specifying the Japanese government's responsibility for history education. A dozen history textbooks, including one written under the leadership of rightwing organizations in 2001, gave rise to controversies by omitting the comfort women and forced mobilization of Koreans. The Japanese government promised to correct them. But the 2006 revision of the text still mentions nothing about the comfort women. Instead it revives an account deleted four years ago, saying there were “voices in Korea wanting to accommodate Japan’s annexation of Korea." Tokyo looks on. Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, who will be the next prime minister, has advocated getting rid of the “self-tormenting view of history" and was the secretary-general of a group of legislators who support the controversial textbook.

We study and teach history lest we are condemned to repeat it. If it genuinely wants stability, peace and common prosperity in Asia, Japan must teach history as it happened to present and future generations in Asia.