Updated on March 27, 2016
This chapter introduces an article written by a Japanese journalist, Nobuo Ikeda. His article can explain how Comfort Women Issue has grown into serious international dispute between Japan and South Korea, despite there were no evidences at all indicating that the Japanese military did NOT systematically dragoon young Korean girls and women.. Historical evidences indicate that most of Comfort Women, if they were unwilling to become so, were sold by their parents to private brokers dealing with sex business because of family's poverty or they were deceived by dishonest brokers. The brokers who recruited Korean Comfort Women were civilians, and many were Korean men
This chapter introduces an article written by a Japanese journalist, Nobuo Ikeda. His article can explain how Comfort Women Issue has grown into serious international dispute between Japan and South Korea, despite there were no evidences at all indicating that the Japanese military did NOT systematically dragoon young Korean girls and women.. Historical evidences indicate that most of Comfort Women, if they were unwilling to become so, were sold by their parents to private brokers dealing with sex business because of family's poverty or they were deceived by dishonest brokers. The brokers who recruited Korean Comfort Women were civilians, and many were Korean men
The following
contents were copied from Ikeda's website.
An Introduction to the "Comfort Women Issue" for The New York Times
(Minor Update)
Original source by Nobuo Ikeda
Translated by randomyoko
PDF version (143KB)
Translated by randomyoko
PDF version (143KB)
The Comfort Women Issue Has Been Taken Up by
the NY Times
On January 2, 2013, The New York Times digitally
published an editorial article entitled, "Another Attempt to Deny Japan’s
History." It is odd that The New York Times has commented on this issue,
as America has almost nothing to do with Japanese-Korean relations. The article
itself is written in a tone so strong that you wouldn't even get to read it in
Japanese newspapers.
Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, seems inclined to
start his tenure with a serious mistake that would inflame tensions with South
Korea and make cooperation harder. He has signaled that he might seek to revise
Japan’s apologies for its World War II aggression, including one for using
Koreans and other women as sex slaves.
In 1993, Japan finally acknowledged that the Japanese
military had raped and enslaved
thousands of Asian and European women in army brothels, and offered its
first full apology for those atrocities […]
It is not clear how Mr. Abe, the leader of the Liberal
Democratic Party of Japan, might modify the apologies, but he has previously
made no secret of his desire to rewrite his country’s wartime history. Any
attempt to deny the crimes and dilute the apologies will outrage South Korea,
as well as China and the Philippines, which suffered under Japan’s brutal
wartime rule.
Mr. Abe’s shameful impulses could threaten critical
cooperation in the region on issues like North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Such revisionism is an embarrassment to a country that should be focused on
improving its long-stagnant economy, not whitewashing the past.
(emphasis added)
(emphasis added)
In Japan, nowadays, there are very few media outlets
which insist on discussing the controversial issue of whether or not those
women were forced to accompany Japanese soldiers. The Asahi Shimbun, which
triggered this whole issue, even withdrew a previous editorial article in which
they acknowledged the existence of forced company, expressing that modifying
the Kono
Statement announced in 1993, in which the government had apologized for the
issue of comfort women, is equivalent to "seeing only a branch and not the
whole stem."
In the mean time, the comfort women issue has
persistently been taken up in the United States, with such examples as the New
York State Legislature submitting a resolution which asks the Japanese
government to apologize to former comfort women. Most of the language
surrounding the issue features absurd expressions, describing the event as
"the biggest instance of human trafficking in the 20th century." It
is disappointing that even The New York Times has made claims that the Japanese
military raped and enslaved those women.
It is impossible to convince most Koreans on this issue,
and America plays a big role in that. It would be ideal if the United States
were willing to be the bridge between Japan and Korea, but the Department of
State has expressed their opinion that if Japan modified the Kono Statement, it
would complicate problems between Japan and Korea. The editorial in The New
York Times is most likely a reflection of American government policies like
this.
Politically
speaking, this might be a reasonable judgement. On this issue, it is impossible
to correct Korea's misunderstanding. However, at least there is a desire on
behalf of westerners to understand the issue of comfort women. This is why,
even though it may take a long time, we must look back and confirm the facts of
which western media is fundamentally unaware, or perhaps, has misinterpreted.
The Disturbance All Started From a Con-man's
Lies
Since long ago, there has been an urban legend which tells of the Japanese
military having served "comfort women", however, even the Treaty on
Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea in 1965 doesn't claim
any associated reparations. The expression, "military comfort women",
was created by a Japanese reporter, and what's more is, there is no proof that
such a phrase was ever used during the war.
However, in 1983, a former Japanese army soldier, Seiji
Yoshida published a book entitled, "My War Crimes." In his book, Mr.
Yoshida claims that he went to Jeju island, and that he went on a "comfort
women hunt" to draft a lot of women into the women's volunteer corps and
to take them to the battle fields. This was proclaimed by a lot of media
outlets as a "courageous testimony," despite the fact that his
statements about time and place were vague, and didn't declare who did the hunt
and where. Because of this, the local newspaper publishing company of Jeju
island went on an investigation and discovered that there was no such village
which appeared in the book, nor proof that the Japanese army had ever come to
that place.
Since there were no other persons who shared this kind of
testimony, there arose suspicion that his statement had been fabricated and he
was interrogated by Japanese historians like Ikuhiko Hata. He ended up
confessing in 1996 that the story was fictional. Ordinarily, it might be hard
to believe that someone would announce that they had committed crimes, but as
for war experiences, there are some "con-men" that try to make money
with their books and lectures, using an exaggerated account of "repentance"
in order to get attention.
Usually, this would be the end of the story, but since
the story of Yoshida was taken up by the Korean media was well, in 1990,
"The Conference of Countermeasure Against the Volunteer Corps" was
formed to ask that Japan pay reparations for the comfort women. In response to
this movement, lawyers in Japan such as Kenichi Takagi and Mizuho Fukushima
looked for an accuser with the intention of bringing a lawsuit against the
Japanese government. The woman who turned up was Kim Hak-sun.
Coming to Japan in August, 1991, she got the attention of
the media for being the first case in which one of the legendary "comfort
women" brought herself into the public light, as well as for being the
accuser in a lawsuit. I was working on a TV program about the anniversary of
the end of the war at the NHK TV station in Osaka, but it was Ms. Fukushima who
came there to sell Kim out.
Kim testified that she was sold by her parents and became
a gi‐saeng, and that her father-in-law took her to
the comfort women brothel of the Japanese military. The military scrip with
which she was paid lost its value as soon as the war had ended, and it was this
event which prompted her to ask for compensation from the Japanese government
for damages.
We decided to go on location to investigate the actual
conditions, dividing into two groups. My team interviewed males and the other
team was in charge of the comfort women. We were guided by a Korean who was
involved in the reparations process, and we ended up interviewing around 50
people in total—both males and females altogether. However, to my surprise, not
one person said, "I was captured by the Japanese military," or
"I was forced to work."
In those days, it was during the period of Korea's
annexation, but the pay was about half that of the interior, which kept the
people there poor. Therefore, a lot of them would go to the mainland to work.
The mainland is where Korean employment agencies would go to make money by
mediating to get such people a job in a coal mine and so on, for its brokerage.
The ships that carried such laborers belonged to the
military. As for comfort women, it was often the case that the military
conducted hygiene management for the comfort women brothels. There were certainly
affairs where comfort women had been deceived and couldn't escape from the
business, but it was the traders that would imprison them. It is not a
desirable thing, but those were commercial transactions made by traders, and
the nation owes no responsibility for that.
No matter how much
I investigated, there appeared to be no case of forced conditions, and so the
TV program didn't have an impact. It did draw attention to the fact that a
comfort woman had come forward for the first time, but it was little more than
the story of a licensed prostitute. Afterward, NHK did not chase the story.
The "Forced Company" Was a False
Report by Asahi Shimbun
Interestingly, when Kim Hak-sun came forward, Asahi Shimbun published an article of the "scoop" by Takashi Uemura, which reported, "It turns out that one of the 'Military Korean Comfort Women' who were forced to the battle field to engage in prostitution activities with the Japanese soldiers, lives in Seoul."
Following that, in January, 1992, the newspaper published
an article that revealed a notification concerning the management of comfort
women brothels submitted by the Japanese military, claiming, "The material
shows the military's involvement." Since the Asahi explanation of comfort
women at this time had claimed that those women were forced to accompany the
military as a volunteer corps, the Prime Minister, Kiichi Miyazawa, apologized
to the Korean president, Roh Tae-woom, when he visited Korea right after the
article had been published.
However, in actuality, that notification was a message to
traders: "Do not kidnap the comfort women". In fact, there is no hard
evidence, nor any document, which suggests that the military had abducted those
women. Though, because the Korean government had asked for reparations from the
Japanese government, it became an issue between the two.
In 1992, the Japanese government (Chief Cabinet Secretary
Kato) announced the result of an investigation which revealed that the former
Japanese military had been directly involved with hygiene management for the
comfort women brothels, but that there were no materials to prove the theory
that the comfort women were forced to accompany Japanese soldiers. Therefore
the problem whether Japanese government was involved or not is agreed by both
sides.
However, Korean government didn't stopped criticism demanding Japan to admit the coercion. For this reason, in 1993, the Japanese government announced the so-called Kono Statement. The issue is described as follows in the written statement.
However, Korean government didn't stopped criticism demanding Japan to admit the coercion. For this reason, in 1993, the Japanese government announced the so-called Kono Statement. The issue is described as follows in the written statement.
As for the recruitment of comfort women, the traders that
received such requests for it were in charge, and in this situation also, there
were many cases in which these women were gathered against their will via
honeyed words, pressure and so forth. In addition to that, it turns out that government officials had directly assisted
in this at times as well. Moreover, it was a painful way of living, to have
been forced to be at the comfort women brothels. (emphasis added)
It became the cause of later problems that, for no
reason, such nonsense words as, "government officials had directly
assisted in this", had been inserted. In regards to this issue, in 2007,
Abe's Cabinet had made a cabinet decision over the written answer, which
clearly states that among the materials which the government had found at the
time of the investigation's announcement, there
is no written description to directly show that military or government
officials had supposedly forced the women to accompany soldiers. (emphasis
added)
Therefore, the
government's dictum was that "there was no forced company." However,
because the written answer said that the "Chief Cabinet Secretary
Statement is right," the government ended up following the Kono Statement,
which says that "government officials had directly assisted in this."
At this time, the branch manager of The New York Times, Norimitsu Onishi, took
up the comfort women issue and reported the testimony of "former comfort
women." Due to this publication, Prime Minister Abe was forced into a
situation that required him to apologize for Japan when he visited the United
States.
Misunderstanding and Confusion Expanded the
Problem
As I witnessed the simultaneous process, I got a strong impression that misunderstanding had piled up and the flame spread unexpectedly. First of all, if it is the case that laborers from the Korean Peninsula were exploited, the issue of the male laborers is, by far, a much bigger, more serious problem than that of comfort women.
For example, towards the end of World War II, Chinese
laborers had revolted against the severe labor environment of Hanaoka mine in
Akita prefecture, which resulted in the death of over 400 people due to
violence and slaughter. This case is a testament to the fact that there was
forced labor. However, even in this case, as you can see from the family of the
deceased asking Kashima for indemnification after the war, it was
private-sector corporations that were in charge when it came to forced labor.
Compared to the supposed 600,000 forced male laborers,
the tally of comfort women is said to be around tens of thousands of workers,
being much smaller in scale. It is also said that they were receiving pay equal
to more than twenty times that of private soldiers. The only reason why comfort
women received so much attention was because Seiji Yoshida had written of these
cases in a manner which presented them as bizarre rapes. It seems that he wrote
about such events in order to make extra money, but because Japanese lawyers
wanted to take advantage of it by making a class suit out of it, the issue
escalated.
When I first heard the story of Kim Hak-sun, she was
saying that she was "sold by her parents," and it was written so on
the petition as well. Even today, no one knows the process of how her testimony
was replaced to reflect that she had been "abducted by the military"
after the report by Asahi Shimbun.
There is suspicion that the article of the reporter,
Uemura, had been fabricated, as the leader of the plaintiff party was the
mother-in-law of Uemura. On the other hand, considering that he had accepted
the lies told by Yoshida, of the "women's volunteer corps," he might
have simply believed Yoshida's testimony, convinced that he had "gathered
the evidence."
It was Yoshiaki Yoshimi, a professor of Chuo University,
who cooperated in the interview for Asahi Shimbun. His book, Military Comfort Women (Iwanami Shoten
Publishers), has been published in English, and this is another cause for
further misunderstanding, as it is the only source of reference for populations
overseas.
It was only after the forced company report of Asahi
Shimbun that Yoshiaki started to investigate this issue. Therefore, from the
beginning, his input on the matter was biased in that it sought to find proof
for forced company. Even though the previous notification was meant to prohibit
abduction, Mr. Yoshimi had wrongly interpreted the message, reading it as if it
had been an order to abduct. This caused more confusion.
Last year, the mayor of Osaka city, Hashimoto, stated
that "Mr. Yoshimi has admitted that there was no forced company," and
yet in his protest note, he wrote, "Even in those days, it was a crime to
sack, abduct, and engage in human trafficking and take women from Japan, Korea
and Taiwan. I have said that abduction and human trafficking also mean forced
company."
This means that he
has acknowledged the fact that in Korea, there were no cases in which the
Japanese military had drafted women to be their comfort women, yet he is
calling the acts of abduction and human trafficking by non-governmental people
"forced company." If he defines such terms in this way, the obvious
implication is that there had been forced company, and that the government has
admitted to it from the beginning. In this way, Mr. Yoshimi and Asahi Shimbun
replaced the issue of the nation's responsibility with women's rights.
The Ill‐managed Response of the Japanese Government
It was the ill-managed correspondence of the government that played a crucial role in making what Asahi Shimbun had started, worse. According to the briefing of Mr. Kono, the reason why he wrote in his statement that "government officials had directly assisted in this at times as well," was because of a matter involving violations of military discipline which happened in Indonesia (Pertempuran Lima Hari). This was the case of rape that private soldiers had participated in, and their leaders were executed as class-B and class-C war criminals.
However, there was no clear description of this in the
Kono Statement, which resulted in the misunderstanding that government
officials forced company even on the Korean Peninsula. Nobuo Ishihara, the
Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary at that time, elaborated on the reasons as to
why they had chosen to make such a misleading expression in the interview by
Sankei Shimbun.
At that time, while the Korean side was persistently
appealing for the inclusion of comfort women recruitment and forced company in
the statement, they were unofficially proposing that the "comfort women
issue is a matter of their fame, and therefore, they won't request compensation
at the personal level." The Japanese side had anticipated that if Japan
admitted to acts of forced company, the Korean side might lay down their arms.
It was this strategy which led the Japanese side to convey to the Korean side
that they would admit to the acts forced company before their announcement.
There was no document which proved such enforcement, but
by using the vague expression that there might have been some acts of forced
company, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs attempted to bring forth a political
settlement with the Korean government. As a result, however, this action was
taken to mean that "Japan has admitted to the acts of forced company,"
and the Korean government made a big spectacle of it and spun the issue out of
control.
Even after that, the report arranged by Ms. Coomaraswamy,
a member of the UN Human Rights Commission, pressured the Japanese government
for compensation and the execution of the people involved, defining comfort
women as "sex slaves". Her report, however, was based on the Kono
Statement.
The Japanese government established an incorporated
foundation called, "The National Fund For A Peaceful Asia for Women (The
Asian Women's Fund)," and paid about 1.3 billion yen as
"indemnification" for former comfort women. Additionally, successive
prime ministers sent out "a letter of apology". And thus, the
government kept portraying an attitude that said, "There was no forced
company, but we are sorry." This repeated message served to firmly
establish misunderstanding about the issue all over the world.
This was around the time when the overseas media started
to show an interest, but more importantly, it meant that they were not aware of
the process by which the issue of comfort women had begun to be regarded as
"slave hunting by the military." For them, the issue of comfort women
became a issue of women's rights from the beginning, and therefore, the idea of
"no forced company" appears to be merely an excuse. Despite there
being no proof to support claims by former comfort women, that "I was
forced to accompany soldiers," the overseas media continue to believe this
statement, something Kim was told to say by her lawyer.
It was surprising that during a conversation I had with a
reporter of the Tokyo branch of The New York Times, Hiroko Tabuchi, when I told
her that "There is no proof to support the testimony of the former comfort
women," she responded with, "So, do you think that they're
liars?" For them, comfort women are the victims, and the Japanese military
is the criminal, which only leaves them with the belief that such poor victims
can't lie.
This type of
psychological tendency that causes people to only see those facts which
corroborate their prejudice, is called confirmation bias. It's because the overseas media started to treat
this issue with the misunderstanding that "The Japanese military had
participated in human trafficking on such a big scale," that they
misinterpreted the issue of whether or not it was done by government officials
as the issue of the "comfort women = human trafficking = forced
company" equation. And so, they kept reporting it in this way.
What's Needed Isn't Criticism But a Cure
Thus, depending on what perspective the "comfort women issue" is
viewed from, the answer varies. At first, the focus of the issue was on the
abductions carried out by the military, the so-called "comfort women hunts".
Consider this example: in the last years of World War II, the Nazis are said to
have had government managed prostitution facilities for the bodyguards and
concentration camp guards. This is what the leader of the bodyguards, Hitler,
had founded for the enhancement of a fighting spirit, and it is said that there
were such facilities within twelve concentration camps, like Mauthausen
Concentration Camp in Austria.
If Japan had had this type of systematic governmental
prostitution, and forced those women to accompany soldiers and be imprisoned,
the Japanese government would have to apologize to the Korean government
regardless of any indemnity liability provided by law. Since what Asahi Shimbun
had first reported was similar to the kind of image portrayed by the Nazis, the
issue developed into a major problem.
However, even with the governmental investigation, proof
of forced company by the military never seemed to come out. Not only are there
no documents, but aside from the stories of the self‐professed former comfort women—which have changed again
and again—no soldiers that were alleged to have participated in the forcing of
company, nor any witnesses of that, have ever surfaced. The majority of comfort
women were Japanese, but even their testimony has not surfaced.
Recently, Mr. Yoshimi has admitted that he cannot
factually confirm that women from Korea and Taiwan, under the control of Japan
at the time, were abducted and taken overseas by the military. He says,
"There was forced company in China and Eastern Asia," but the only
proof of that is the judicial report of Pertempuran Lima Hari. That report was
executed in response to a violation of military discipline, which means that
this is rather proof of the Japanese military prohibiting forced company.
Thus, at least for Korea, historians have agreed that
there is no proof of the Japanese military forcing women from Korea to
accompany soldiers. The the problem now is resolving the facts. If you conclude
that "the abduction or human trafficking by traders are also considered to
be forced company," it is only recognition that such things happened. Yet,
those matters are not the responsibility of the Japanese military.
However, in The New York times article, it says,
"The Japanese military raped and enslaved thousands of Asian and European
women in army brothels." The subject is the Japanese military, but the
expressions used are not very clear, and seem to view the matter as the
Japanese military having forced Korean women to become their "sex slaves."
At first, according to Yoshida's story, the claim was
that there was a "slave hunt" for Korean women. Yet, as soon as this
was revealed to be a lie, Asahi Shimbun, Mr. Yoshimi, and others, distorted the
issue by reframing the argument with vagueness. This was accomplished by
stretching the meaning of the issue by saying that "the human trafficking
by the traders is also forced company". In turn, overseas media outlets
such as The New York Times followed this movement; this is the source of all
this confusion. There are contradictions within the resolutions of the American
Congress, which highlight the problem of forced company while criticizing human
trafficking. If the Japanese military had abducted women using violence, there
would have been no need for human trafficking.
It is an irreparable mistake that the Japanese government
has apologized for such events without clarifying where the responsibility
lies. It sounds like nothing more than an excuse to say that this was all the
"enforcement of narrow sense and broad sense" at this late point, and
it's difficult to think that the world will take that explanation seriously.
The recognition of the state of affairs by the State Department, in a statement
saying, "Japan defending itself won't improve its position," is sad
but true.
As a first step in finding a way out of this deadlock, it
is essential to have the overseas media understand that this issue was born
from lies and misunderstanding. However, if such entities are haunted by the
obsessive idea that "the Japanese military is a vicious sex
offender," it is no use to criticize by saying, "you're wrong."
What is needed now is a cure which helps the overseas
media to become aware of their bias. The first step to a mutual understanding
is to explain how the comfort women issue occurred, where the misunderstanding
happened, and what kind of misinterpreting has expanded the problem, in order
to remove the preconception that's been imprinted in their minds.
Posted 3rd October 2014 by ikedanobuo
