WASHINGTON — With 2015 marking the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe didn’t take the chance in his trip to Washington to address the complaints of so-called comfort women and their supporters who demand a formal apology.
“On the issue of comfort women, I am deeply pained to think about the comfort women who experience immeasurable pain and suffering as a result of victimization due to human trafficking,” Abe said during a joint news conference with President Barack Obama Tuesday, where Abe avoiding talking about the involvement of the Imperial Japanese Army with the issue.The term has been used to describe Japan’s wartime sex slaves, but critics say it confuses forced slavery with voluntary prostitution.
“We want an official apology rather than his emotional response to it as if he is the innocent bystander,” said Jungsil Lee, president of Washington Coalition of Comfort Women Issues. “Abe’s objective is to argue, contrary to the fact, that the individual soldiers are solely responsible for the crime. In Abe’s version, neither the Imperial army nor the government had any involvement and responsibility whatsoever for this systematic crime.”
In 1993, Former Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono issued the Kono Statement, acknowledging that during World War II the Japanese military had been, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and that, in many cases, the women serving in them were “recruited” against their will.
Because of Abe’s constantly changing position towards this issue, Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., introduced a resolution in January 2007, asking Japan to accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Forces’ coercion of young women into sexual slavery.
In response to that, Abe said that the evidence of the Imperial Army’s involvement in the issue was lacking, and blamed the U.S. for bringing the issue to the spotlight.
Last year, Abe said the Japanese government won’t change the Kono Statement, but added he had reservations about it. Then in the same year, Abe’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga for the first time publicly stated that the government should knock down the Kono Statement and appeal for the restoration of Japan’s honor and trustworthiness
Abe’s repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo and to some Japanese cemeteries have been interpreted, especially in Seoul and Beijing, as representing a rejection of Japan’s wartime aggression. His statement at the White House Tuesday was viewed by some protestors again as a dilution of Japan’s officially stated remorse for its aggression during the war because he didn’t use the word “apology.”
President Barack Obama hosts a state arrival ceremony for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Tuesday, April 28, 2015, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. Abe’s wife Akie Abe, left in red, and first lady Michelle Obama are at left.
Protestors have followed Abe around since he started his week-long visit to the United States in Boston on Monday.
In Washington on Wednesday, some 800 people rallied at the East Front of the Capitol. Among them, Yong Soo Lee, an 87-year-old woman who said she is a former sex slave, one of more than 200,000 women from across Asia who were forced into prostitution to raise the moral of Imperial Japanese Army troops during World War II. Lee traveled from South Korea to join the Washington Coalition of Comfort Women Issues, the group that organized that rally and a news conference, demanding an official apology from Prime Minister Abe.
In 1993, a study done by the government of Japan revealed, “In many cases the comfort women were recruited against their own will, through coaxing, coercion, etc.” Many of them responded to calls for jobs as nurses and didn’t know that they would be pressed into sexual slavery. Others, like Lee, were taken by force. After release of the study, the Japanese government issued to Kono Statement.
“The story is relevant today,” said Dennis Halpin, a scholar at US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He compared the World War II abductions with the missing Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram and instances of human trafficking occurring across the globe in 2015.
Yong Soo Lee was not satisfied by Abe’s declaration at the White House on Tuesday. She said she would continue to fight for her honor, together with victims from China and other countries.
Though she suffered considerable pain, Lee survived in better condition than many of the victims.
Only 32 out of more than 200,000 victims are alive in China, around 50 in Korea. South Korean President Park Geun-hye has refused to meet Abe for a bilateral summit unless Tokyo apologizes and set a compensation plan for the women.
Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., a Japanese-American who sponsored the U.S. House resolution, invited Lee as his guest to the Congress when Abe delivered the speech Wednesday. He said Abe should acknowledge history if he is committed to improving the status of women in Japan and on the international stage.
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