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A group of Japanese lawmakers in a full-page ad in the Washington Post on Thursday denied the Japanese government and military had a hand in conscripting women from Asian countries as sex slaves for the Imperial Army during World War II. Titled ¡°The Facts¡±, the ad published Wednesday claims ¡°no historical document has ever been found¡± proving the direct involvement of the Japanese government and military, contrary to a recent U.S. congressional resolution sponsored by the Democrat Representative Mike Honda. The ad was co-sponsored by some Japanese academics, political commentators and journalists.
According to the ad, Japanese authorities on the contrary ordered soldiers not to kidnap and force women into sexual slavery. The lawmakers acknowledge ¡°breakdowns in discipline¡± by Japanese soldiers, who kidnapped Dutch women as sex slaves in Indonesia. But the soldiers had been punished, they claimed.
The ad claims the so-called comfort women were in fact authorized prostitutes, earning more money than officers. It claims the testimony of former comfort women was inconsistent since they first testified that they had been kidnapped by civilian brokers but later changed their story saying they were forced into slavery by men in ¡°what appeared to be police uniforms.¡±
The lawmakers accused the U.S. congressional resolution of ¡°gravely and intentionally¡± distorting historical facts by defining the ¡°comfort women tragedy¡± as ¡°one of the largest cases of human trafficking in the 20th century.¡±The ad also flies in the face of the current Japanese government¡¯s position, which is to uphold an apology by chief Cabinet secretary Yohei Kono in 1993 acknowledging the government and military¡¯s role.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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