Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 5, 1993 TAG: 9308050123
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: TOKYO LENGTH: Medium
Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa's office issued a hastily prepared report admitting that so-called "comfort women" were made to serve as forced prostitutes between 1932 and 1945 in Japan and 10 other Asian nations colonized by the Japanese. The government said it would study whether and how to compensate them.
The report was issued on Miyazawa's last day in office, and government officials said he had particularly wanted to act on the issue before his term ended.
But the newly elected coalition government that will take office today has promised to go much further than Miyazawa's or any previous postwar government in taking the blame for World War II war crimes and apologizing to the victims.
For decades, Japanese governments have been criticized at home and abroad for failing to face up to the country's responsibility for acts of brutality in East Asia and the Pacific before and during World War II.
Japanese emperors and prime ministers have issued statements of regret in recent years, but they have never used the word "apologize." Thus there remains a strong feeling in Asia that the Japanese are holding back. In Japan, history textbooks and classes do cover the war crimes, but generally in a perfunctory way. Many Japanese students are stunned when they learn the real extent of Asia's lingering anger.
Leaders of the new coalition government have promised to change that.
"I think instead of using words like `regret,' the right thing to do is to offer a clear apology," said Tsutomu Hata, as leader of the coalition who is likely to be vice prime minister of the new government.
"We need at long last to take a soul-searching look at the meaning of the war," Hata said in a speech this week. "We must also inform our children what their forefathers did in the past."
The case of the "comfort women" reflects the belated and sometimes grudging way that Japan has dealt with evidence of its wartime misdeeds.
After refusing to discuss this harsh aspect of World War II for decades, the government finally admitted in 1991 that thousands of women - some estimates by victims' groups run to 200,000 - were enslaved as prostitutes for Japanese soldiers.
But until Wednesday, Tokyo would not concede that the women were forced to serve by the Japanese military.
The government's position was not completely clear, but seemed to be that the "comfort women" were actually employed by private Japanese businesses that then sold their services to soldiers. Last year, Miyazawa said that the military was "involved," but did not say the army had forced the women to serve.
This distinction has been cited in Japan as a reason why the government need not pay blanket compensation.
Wednesday's announcement, based on wartime documents and interviews with surviving "comfort women," finally conceded that "the then-Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women."
"In many cases," it said, "they were recruited against their own will through coaxing, coercion, etc." That wording would suggest that in some cases women became forced prostitutes voluntarily, but a government spokesman said he knew of no evidence that this was the case.
The government said it has confirmed that there were "comfort women" slaves taken from Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia, as well as Dutch colonies in Indonesia.
by CNB