BEHIND THE COMFORT WOMEN CONTROVERSY: HOW
LIES BECAME TRUTHNISHIOKA Tsutomu

Professor, Tokyo Christian University
Deputy Chairman, National Council for
the Rescue of Japanese Abducted by North Korea

Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact© 2007 by the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact

Note: Japanese, Chinese and Korean personal names have been rendered surname first, in
accordance with customs in those countries.

CONTENTS
PREFACE ..................................................................................................................................v
CHAPTER 1: THE MAIN FORCES BEHIND LITIGATION INVOLVING FORMERCOMFORT WOMEN................................................................................................................1
Fabricated confession ..........................................................................................................1
Former comfort women denounce Japan ..........................................................................4Japanese instigated suit instituted in Korea......................................................................7
Fact-finding investigation commissioned by magazine ....................................................9CHAPTER 2: WERE THE COMFORT WOMEN ABDUCTED BY JAPANESEAUTHORITIES? .....................................................................................................................11
The link between the Association for the Pacific War Victims officer and Asahi
Shimbun ..............................................................................................................................11
Criminalization of the Japanese military ........................................................................12
Asahi Shimbun’s malicious fabrication............................................................................14Child comfort women? ......................................................................................................15
Another bombshell: lawsuit instigated by Japanese.......................................................18
Compensation of individual victims at discretion of ROK government.......................20
Why is the Japanese government paralyzed? .................................................................22
Four proposals in 1992 article ..........................................................................................23
CHAPTER 3: A CONTROVERSY BUILT ON LIES............................................................26
The Cheju Island slave hunt farce....................................................................................26
More lies: “Kwantung Army Recruits 20,000 comfort women” ...................................29
Only men rounded up........................................................................................................32
Korean pimps hold the key to this controversy...............................................................34
Comfort woman saves enough to buy five houses in Tokyo...........................................36
Intentionally falsified testimonies.....................................................................................38
Analysis of 19 testimonies..................................................................................................41
Lies spread through South Korea ....................................................................................43
CHAPTER 4: JAPANESE DIPLOMACY STUMBLES ........................................................46
Career bureaucrat’s brainstorm: “coercion in the broad sense”..................................46
Kono Statement: sowing the seeds of future discord......................................................48
Payments a foregone conclusion with Asia Women’s Fund...........................................50
Japanese Japan-haters and the media .............................................................................52
All-night debate on television............................................................................................53
Television networks shun Yoshida Seiji...........................................................................55
Yoshimi Yoshiaki pronounces comfort women “sex slaves” .........................................56
Kono Statement debate extends to Diet ...........................................................................60
Interference in Japanese internal affairs: déjà vu ..........................................................65
CHAPTER 5: SEX-SLAVE IMAGE RUNS RAMPANT ......................................................67
The New Left: masochist demolishers of culture ............................................................67
Former Asahi Shimbun reporter’s choice........................................................................67
Japanese attorney takes comfort women controversy to UN.........................................68
The Coomara-swamy Report............................................................................................69
George Hicks’ worthless book ..........................................................................................72
North Korean propaganda presented as fact ..................................................................73
Sex slave” lies infiltrate U.S. House of Representatives .................................................75
CHAPTER 6: ATTACKS ON JAPAN BEGIN ......................................................................80
Rabid anti-Abe campaign..................................................................................................80iii

American conservatives convinced that comfort women were sex slaves ....................82
Leftist groups also lobby U.S. Congress...........................................................................84
Japan’s incompetent diplomats ........................................................................................86
U.S. media bash Abe and Japan .......................................................................................87
How to stop resolutions condemning Japan ....................................................................88
What did Abe’s April 2007 visit to U.S. accomplish?.....................................................90
Truth must prevail.............................................................................................................95
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................97
AUTHOR PROFILE..............................................................................................................102iv

PREFACE
First of all, I would like to extend heartfelt greetings to all those kindred spirits who haveembraced the universal values of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
In 2007, the citizens of Japan were stunned by a spate of resolutions condemning theJapanese government in connection with the comfort women (prostitutes who provided sex
services to Japanese military personnel prior to and during World War II) emanating from the
U.S. House of Representatives, the Canadian Parliament and the EU Parliament. Theirreaction was perfectly understandable, given that the accusations in those resolutions simply
parrot anti-Japanese propaganda, and have no basis whatsoever in fact.
Take, for example, the following language in the U.S. House resolution:
Whereas the Government of Japan, during its colonial and wartime occupation ofAsia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War II,
officially commissioned the acquisition of young women for the sole purpose of
sexual servitude to its Imperial Armed Forces, who became known to the world as
ianfu or ‘comfort women’;
Whereas the ‘comfort women’ system of forced military prostitution by theGovernment of Japan, considered unprecedented in its cruelty and magnitude,
included gang rape, forced abortions, humiliation, and sexual violence resulting inmutilation, death, or eventual suicide in one of the largest cases of human trafficking
1in the 20th century;

To make matters absolutely clear, these accusations can be traced to political propaganda; notone of them is true.
Beginning in the 1990s, Japan was the arena of contentious debates over these very
accusations, which became the subject of diplomatic discord between Japan and South Korea.
The Japanese government conducted an exhaustive investigation, scrutinizing thousands of
documents. Scholars in the private sector engaged in separate research efforts. No evidence
was uncovered indicating that the Japanese government had coerced anyone to serve as acomfort woman.
According to a statement issued by the Japanese government in 1994 (commonly referred toas the “Kono Statement” after then chief Cabinet Secretary Kono Yohei, who delivered it)
mentions that “in many cases [comfort women] were recruited against their own will.” Thismeans that they were deceived by procurers or were born into poor families who sold theminto prostitution. It also acknowledges that “at times, administrative/military personnel
directly took part in the recruitments.”2 Here, the statement is referring to exactly one case inwhich several Japanese soldiers stationed at an outpost in Java, Indonesia, forced a female
12

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:2:./temp/~c1107o1Q34::
http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/women/fund/state9308.html

vDutch prisoner of war to work as a prostitute for approximately one month, in violation of
military regulations. When military authorities got wind of the crime (a war crime), they
immediately shut down the brothel. The Allies later tried the perpetrators of the crime (fivesoldiers and four private citizens), who were executed or given prison sentences.
The Kono Statement acknowledges that many women who serviced Japanese soldiers in war
zones did so because no other options were available to them during the era of imperialism.
The statement also expresses empathy for the ordeals they endured, and acknowledges moral
responsibility.
Later in the Kono Statement, the Japanese government apologizes to the Korean people who
suffered under Japanese colonial rule, and reiterates its “firm determination never to repeat
the same mistake.”3 Moreover, the government offers an apology to the comfort women for
their pain and hardship. There has been no change in this position.
In North Korea, Kim Jong-il’s terrorist administration is attempting to deflect global attention
from its abductions of private citizens by launching a relentless political propaganda
campaign at the United Nations and elsewhere, accusing the Japanese government of forcing
200,000 Korean women to become sex slaves prior to World War II. Although the series ofresolutions condemning Japan, which stand on the same lies and misconceptions as the North
Korean propaganda, has come as a great shock to the Japanese people, it has given terrorist
elements a cause for great rejoicing.
It would give me great pleasure if my book were received as my attempt to provide
information about the investigations and research on this controversy conducted in Japan, inthe hope of widening the network of people who cherish freedom and democracy. For the
past 16 years, I have been on the front lines of the debate over the comfort womencontroversy, as it unfolded in Japan. The English translation has been done by volunteers whoshare my views and concerns. The great majority of Japanese will be heartened if readers
come to realize that at the heart of the controversy is a tragedy, meaning that prostitution was
one of the few options for many poor women, and that neither administrative nor military
authorities ever forced women to become sex slaves.

Nishioka Tsutomu
Tokyo, 2007

3

Ibid.

vi

CHAPTER 1: THE MAIN FORCES BEHIND LITIGATION INVOLVING FORMERCOMFORT WOMEN
Fabricated confession
I first became involved with the comfort women controversy in 1991. Most of my recent
work concerns North Korea, particularly abductions of Japanese nationals. But my specialty
is Japan-Korea relations (the title of my master’s thesis is “How Postwar South KoreanIntellectuals Perceive Japan”). Between 1950 and 1980, I devoted a great deal of time andeffort to research exploring topics that have incited Koreans to criticize Japan over the years,
and the logic behind the criticism. Then, from 1982 to 1984, I was a specialist researcher
attached to the Foreign Ministry at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.
The research topic assigned to me by the Foreign Ministry was “South Koreans’ Perceptionof Japan,” which was essentially an extension of my master’s thesis. It was then that I
encountered the first problem having to do with history — what I call the “first textbook
incident.”
This problem was contextually very similar to the comfort women problem, which reared its
head later. Anti-Japanese elements in Japan embarked on a mammoth campaign devoted to
publicizing a lie: they claimed that the Ministry of Education had ordered textbook screeners
to substitute “expansion” for “aggression” in accounts of modern Japan-China relations inJapanese middle school history textbooks. Consequently, Chief Cabinet Secretary Kiichi
Miyazawa issued an apology to South Korea on behalf of the Japanese government. Then
another criterion was added to the list to be observed during the textbook-screening process:“Textbooks ought to show understanding and seek international harmony in their treatment ofmodern and contemporary historical events involving neighboring Asian countries.”
I am not a historian, but as a regional studies researcher, I’ve been observing situations likethis for quite some time. If I were asked what threw Japan-Korea relations off kilter, or how
the perception gap arose, or who caused it, I could tell you. My first book, which came out in
1992, was entitled The Mountain of Misconceptions Separating Japan and Korea.4 It deals
with the controversies over the comfort women and textbooks. Since then, I have been
following these controversies, and participating in the debate against the Japan-bashers overthe comfort women.
Now, to describe the course of events: in 1983, a book was published — one that greatly
distorted the Japanese and Korean perceptions of comfort women. Entitled My War Crimes:
Abduction of Koreans, it was written by Yoshida Seiji. In his foreword, Yoshida writes:
For about three years, from 1942 until Japan lost the war, I was head of a labormobilization group called Yamaguchi Prefecture National Labor Service Association.
My job was to procure Korean laborers. I was a loyal citizen, a self-sacrificing patriot
serving my country by going on “slave hunts.” (...) I hope Japanese born after the war
will read my book and learn that during one chapter of history, we enslaved Koreans.

4

Nishioka Tsutomu, Nikkan gokai no shin’en (The mountain of misconceptions separating Japan andSouth Korea (Tokyo: Aki Shobo, 1992).

1

By showing remorse for such behavior, we Japanese will have taken a step toward
becoming civilized human beings.5

In 2007, a resolution demanding that the Japanese government “formally acknowledge,
apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its
Imperial Armed Force’s coercion of young women into sexual slavery, known to the world as‘comfort women,’ during its colonial and wartime occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands
from the 1930s through the duration of World War II”6 was submitted to the U.S. House ofRepresentatives, creating a huge uproar. The origins of this resolution, which has no basis infact, can be found in Yoshida’s fictional confession about “slave hunts.”
One of the main themes of my book involves tracing the path from Yoshida’s lies to the U.S.
House of Representatives. To that end, I must again quote from Yoshida’s book. This is alengthy citation, and not pleasant reading, but I ask readers’ forbearance.
I ordered an immediate roundup of the women in the village. Houses lined the road,each one surrounded by a stone wall. My crew, armed with wooden swords and guns,
opened the doors, entered the houses, and began searching for women.
I climbed up on a wall and looked around. I saw 20 or 30 women gathered at a large
house in front of me. Young girls, along with older women, were sitting in rows in aroom with a wood floor and on the veranda, weaving rushes to make cylindrical
Korean hats. When I signaled, my crew and the soldiers rushed into the house.
The women began to scream, and I could hear the crew and soldiers yelling. Somemen emerged from a silent, nearby house, and ran down the street. There were abouta dozen of them. They gathered inside the wall around the house; I could tell they
were agitated. My crew emerged from the house, in pairs, each dragging a wailingwoman by the wrists to the road. They had captured eight young women. The othermen were yelling something in Korean.
The road was narrow, with stone walls on both sides. Our path was blocked in both
directions by more than 100 villagers. Among them were 20 or 30 half-naked robustlooking men, who might have been fishermen. They didn’t seem to be afraid of us
Japanese, and began walking toward us, snarling and screaming.
Sgt. Tani ordered the soldiers to fasten their bayonets, but the villagers kept on
yelling. He ordered the soldiers to advance. My crew followed them, dragging theeight girls, who were sobbing. Five or six strong Korean men came forward; theystood in the road, blocking our way. They were waving their arms excited andhowling. Exasperated, one of the higher-ranking soldiers with a mustache raised hissword, yelled and started running. The villagers screamed and retreated; the men
escaped inside the wall.
When we arrived at our truck parked in the road, the girls started screaming andstruggling. They were sturdy young women. As they squirmed, their tanned faces
5

Yoshida Seiji, Watakushi no senso hanzai: Chosenjin kyosei renko (My war crimes: abduction of
Koreans) (Tokyo: San’ichi Shobo, 1983).
6

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=hr110-121

2

stiffened, and you could see their white teeth as they twisted and turned, attempting toescape from their captors. When they succeeded, crew members tried to grab themfrom behind. The girls fell onto the grass in a heap. Their white Korean robes opened
up in front, exposing their breasts, and rode up at the bottom. They kicked out with
their sandaled feet; all in all, they gave the crew a hard time. The soldiers thought thewhole scene was very funny and entertaining. My crew finally subdued the girls,
grabbed their arms and pushed them into the back of the truck, which was covered
with canvas. The crew left right away.
After we had driven east on a main coastal road for about five or six kilometers, Sgt.
Tani ordered us to drive the truck into a thicket near a rocky hill. Then he said, “Thesoldiers expect a reward for protecting the procurement crew. Let’s stop here for a
rest for 30 minutes and let them have some fun.”The soldiers were delighted when they heard Sgt. Tani order a rest break. Once mycrew had gotten out of the truck, they jumped into the back. When the girls screamed,
the soldiers laughed. No sooner were they procured than the soldiers initiated them:
they were comfort women now.7

The comfort women portrayed by Yoshida would indeed have been sex slaves — if he wastelling the truth, that is. Later he writes that the procurement of comfort women was done inaccordance with an order from the Japanese Army instructing him to “mobilize a Korean
female volunteer corps.”
On May 15, 1943, a first lieutenant from Western District Army Headquarters arrived
at the Yamaguchi Prefectural Police Department’s Labor Administration office. The
officer delivered a labor mobilization order addressed to the Yamaguchi Labor
Service Association chairman (also governor of Yamaguchi Prefecture). The head of
the Labor Administration Section was also secretary of the Labor Service Association.
As head of the Shimonoseki Branch Mobilization Department, I was asked to bepresent because I would be executing the mobilization order.
The lieutenant explained that the mobilization order was issued to National Labor
Service Association groups in prefectures in Japan’s Western District, and in eachprovince in the southern part of Korea. Two thousand workers were to be mobilized.
The order delivered to the Yamaguchi Prefectural National Labor Service Association
contained the following information.
1.

Volunteer corps of 200 Korean women to serve as entertainers for the ImperialArmy
2. Age: 18-29 (married women acceptable; pregnant women not acceptable)
3. Healthy women (medical examination required, especially tests for venereal
diseases)
4. Duration: One year (renewal possible if desired)
5. Remuneration: \30 per month
6. Clothing allowance: \20 (to be paid in advance)
7. Place of assignment: central China
8. Recruiting areas: southwestern Korea and Cheju Island
9. Departure date: 12:00 noon, 30 May 1943
10. Meeting place: Western Army, Unit 74
7

Yoshida, op. cit., pp. 107-110.

3

The women’s Labor Service unit was renamed the Female Volunteer Corps. Students atgirls’ schools and local girls (members of girls’ youth groups) working in munitions
factories were called “Female Volunteer Corps,” but the female volunteer corps members
who provided entertainment to soldiers of the Imperial Army were actually comfort women.
(...)
The order to mobilize 200 Korean comfort women was reissued as a procurement workorder and handed to me by the head of the Labor Administration Section.8

After his book came out, in December 1983, Yoshida visited Korea, apologizing wherever hewent; he even had an expiatory tablet erected. But his efforts seemed to end there, and the
problem seemed to have gone away.
When I read the book, soon after it was issued, I was suspicious. The scenario Yoshidadescribes didn’t seem credible. It didn’t jibe with what I had heard from older Koreans who
had experienced colonial times.
Japanese specialists in Korean history, the masochistic media (especially Asahi Shimbun) andother Japan-haters swallowed Yoshida’s confession whole, without even bothering to checkthe facts. Consequently, after the late 1980s, an increasing number of historical works anddictionaries carried references to the coercion of comfort women. People born too late toknow about the colonial era began to believe them. Then, in 1989 or so, Socialist Party
members began bringing up the subject of comfort women in Diet sessions.
At about the same time in South Korea, feminist movements and the left-wing media
pounced on the myth about the coercion of comfort women. It was then that the Korean
Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan got its start.
As I will explain later, rumors that the female volunteer corps and the comfort women, whichbore no resemblance to each other, were one and the same were already becoming ingrainedin people’s minds. When Yoshida used the term “female volunteer corps” to refer to the
comfort women, the die was cast.

Former comfort women denounce Japan
In August 1991, about eight years after Yoshida’s book was published, Asahi Shimbun cameout with an article under a banner headline reading “Korean Former Comfort Woman Breaks
Silence After Half a Century.” It begins as follows:
During the Sino-Japanese War and World War II, Korean women were told they would be
joining Female Volunteer Corps, but were instead transported to battle zones and forced toprovide sex services to Japanese military personnel. It has come to light that one of theseso-called “comfort women” lives in Seoul. The Korean Council for Women Drafted for
Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (Yun Chung-ok, co-chairwoman: umbrella organization
8

Ibid., pp. 100-102.

4

for 16 groups with a total membership of approximately 300,000). The Council interviewed
the woman, and on August 10, turned over a recording of the interview to an Asahi Shimbun
reporter. On the tape, the woman can be heard saying, “Even now, my skin crawls when I
think about those days.” Nearly 50 years after the war, she is finally able to talk about
experiences that she had kept hidden deep inside.9

In the article the woman was given a pseudonym, but she revealed her real name (Kim Haksun) when the Japan-bashing continued at a press conference on August 14. At the end of theyear, Kim toured Japan, telling her story at every destination. She then sued the Japanese
government, demanding compensation.
Asahi Shimbun gave this woman and her story extensive coverage. Numerous articles about
comfort women appeared in other publications, laying the foundation for the still-unresolved
comfort women controversy, and a grass-roots campaign aimed at forcing the Japanese to
take responsibility in some way. Soon the campaign would evolve into a domestic consensus
and conviction that as a nation, Japan had committed an unforgivable crime.
Then an article by Chuo University Professor Yoshimi Yoshiaki, a historian, appeared on thefront page of the January 11, 1992 edition of the Asahi Shimbun. Yoshimi announced that hehad uncovered sources at a Defense Agency research institute stating that the Japanesemilitary was involved in the abduction of comfort women. His disclosure threw thegovernment into a panic, prompting Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Koichi to issue a statementof apology. This was exactly the effect intended by Asahi Shimbun and the reason for its
intensive coverage of the issue.
As it later became clear, Yoshimi had been aware of the sources in question for quite sometime. However, Asahi Shimbun didn’t release the information until Kim Hak-sun had filed
her suit, the comfort women controversy had reached frenzy level, and Prime Minister
Miyazawa’s visit to South Korea was only a few days away.
Newspapers commonly attempt to inform the public by explaining a topic, concept or termwhen it comes into the news for the first time. When Asahi Shimbun announced Prof.
Yoshimi’s “discovery,” it supplied the following explanation at the bottom of the front page:
In China in the 1930s, Japanese military personnel raped a great many women. To holdanti-Japanese sentiment at bay and prevent the spread of venereal diseases, brothels were
established. According to former soldiers and army doctors, 80% of the women who
worked in the first brothels were Koreans. With the outbreak of the Pacific War, women —mainly Korean women — were transported to the brothels under the pretext that they would
be serving in a female volunteer corps. Their numbers are estimated to have been 80,000 or
200,000. (Italics supplied.)10

There is tremendous significance in the italicized portion of the text. At that time, Japan was
mobilizing workers in accordance with the National Mobilization Act. “Female volunteer
corps” was the name given to groups of women drafted to work in munitions factories. The
9Asahi Shimbun, 11 August 1991.

10

Ibid.

5

term was never used in connection with comfort women. I know plenty of women who were
mobilized into female volunteer corps, and all of them have assured me emphatically that
their groups had nothing to do with comfort women.
Members of female volunteer corps were mobilized in accordance with the National Labor
Service Cooperation Act, which stated that unmarried women between the ages of 14 and 25,
as well as men aged 14-40, would join National Labor Service Corps. Beginning in 1943,
married women were also urged to join female volunteer corps but, as the term implies, they
were not obligated to join. When the Female Volunteer Labor Act (Imperial Order No. 519)
was enacted in 1944, women between the ages of 12 and 39 were legally bound to join
volunteer corps.11
It is unlikely in the extreme that Asahi Shimbun was unaware of these historical facts. In
actuality, it was the conventional wisdom among left-wing, masochistic scholars of the timethat the mobilization of workers into compulsory “volunteer” groups in colonial Korea also
included comfort women.
Here are some examples of that conventional wisdom.
Beginning in 1943, approximately 200,000 Korean women were mobilized into teams
called “female volunteer corps.” Approximately 50,000-70,000 young, unmarried, womenamong their number were forced to become comfort women.12
In August 1944, the Female Volunteer Corps Labor Act was promulgated. Several hundred
thousand Korean women between the ages of 12 and 40 were mobilized; several tens of
thousands of unmarried women among their number were pressed into service as comfort
women for Japanese military personnel.13

The origin of both of these “explanations” is Yoshida Seiji’s book. As I wrote earlier, hestated that there was a roundup of women in 1943 on Cheju Island for a volunteer corps ofcomfort women.
By stating that “women — mainly Korean women — were transported to the brothels under
the pretext that they would be serving in a female volunteer corps,” Asahi Shimbun was
claiming that they were compelled to become comfort women, as Yoshida wrote. This is“coercion in the narrow sense” of the word, which Prime Minister Abe has denied.
In 1997, Asahi Shimbun changed the focus of its coverage to the hardships the womenexperienced once they entered the brothels, i.e., the coercive nature of their environments.
But in 1992, the newspaper had charged that the recruitment of the comfort women was“systematically coercive.”
11

Momose Takashi, Jiten: Showa senzenki no Nippon (Sourcebook: Japan in the Showa era prior toWorld War II) (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1990).
12

Ito Abito, ed., Chosen wo shiru jiten (Cyclopedia of Korea) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1986). This text
appears unchanged in the fourth printing (revised and expanded edition) released on 05 July 2006.
13

Takeda Yukio, ed., Chosen shi (Korean history) (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 1985).

6

Meanwhile, the living witness to the slave hunts (Yoshida), and former comfort woman Kim
Hak-sun had been making frequent appearances on Japanese television and in newspaper
articles.
The January 23, 1992 edition of the Asahi Shimbun carried an editorial entitled “The Comfort
Women.” It quoted Yoshida as saying, “They used the police, a state power, to abduct
women in the colony using means that precluded escape. They transported them to battle
zones and confined them there for a year or two years. They were gang-raped, and abandoned
when the Japanese military retreated. It’s my guess that half the men and all the women I
personally abducted died.”14 This was followed by a portion of a conversation between theauthor of the editorial and Yoshida: “I was concerned that Mr. Yoshida would beinconvenienced if his name appeared in the media. When I asked him about that, his cheerful
reply was ‘That’s all right. It doesn’t bother me anymore.’”15
When I read the editorial, I realized that Yoshida was the answer to Asahi Shimbun’s prayers.
Now the trio was complete: Yoshida (the conscientious witness), the documents unearthed by
Prof. Yoshimi, and the former comfort woman, the victim. This unfortunate alignment
created the mistaken impression of being evidence that women were abducted in slave hunts,and forced to service Japanese soldiers. Asahi Shimbun, other anti-Japanese media andactivists had seized upon them and used them in their attempt to ruin Japan’s reputation.
The prevailing view at that time was that Japanese troops had abducted Korean women andforced them to become prostitutes, but the Japanese government would neither acknowledge
nor apologize for these inhuman crimes.
I have vivid memories of Keio University Professor Okonogi Masao’s January 1992 editorial
in Sankei Shimbun : “What I have learned is so horrible it makes me want to cover my eyes.”
He had offered his political conclusion without ever bothering to examine the facts.16
Then, on January 13, Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Koichi issued an official statement,saying that “we would like to offer our heartfelt apologies to the women who endured
unspeakable suffering while serving as comfort women.” This was the first government
statement issued in connection with the comfort women problem. On January 17, Prime
Minister Miyazawa went to Korea, where he apologized to President Roh Tae-woo eighttimes.
Japanese instigated suit instituted in Korea
The February 1992 issue of the monthly Hoseki carried transcripts of interviews conductedby journalist Usuki Keiko with former comfort women. The title was “Another Pacific War:
Former Korean Comfort Women Tell Their Stories: the Depravity and Shamelessness of the
14
15
16

Asahi Shimbun, 23 January 1992 (evening edition).
Ibid.
Sankei Shimbun, 25 January 1992.

7

Japanese Soldiers Who Abused Our Bodies.” Those who agreed to the interview were Kim
Hak-sun and two women who used pseudonyms.
Curious about what they had said, I immediately obtained a copy of the magazine. I waswondering whether they were going to say they had been abducted, thereby proving Yoshida
Seiji was right.
But Kim Hak-sun said that she had been sold into prostitution for ¥40. Neither of the othertwo women said anything about having been kidnapped by Japanese soldiers. “What’s this?”I thought.
Poverty was a pervasive serious problem in both Japan and Korea prior to World War II. In
those days, women were indeed sold into prostitution. Everyone is aware of that; it is not
news. What was supposed to make the comfort women newsworthy was their coming
forward to say they were coerced.
Reading the apologies offered by the chief cabinet secretary and the prime minister, and theemotional coverage in the Japanese media, I thought, “Something’s wrong here. This may be
a huge scam. No one has offered any proof that those women were coerced into prostitution.”
I was aware that, for the court proceedings held in connection with the suit instituted by Kim
Haksun, et al. against the Japanese government, Japanese had gone to Korea and posted fliers
advertising for plaintiffs.
Actually, theirs was not the first suit filed in connection with comfort women. Its precursor
went to trial in 1990. When I learned that that suit had been instituted by Japanese, I realizedthat there must be some extraordinary lies involved.
It so happened that the monthly Bungei Shunju had printed an article entitled “Japan-Korea
Relations Have Deteriorated So Much that We Must Apologize” in its March issue, which
went on sale on February 10, 1992. The article is a dialogue between Sato Katsumi, directorof the Modern Korea Institute, and Takushoku University Professor Tanaka Akira. These twopioneering specialists in postwar North and South Korean studies, who have many friends inSouth Korea, were also my mentors.
Both men spoke candidly. They deplored the state of the relationship between Japan andSouth Korea, reminding us that all reparations had been paid in accordance with the JapanKorea Treaty. They mentioned a white paper, a statement of claim issued by the South
Korean government, which lists the uses to which monies received from Japan were put,including monies intended for individuals. During their discussion, they indicated that therepeated apologies offered by Japan in response to South Korean demands had caused antiKorean sentiment to spread against the Japanese. They also referred to the fact that the“comfort women trial” had been instigated by Japanese.
Scholars who have been engaged in research on South Korea for 30 years, or 40 years, cameout and said that we must stop apologizing to the Koreans, that the more we apologize theworse relations between the two nations will become, using their real names. The shockwaves were mammoth. Their statements were met with harsh criticism from the South
Koreans, who pronounced them absurd.
8Fact-finding investigation commissioned by magazine
As repercussions rippled throughout Japan and Korea, the editorial division of the monthly
Bungei Shunju asked me to investigate the comfort women controversy and write up theresults. To be candid, I wavered about accepting the assignment. As I wrote earlier, at thatpoint I was having serious misgivings about the Japanese and Korean media coverage of the
problem, and the Japanese government’s response. Therefore, I knew that someone had to dopainstaking research into the facts and make the results known to the world.
But at the core of the problem was sex, a topic that people are generally unwilling to discuss
frankly. Also involved was the fact that I, a citizen of a nation that had colonized Korea,
might end up criticizing women who had been victimized and were now old. I would rather
have someone else do this job.
But as I vacillated, the lies continued to spread. I finally assented, believing that I could not,in good conscience, refuse. I was afraid that Japan’s relationship with Korea, a nation where
many of my professors, mentors, friends and acquaintances live, might be irreparably
damaged.
I was convinced that there is nothing more absurd (or harmful) than debates and apologies
that have no basis in fact. I was fully prepared to be the first to offer an apology if I wasproven wrong, if this wasn’t a scam and my investigation revealed that Japan had used force
to victimize innocent Korean women.
The editor in chief of Bungei Shunju told me, “When you conduct your investigation, resign
yourself to being vilified, along with me.” He promised me the editorial division’s full
support. He assigned one of his most capable editors to the project full time, and told me I
could use as many investigators as I wanted, and buy as many references as I needed. He said
my research should be done wherever it needed to be, and not to worry about money.
Therefore, I wasn’t a solo investigator, but part of a team working on the same project.
The objective of my research was to discover whether the comfort women were so poor they
had to sell their bodies to stay alive, or whether they were sex slaves coerced into prostitution
by military or government personnel.
First of all, I scrutinized the document that Prof. Yoshimi offered as proof of military
involvement. It permitted me to confirm an important fact. Yes, the military was involved inrecruiting comfort women, but only by attempting to prevent private brokers from engaging
in immoral behavior and claiming they were acting on behalf of the military.
Not only did the document prove that the military did not coerce women, it also proved thatthey tried to stop brokers from engaging in unlawful acts during their recruiting campaigns.
Yes, the military were involved, but their involvement had benevolent intentions.
I will quote from the document as published in Asahi Shimbun. It appears in a collection of
documents exchanged between the Ministry of the Army and units assigned to China andentitled “China Area Army Journal: Secret.”9Subject: Recruitment of Comfort Women (Communication from adjutant to head staff
officers of North China Area Army and Central China Expeditionary Army)
China Area Army No. 745: Secret
04 March 1938
We advise Expeditionary Army personnel to exercise extreme caution in the recruiting of
female workers to avoid harm to the prestige of the military and the emergence of social
problems. Be aware that unscrupulous brokers may say they are acting on behalf of themilitary, thus causing the military to lose prestige or generating misunderstandings among
the local population. They may also cause social problems by violating regulations andrecruiting through war correspondents or visitors. Some of the recruiters cannot be trusted;
they lack the judgment required of recruiters, and must be watched carefully, as they havepreviously been arrested or interrogated by the police for using improper recruiting methods
akin to kidnapping. Select recruiters with care and keep control over them. Maintain close
contact with the military police and local police authorities.17

This document does not prove that the military forced women to serve as prostitutes. Asahi
Shimbun reported that this document and two others attest to military involvement. But they
simply state that the brothels were established to improve military discipline, as rapes
committed by Japanese soldiers in war zones would be used as anti-Japanese politicalpropaganda.
Following a logical thought process, we have: the military were concerned about inciting
adverse public sentiment in war zones. There was already a fledgling independence
movement in colonial Korea. The military wouldn’t have dared angering the local populationby coercing women to become prostitutes. Therefore, the document found by Prof. Yoshimi
does not prove that the comfort women were coerced. On the contrary, it proves that they
were not coerced.
But the atmosphere at the time was obviously conducive to the creation of a mass delusionand fraud (the flames of which were fueled by Asahi Shimbun’s coverage and the chiefcabinet secretary’s flustered apology) — namely, that the comfort women were victims of
coercion.

17

China Area Army Notice No. 745, 04 March 1938.

10

CHAPTER 2: WERE THE COMFORT WOMEN ABDUCTED BY JAPANESEAUTHORITIES?
The link between the Association for the Pacific War Victims officer and Asahi Shimbun
I examined the testimony of the former comfort woman who had come forward. I wanted toknow whether it would attest to her having been the victim of official coercion (abduction by
military or government authorities).
Since she had instituted a lawsuit, I decided to have a look at the petition, which I acquired. I
discovered that it agreed with the article I had read in Hoseki. An excerpt follows.
Kim Hak-sun’s family was poor, so she stopped going to school. To earn some money, she
did babysitting and maid’s work. She was adopted by Kim Tae-won, who sent her to aschool for kisaeng (entertainer-prostitutes) when she was 14, for three years. In the springof 1939, when Kim Hak-sun was 17, her adoptive father convinced her and another girlnamed Emiko, who was one year her senior, to go with him to China, “where you can makea lot of money.”18

Kim Hak-sun states clearly that she became a kisaeng because her family was poor. When I
discussed her case with the Bungei Shunju editors, we agreed that it was similar to those ofyoung Japanese women who were sold into prostitution by their parents. But how can anyone
claim Kim was abducted?
The more I investigated, the more malicious the Asahi Shimbun editorial seemed. Then I
learned that the daughter of Yang Sun-in, the former executive director of a South Korean
organization that goes by the name of Association for the Pacific War Victims, is married to
Uemura Takashi, a reporter for Asahi Shimbun. If my sources were accurate, it did seem as
though Uemura had manufactured his article out of whole cloth to give his mother-in-law and
her accomplices an edge in court.
In any case, I had decided to track down absolutely every lead, including this one. That meant
going to South Korea to meet Yang Sun-in. The people at the Bungei Shunju editorial
division expressed concern when I told them of my plans. They were afraid that I might beassaulted by survivors, activists, or their agents; I was encouraged to travel with a reporterand a bodyguard. I declined their offer to save myself from having to interpret for an
entourage.
Once in Seoul, I obtained the phone number of the Association from a Japanese foreign
correspondent. I made an appointment to meet Yang Sun-in at the organization’s office.
Actually, if luck hadn’t been on my side, that meeting might have been canceled at the lastminute. Takagi Ken’ichi, the Japanese lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the suit, wasscheduled to visit the Association’s office at about the same time to prepare for the trial.
Since I had criticized his activities in Gendai Koria (Modern Korea) and other publications, I
was sure he knew who I was. If Takagi had showed up at the office prior to my appointment,
18

Petition submitted to Tokyo District Court by Kim Hak-sun et al. on December 6, 1991); for thecomplete testimony, see Hirabayashi Hisae, Kyosei renko to jugun ianfu (Abductions and comfort women)(Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Center, 1992).

11

Uemura would have warned Yang Sun-in about me, and she would not have agreed to theinterview. Fortunately, I arrived in Seoul a few days before he did.
I went to the Association’s office bearing a gift (a box of fruit) and proffered my businesscard (the one that says I’m a university professor). I announced that I was doing research on
Korea. When I mentioned that I was particularly interested in the comfort women controversy,
Ms. Yang opened up to me.
I asked her how the lawsuit had come to be filed. (I will describe her response in detail later.)
Then I told her, “The Japanese government has already paid $300 million in cash andtendered $200 million in loans to South Korea in accordance with the 1965 treaty. The South
Korean government paid 300,000 won out of that amount to victims’ survivors. Why demandfurther compensation from the Japanese government, especially at this late date?”
Her strange reply was: “The 1965 treaty was imposed on the weak (South Korea) by thestrong (Japan). We don’t care if a thousand treaties were signed. We won’t recognize them.”
Then I said I’d heard that her daughter was married to an Asahi Shimbun reporter. “Yes,that’s true,” she replied.
To make sure I had the correct information, I asked, “Is his name Uemura?” “Yes.” Now I
had the information I needed, straight from the horse’s mouth.

Criminalization of the Japanese military
The next task on my agenda was to interview Kim Hak-sun, the former comfort woman who
had come forward. I wasn’t able to do that, unfortunately, because she had been hospitalized.
Instead, I managed to track down and meet with a Korean resident of Japan, a woman whom
I’ll call “Ms. X”; she had arranged for Kim to appear on Japanese television programs, andacted as her interpreter.
Ms. X had come to know Kim very well after interpreting for her a number of times. She hadlearned that Kim had not been abducted by the Japanese military, but had been sold to akisaeng house because her family was so poor.
Having discovered that the truth was quite different from the fiction preferred by televisioncommentators, etc., who were determined to portray the Japanese military as a band of
demoniacal criminals, Ms. X had begun to realize that something was terribly wrong. I
believe that is why she told someone like me, who had come from Japan on a fact-finding
mission, Kim Hak-sun’s true story.
She said that once she had learned the truth, she had a quiet conversation with Kim when
there were no reporters around.
“Halmoni (grandma), you were sold to a kisaeng house, weren’t you?”“Yes, I was.”12

“Then why in the world did you come forward?”“I was so lonely. No one ever came to see me. Then one day I saw a television program about
people who were forced to work during the war and how they were going to go to court. I
thought maybe that had something to do with me, so I made a phone call.”In August 1991, Kim Hak-sun was the first former comfort woman to come forward. At thattime, as already described, Asahi Shimbun gave the event a huge amount of coverage: “A
comfort woman comes forward for the first time ever.” This was a scoop for Asahi, which
wrote about the event before even Korean newspapers got wind of it. The author of the article
was, needless to say, Uemura Takashi, son-in-law of the woman whose organization was
contacted by Kim Hak-sun. He was bound to get the scoop.
The article Uemura produced, as mentioned earlier, has a very shocking beginning.
During the Sino-Japanese War and World War II, Korean women were told they would be
joining female volunteer corps, but were instead transported to battle zones and forced toprovide sex services to Japanese military personnel. It has come to light that one of theseso-called “comfort women” lives in Seoul. The Korean Council for Women Drafted for
19
Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (...) interviewed the woman ... .

Nowhere here will you find the most critical part of her story: that her family was so poor she
was sold to a kisaeng house. Without this information, readers would never see the true
picture.
Interestingly, the portion of the article that mentions the female volunteer corps (“Korean
women were told they would be joining Female Volunteer Corps, but were insteadtransported to battle zones”) is the same language used in the “supplementary material”
supplied by Asahi Shimbun in connection with the document provided by Prof. Yoshimi. The
first glimpse the Japanese reading public got of Kim Hak-sun was the portrait Uemura
Takashi painted of her, which closely resembled Yoshida Seiji’s confession: the victim ofabduction.
On December 25, 1991, Asahi Shimbun carried another article under the headline “Former
Comfort Woman Kim Hak-sun Institutes Suit Against the Japanese Government: Seeks
Compensation for a Stolen Youth.” It contained a partial transcription of Uemura’s interview
with Kim, where she says, “I heard I could make a lot of money. Someone working in myneighborhood told me. He didn’t say what type of work was involved. I accepted the offer,and so did a friend who lived nearby. It was the spring of 1939, and I was 17.” Still no
mention of being sold to a kisaeng house.
Did Kim Hak-sun fail to mention the kisaeng house when she first came forward? If so, thenthe information in Uemura’s article was erroneous. But it would be unfair to describe it asmalicious fabrication.
The truth quickly emerged. After doing some checking, I learned that on August 14, shortly
after Uemura’s article appeared, Kim Hak-sun held a press conference for Korean newspaper
19

Asahi Shimbun, 11 August 1991.

13

reporters. I looked for the articles and discovered that even Hankyoreh, South Korea’s mostleft-leaning daily, carried one about Kim.
No longer able to make ends meet, my mother sold me to a kisaeng house owner in
Pyongyang when I was 14. After living there for three years, I thought I had gotten my firstjob. But the place I was taken by the kisaeng house owner who had adopted me was adivision of the Japanese Army in North China. There were more than 300 soldiers there.
First I was sold for ¥40, then trained to be an entertainer for a few years, and after that I
20went to a place where Japanese soldiers were stationed.

It was the same story she had told from the very beginning, the one I read on the petition forthe lawsuit. Every time she told it — the first time she spoke out, on the petition, and in the
Hoseki interview — it was the same: Kim Hak-sun had been sold to a kisaeng house.

Asahi Shimbun’s malicious fabrication
Uemura’s article in the December 25 edition of Asahi Shimbun begins: “I was present when
the lawyers interviewed the former comfort woman, so I heard her story in detail. Here are
excerpts from the tape-recorded description of her stolen youth.”
Not only in his August article, but also in the December piece, Uemura deliberately omitted
important information from Kim Hak-sun’s account: the part about being sold to a kisaeng
house. At that time, Uemura worked on the city desk at the Osaka office of Asahi Shimbun.
Apparently, he had gone to Korea as an exchange student, where he was studying thelanguage. There he met Yang Sun-in’s daughter, whom he later married. This means that hereads and speaks Korean. It is hard to believe that Kim Hak-sun omitted the part of her story
relating to having being sold only when she spoke to him, i.e., Asahi Shimbun.
That part of Kim’s story can also be found in the petition for the lawsuit. So, if Uemura waspresent when Takagi and the other attorneys met with Kim, she would certainly have told
them about it. Uemura must have known about it. I can only assume that he left it out because
it didn’t fit in with the scenario he had concocted. He was afraid to write the truth, because
then his whole drama about official coercion, which was what Asahi Shimbun wanted to
publicize, would have crumbled.
Asahi Shimbun’s current position is that Prime Minister Abe should stop dithering about
whether there was coercion in the narrow sense or in the broad sense. If he’s going toapologize, then he should apologize, and properly. Actually, the newspaper thought that thestory wasn’t worth printing unless they could make a case for coercion in the narrow sense of
the word (i.e., abduction by military or government authorities). For that reason, the editors
deliberately dropped the part about Kim’s mother selling her for ¥40.
Recently, a television program claiming that you’ll lose weight if you eat fermented soybeans
was canceled and the television network that broadcast it was expelled from Minporen(National Association of Commercial Broadcasters) for misinforming the public. But Asahi
Shimbun’s sins are far, far more grievous.
20

The Hankyoreh, 15 August 1991.

14

When an Asahi reporter claimed he had found graffiti carved in coral and was later found tohave staged the incident, the president of Asahi Shimbun resigned. But Uemura’s offense wastwice as reprehensible, since he lied not only to get a scoop, but also to get a lawsuit
instituted by his mother-in-law off on a good footing. Their deliberate dissemination of lies
has had serious consequences, worsening not only relations between Japan and South Korea,
but also between Japan and the U.S.
Since 1992, I have been spreading the word about this incident every chance I get: inmagazine articles, books, and in televised debates and public speeches, naming names every
single time. Still, Asahi Shimbun has yet to issue a rebuttal, a correction or an apology; nor
has the newspaper reprimanded Mr. Uemura. Far from it, it appointed him Seoulcorrespondent, and assigned him to write articles on Korean problems. This is inexcusable
behavior.
Another individual whose conduct has been reprehensible is Takagi Ken’ichi, the attorney.
We assume he read the petition, so he must have known Kim Hak-sun’s sad story: the family
was so poor her mother had to sell her for ¥40. If he were a reputable lawyer, he would have
explained things to her: “You don’t have a case. By telling your story, you risk being
humiliated a second time.”
As the first former comfort woman to come forward, Kim Hak-sun became a pawn in theanti-Japan campaign waged by Takagi and his accomplices. She was also used by Uemura
and the Asahi Shimbun. When I and other Korea specialists exposed her true past, she became
expendable. After I wrote about the portion of her story that Uemura concealed in Bungei
Shunju, Korean scholars conducted an inquiry. She told them a new tale, which wasn’t
included in the petition. This resulted in closer scrutiny of her past; she was now trapped in a
vicious cycle. It’s hard to believe that Takagi Ken’ichi cared the least bit about her humanrights.

Child comfort women?
Now I’d like to return to the investigation I conducted in February 1992. On January 14 ofthat year, two days before Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi was to visit Korea, articles about
the Japanese rounding up elementary school students to serve in volunteer corps, andeditorials about forcing even elementary school-aged girls to become sex slaves appeared in
Korean newspapers, fomenting resentment against Japan.
Did the authors actually verify the existence of 12-year-old comfort women? I located theperson who wrote the first article about elementary school students and the volunteer corps,
and met with him. His name is Kim Yong-soo, and he works for Rengo News Agency. He
said he had been following this problem for quite some time.
As described earlier, in South Korea there is a misunderstanding about the wartime volunteer
corps. They have been mistaken for comfort women; there was no connection. Kim knew that,but he wrote only that 12-year-olds were drafted into volunteer corps. He made no effort to
explain. He didn’t claim that they had been forced to serve as comfort women. But theeditorial in the Dong-a Ilbo, a Korean daily, which appeared not long after the Kim article,
15

stated that “even 12-year old schoolgirls were mobilized to serve as sex slaves in war zones.”
Presented as unassailable fact, this “information” infuriated many Koreans right before Prime
Minister Miyazawa’s visit.
Volunteer corps were, more accurately, volunteer labor corps, which had nothing whatsoever
to do with comfort women. Members were not transported to brothels, but to munitions
factories in Toyama Prefecture. According to my research, in 1944, Ikeda Masae, a Japaneseteacher at the Hozan National School (an elementary school) in Keijo (today Seoul), sent sixof her sixth-grade students to work in a munitions factory in Toyama as members of avolunteer corps. In August 1945, the war ended; in December, Ms. Ikeda returned to Japan.
By that time, all but one of her students had returned to Korea. Ms. Ikeda never forgot the girl,and after retiring from her teaching position in Japan, went to look for her. Her search ended
happily in 1991, when she found the student. She learned that having returned safely to South
Korea, the girl had headed straight for her home village without stopping at the school toannounce her return.
Since Kim Yong-soo had intended to write an article describing this chain of events, hecontinued to gather information. He observed that a former comfort woman had comeforward and that a document uncovered by Prof. Yoshimi had been given wide coverage inJapan. Then he wrote an article stating that elementary school children had been drafted into
volunteer corps.
As I stated earlier, Kim did not explain that these girls were being sent to work in a factory inToyama, not a brothel. He knew (or perhaps hoped) that his article would be misinterpreted.
I asked him directly: “Why did you write that article? You knew that those 12-year-old girls
never became comfort women. In Korea, your article served as the basis for others assertingthat 12-year-old Korean girls were forced to become sex slaves in battle zones. Maybe yourarticle, and your article alone, contained no inaccuracies, but you wrote it knowing full wellthat it would be misinterpreted. How could you do such a thing?”
Kim’s reply: “Yes, I knew that those six children weren’t comfort women, but I’ve heard
stories in Korea about children who were drafted into volunteer corps and later forced to
become comfort women. So I thought that other elementary schoolgirls might have been
forced to become comfort women. That’s why I didn’t bother to write that these six weremembers of volunteer labor corps, and not comfort women.”His excuse was pathetic, but at least I was able to ascertain that there was no proof to back up
the accusations that followed his article.
To this day, none of the sources of the rumor that 12-year-old girls were forced to serve as
comfort women (Kim’s article, the newspapers, television networks, etc.) has stated that
schoolgirls were mobilized to work in munitions factories, not to serve as comfort women.
Anti-Japanese sentiment has continued to worsen. Here is an excerpt from one of theeditorials; this one appeared in Dong-a Ilbo in early 1992.

16

Twelve-year-old “volunteer corps” members
The crimes committed by the Japanese empire were so repugnant and barbarian that it isdifficult to believe they were perpetrated by human beings. It is true that they werecommitted during the conduct of a war waged by a militaristic government, but still, we
find it nearly impossible to believe that the Japanese would go to such cruel, inhumanlengths to commit these brutal crimes.
We have been struggling to comprehend, even vaguely, the pain and suffering the membersof those “volunteer corps” endured when they were brutally abducted and forced to provide
sex services to the Japanese military. However, we find it impossible to control the anger
that consumes us once again at the news that even 12-year-old elementary school students
were mobilized and used as sexual commodities in war zones.
(...)
It is shocking to learn that before liberation,21 six students in Sixth Grade Class No. 2 (anall-girl class) of the Hozan National School in Seoul (then a public elementary school
affiliated with Keijo Province) were abducted and forced to join a girls’ volunteer corps.
Five of them were only 12 years old at the time. It is common knowledge that 15-year-old
girls were mobilized for those volunteer corps, but we have learned that even 12-year-old
girls were abducted.
A Japanese teacher named Ikeda (female, now 68 years old), then employed by said school,
sent the students off to a volunteer corps, which she called a “volunteer labor corps.” Ikeda
persuaded the girls to go by telling them and their parents that, as subjects of the Japanese
empire, they were obligated to join volunteer labor corps.
However, that was a bald-faced lie. We now know from testimony provided by various
individuals that after the girls were mobilized under the volunteer labor corps pretext, they
were instead assigned to brothels. Ikeda says she felt so guilty that she never married, andcould never look at the sky in the direction of Korea. This is proof that she knew what thevolunteer labor corps really were.
(...)
We don’t know how many young girls were taken from their parents and forced to join
volunteer corps. Even some young mothers were beaten and abducted, their infants tornfrom their breasts. We estimate that 80,000-200,000 people were mobilized to serve as
comfort women.
(...)
We do not wish to dwell on the volunteer corps issue, which has caused us great disgrace.
We should persuade Japan to seek forgiveness for these brutal acts by making amends in22
the spirit of humanitarianism.

21
22

Here “liberation” means liberation from Japanese colonial rule.
Dong-a Ilbo, 15 January 1992.

17

After my second reading of this tirade, I was practically groaning. Images of 12-year-old girls
and new mothers being abducted and forced to become comfort women in war zones, where
they “were used as sexual commodities,” had become imprinted in the minds of a great many
Koreans. Subsequently, they made their way, practically unaltered, into the educational arenaand into dramas shown on television. The conventional wisdom in South Korea about the
comfort women, especially among those who never experienced colonialism, is virtually
identical to the scenarios described in this editorial.
Another bombshell: lawsuit instigated by Japanese
The more research I did, the clearer it became that there had been absolutely no official
coercion of comfort women. I set out to discover the motivation for the lawsuit, and ran into
yet another instance of chicanery.
During my investigation I went to Oita Prefecture to interview a woman named Aoyagi
Atsuko. The wife of a physician, Aoyagi champions a Korean-Japanese anti-discrimination
activist named Song Tu-hea. Aoyagi teamed up with Song to institute a lawsuit against theJapanese government demanding an apology and compensation. I later met with her puppet
master Song, too, in Tokyo. From those interviews, I gleaned the following facts.
The first lawsuit of this sort involved Koreans residing in Sakhalin. It too was instigated bySong Tu-hea. Quite the eccentric, Song Tu-hea uses a bizarre logic, which prompts him toemit utterances like “the Koreans in Sakhalin and the Koreans in Japan, including me, allpossess Japanese citizenship, even today.” Apparently he didn’t want to use lawyers, but the
court wouldn’t accept the documents he submitted. Enter Takagi Ken’ichi, the attorney.
In 1975, Takagi and his colleagues sidelined Song, and prepared the required documents.
They then instituted suit against the Japanese government, demanding an apology andcompensation because “Japan bears responsibility for the inability of Koreans in Sakhalin to
return to South Korea.”That lawsuit was adjudged to be without merit. After its defeat, Japan was not involved inany way with the South Koreans’ tragic postwar fate. Sakhalin was occupied by Soviet troops,
who sided with North Korea and, therefore, refused to allow Koreans to return to South
Korea. The court ruled that the lawsuit was groundless. But the attitude that anything is fairgame if it makes Japan look bad, and that it’s perfectly all right to twist the facts, if necessary,is the specialty of Japan-hating Japanese like Takagi and company.
But between the time the suit was instituted and into the 1980s, the Soviet Union began
granting temporary exit visas so Koreans could travel to Japan. Reunions took place, and they
included family members who had traveled from South Korea. The Japanese government
funded these reunions, for humanitarian reasons. South Koreans in Sakhalin seemed to havereasons to be hopeful.23 After his Sakhalin court case was hijacked by Takagi, Song looked toSouth Korea as a source of plaintiffs.

23

For details, see Arai Sawako, Saharin no Kankokujin wa naze kaerenakatta no ka (Why South
Koreans on Sakhalin couldn’t return home) (Tokyo: Soshisha, 1997).

18

The Song-Aoyagi group placed an advertisement in the February 19, 1989 issue of the now
defunct left-wing magazine Asahi Journal that read, in part: “Japan must issue a formal
apology to North and South Koreans.” The advertisement appeared 14 more times, every
other week, until December.
On January 19, 1989, Aoyagi made a three-day trip to South Korea, armed with a Koreantranslation of the Asahi Journal ad. The purpose of her trip was to find plaintiffs for a lawsuit
against the Japanese government demanding an apology and compensation. She left her
literature with various media organizations, but was unable to locate any victims.
An acquaintance who works at a branch office of a Japanese daily in South Korea told methat Aoyagi visited his office during her 1989 trip, and said she was looking for plaintiffs.
Imagine a Japanese woman going around handing out flyers in South Korea, and urging
people to sue the Japanese government. The more I learned about her activities, the moredubious I became.
Several weeks after she returned to Oita, Aoyagi received a telephone call from South Korea.
It was Yang Sun-in, the mother-in-law of Asahi Shimbun reporter Uemura Takashi. Yangsaid she represented a group called Association for the Pacific War Victims, and wanted to bea plaintiff in Aoyagi’s lawsuit.
In March 1990, Aoyagi visited Korea a second time. Awaiting her arrival were approximately
1,000 members of the Association for the Pacific War Victims, who had gathered in theauditorium of the Hankuk Ilbo Building near the Japanese Embassy for a “Briefing on a
Lawsuit Seeking a Formal Apology and Compensation from Japan.” Aoyagi told me that her
speech to the Association for the Pacific War Victims had gone something like this:I am just an ordinary housewife and the mother of three children. When I met Song Tu-hea
and the members of his group, I realized that I could wait no longer for Japan to do the rightthing. I decided to make preparations for a lawsuit. No decent human being could possibly
forgive what Japan has done, including the annexation of Korea for 36 years. It makes me
especially angry that Japan has shirked its postwar responsibilities.
We decided that the most effective method to use, of those available to us, would be alawsuit. We are now preparing for the court proceedings. At the trial, we will ask for an
official apology and compensation from Japan. I’d like to explain the court proceedings
briefly. Court costs vary according to the amount of compensation demanded. Since it isexpensive to transport witnesses to Japan, we’d like to start out with 10 plaintiffs. But tomake it clear that there are many more plaintiffs standing behind these 10 people, I’d like tohave as many powers of attorney as possible. We have raised four million yen in Japan tocover court costs. We plan to begin the court proceedings with 10 plaintiffs and a large
number of powers of attorney.

Surely the Koreans in the audience reacted positively to this Japanese woman, who hadjourneyed to South Korea, condemned her own country’s government and exhorted all in
attendance to join her in a lawsuit demanding an official apology and compensation, allexpenses paid. Then Aoyagi suggested staging a demonstration in front of the Japanese
Embassy, just a few steps away. The demonstration, the first of its kind, took place that day.
Since then, there have been demonstrations demanding compensation every Wednesday infront of the Japanese Embassy, but it was Aoyagi who organized the very first one.
19

Inspired by Aoyagi’s exhortations, the Association for the Pacific War Victims began to act
in earnest. In May 1990, the group held a two-week-long sit-in in front of the Japanese
Embassy. In June and July, they marched from the Japanese Consulate in Pusan to theJapanese Embassy in Seoul carrying photographs of victims hanging from their necks. Then,on October 29, 22 South Koreans appeared in Tokyo District Court to file their lawsuit
against the Japanese government, the bulk of their paperwork having been done by Aoyagi
and her accomplices.
The plaintiffs in this case were the survivors of Koreans who had been drafted into theJapanese Army or mobilized as workers, and were killed on the battlefield or elsewhere. No
former comfort women were involved in this action.
But Song Tu-hea and Aoyagi hadn’t used an attorney then, either. As a result, they did not
succeed in bringing the lawsuit to trial.
In August 1991, when the first former comfort woman came forward, the Association for the
Pacific War Victims bid Aoyagi farewell, and together with attorney Takagi and a group
including journalist Usuki Keiko, began preparing for a new lawsuit. This is the casedescribed earlier (Kim Hak-sun was the lead plaintiff).
By rights, any controversy over compensation should have been resolved when the Treaty on
Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea was concluded in 1965. There
were no demonstrations in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul until the first was
fomented by the Association for the Pacific War Victims and Aoyagi.
But when someone came from Japan and told them they could sue, when someone told them
they might be able to get more money, and that all their expenses would be paid in Japan,
that’s when the movement gained real momentum.

Compensation of individual victims at discretion of ROK government
How did the Association for the Pacific War Victims come to be established? In accordancewith the 1965 treaty, Japan paid $300 million in cash and tendered $200 million in loans to
Korea (the property claim agreement). Since Japan had only $18 billion in foreign currency
reserves in 1965, an expenditure of $500 million would have been a hardship. That amount
was paid in installments over 10 years between 1966 and 1975. At the time, South Korea had$130 million in foreign currency reserves, far less than the nation’s trade deficit ($290
million). Therefore, $500 million was very significant to the Korean economy.
The Park Chung-hee administration earmarked the funds received from Japan as follows: (1)All citizens must benefit equally, (2) the funds must be applied so as to increase national
income, (3) decisions to distribute funds must be made in accordance with Korean leadershipinitiative, be they applied to infrastructure, raw materials or machinery, and (4) the funds

20

must be invested in major enterprises that can be passed on to our children andgrandchildren.24
Based on the view that investment in production would result in increased national income,plans were made to use the funds for national construction projects: dams, steel plants androads were built.
According to Korean government estimates, the funds from Japan represented a contributionof 19.3% on average, between 1966 and 1975, to South Korean economic growth. In the
postwar world, developing countries received a tremendous amount of financial aid fromadvanced nations. But few nations used those funds as effectively as the Park Chung-hee
government.
The matter of compensating individuals was put off until later. Between May 1971 andMarch 1972, private claims against Japan were filed. The Association for the Pacific War
Victims was formed during this period. In 1974, the Law Concerning Private Compensation
Claims Against Japan was enacted. Beginning in 1975, 300,000 won was paid to each of
9,546 direct descendants of “persons who lost their lives as a result of having been
conscripted as military personnel, civilian workers for the military or laborers prior to August
15, 1945.”25
The Association for the Pacific War Victims came into being in 1972; its raison d’être was topetition the Korean government for more money, since 300,000 won was insufficient. The
organization should have asked the South Korean government for more money, since Japan
had already transferred the funds, and there was no reason for further Japanese involvement.
Furthermore, the Korean government compensated only those who were mobilized to serve
as soldiers, military workers or laborers and died while performing those services, as
described earlier. Individuals who were wounded or injured received nothing.
I can certainly empathize with the petitioners. But if the Japanese government were to pay thesame amount of compensation to Korean survivors as to Japanese survivors, as JapaneseJapan-haters would have it, what would happen?
The South Korean government spent some of the funds received from Japan on programs
intended to support independence activists and their survivors. But South Korea is now an
independent nation; it must attempt to achieve a balance between compensation to survivorsof those who were forced to help with Japan’s war effort when Korea was a Japanese colony,and survivors of popular heroes who died fighting for independence. Also to be factored in iscompensation to survivors of Korean military personnel killed in action protecting theirnation against invaders from North Korea, after independence.
The basis of comparison should be not the level of military pensions in Japan, but the balancewith other survivors in South Korea. Again, it is up to the South Korean government to24White Paper on Agreement on the Settlement of Problems Concerning Property and Claims, andEconomic Cooperation between Japan and Republic of Korea, Economic Planning Board, Republic of Korea,
1976.
25

Ibid.

21

decide to whom and how much of the funds received from Japan should go to Koreans who
were mobilized for the Japanese war effort.
None of the Korean survivors had been contemplating an attempt to extract more money fromJapan. After all, Japan had paid an amount equivalent to one-third of its foreign currency
reserves. And since Park Chung-hee put the money to good use, it contributed greatly toSouth Korean economic growth.
But more than 20 years after diplomatic relations were normalized (14 years after the South
Korean government began paying compensation to individuals), a Japanese woman appearson the scene, out of the blue. She hands out flyers, and goes around telling people, “We’ve
raised ¥4 million, so let’s go to court and extract damages from the Japanese government on
an individual basis.” Then she holds a briefing, followed by an anti-Japanese demonstration.

Why is the Japanese government paralyzed?
Now I’d like to return to the research I conducted for my article in the February 1992 issue of
Bungei Shunju. After visiting South Korea and Oita, I tackled the Northeast Asia Division of
the Japanese Foreign Ministry. The civil servants there repeatedly refused to talk to me, butwith my deadline looming, I asked again for a briefing, and someone finally agreed to see me.
The first thing I needed to know was why Prime Minister Miyazawa apologized in South
Korea.
“Did Mr. Miyazawa acknowledge that there had been coercion or ‘slave hunts’ on the part ofmilitary or government authorities when he apologized? Or did he say, ‘At the time, there
was a district of Japan called Yoshiwara, where many Japanese women worked. They had
been sold into prostitution because their families were so poor.’ Did he say that was sorry forthe suffering they had experienced when he apologized? Which was it? If the latter, then why
doesn’t the Japanese government apologize to the Japanese women who worked in
Yoshiwara?”
The bureaucrat’s shocking reply was, “I’ll have to check on that, but it’s a fact that people
were taken away and had horrible experiences.”
I asked, “What is your opinion of Yoshida Seiji’s testimony about having hunted for comfort
women under military orders?”“I can’t comment with certainty, but it’s hard to believe that someone who has confessed to acrime would lie about that.”
So the Foreign Ministry didn’t possess any proof of official coercion, either.
The more I investigated, the more convinced I became that no one had proved that there wassystematic coercion. But it seemed as though all of Japan had accepted that premise. I felt
totally isolated.
Several days later, holed up in a hotel, I worked night and day finishing up the article. All
that time, there was a nagging thought in the back of my mind: Why am I, a private citizen,
22

using a private publishing company’s money and a considerable supply of my energy to go to
South Korea, interview everyone I possibly can, and gather evidence to clear Japan’s name?
The Japanese government should be doing this!
Was there actually official coercion? If so, then it would have been in violation ofinternational law. Japan would be obligated to apologize.
When Japan annexed Korea, a sincere effort was made to unite the two countries. Koreans
were exhorted to become loyal subjects of Japan’s Emperor — to become Japanese. Even in
the context of the value system of the time, abducting Korean women to provide sex services
to the Japanese military would have been betraying the Koreans. It would have been a state
crime — an unforgivable state crime. And certainly, some sort of compensation would havebeen warranted.
My opinion on this subject has not changed at all. But I was shocked that the Japanese
government had apologized without benefit of an investigation.

Four proposals in 1992 article
There is not one civil servant who will protect Japan’s honor. The Defense Agency (nowDefense Ministry) and Self-Defense Forces can protect Japan’s sovereignty in the event of anarmed attack. But there is no government office, there are no civil servants, to defend Japan’shonor in the face of a scurrilous, indirect attack, i.e., an attack on Japan’s honor, byconducting an investigation and countering the attack effectively.
Such matters should be within the purview of the Foreign Ministry. As described previously,that entity is planning to launch a fact-finding investigation. But what is the ministry’s reason
for waiting until now, after lies about the comfort women have spread all over the world, andJapan is being condemned from all quarters? I am even more outraged that it forced a prime
minister to apologize.
My essay, entitled “Behind the Comfort Women Controversy,” appeared in the March 10,1992 issue of Bungei Shunju. I am glad that I was able to make a difference at a time when
the conventional wisdom in Japan was that comfort women were victims of official coercion,and the discussion had turned to how the victims should be compensated.
My essay jump-started a huge debate focusing on official coercion. Before I trace the path ofthat debate, there’s another point I would like to make: we must not do anything that would
result in the abrogation of the treaty signed with Korea in 1965 or destroy the foundation ofJapan-South Korea relations, built with great effort on the part of both nations over the years
since then.
Although the two nations had already settled their past differences, a debate began, not onlyin the South Korean mass media, but in Korean government circles, over whether theJapanese government should compensate former comfort women. It has not subsided. In aspeech delivered in March 2005, President Roh Moo-hyun said that “we should delve into thepast, and if we discover that apologies are needed, they should be made from the heart, andcompensation should be paid, if justified.” More recently, the situation has deteriorated so
23much that the U.S. Congress debated a resolution demanding that the Japanese government
issue a formal apology to the former comfort women.
In my essay, I offered four proposals to be adopted for the sake of friendship between Japanand South Korea.
1.

The issue of compensation was resolved when the treaty between Japan and Korea andits ancillary agreements were concluded in 1965. Care should be taken to avoid
abrogating these pacts, as they form the foundation of Japan-South Korea relations.

2.

Both Japan and Korea should make an effort to explain to their citizens the terms of the1965 treaty, how much compensation was paid to Korea, and how it was decided towhom compensation would be paid. Then they should publicize information about how
the funds were used. The media of both nations should publicize this information.

3.

The Japanese government should discontinue its habit of apologizing every time Japan is
criticized. Instead, it should review the colonial era from Japan’s perspective.

4.

The South Korean government should establish programs that will provide humanitarian
aid to former comfort women. Japan should cooperate with South Korean efforts, onhumanitarian grounds.

As for my second proposal, in August 1992, by way of making a personal contribution, I
devoted 28 pages of my first book, The Mountain of Misconceptions Separating Japan and
Korea, which dealt with the comfort women controversy, to a Japanese translation of thesalient portions of the White Paper on the Japan-ROK Property Claim Agreement issued by
the Korean government in 1975.
My essay did provoke a reaction in some circles. Older people who lived through the colonial
era said that there was no official coercion; the women were sold into prostitution due topoverty. Their statements, however, were not carried by the mass media. As a result, an
increasing number of discerning Japanese have suddenly developed a dislike for South Korea.
Also, the editorial division of Gendai Koria received numerous telephone calls and lettersfrom Japanese saying they felt like assaulting Koreans, or that they wanted Korean Japanese
to be expelled from Japan, or that they wanted to sever diplomatic relations with South Korea.
Some of the older people were furious: “How can anyone equate volunteer corps with the
comfort women?”
Here is one person’s comment: “At that time, the standard of living was low in Japan, too.
I’m not going to claim that everything was wonderful during the colonial area. There wasdiscrimination against the Koreans. Some of them suffered terribly. But there was absolutely
no connection between the volunteer labor corps and the comfort women. Nor was their any
coercion of the comfort women.”
Some periodicals carried statements from women commentators Sone Ayako and Kamisaka
Fuyuko, both conversant with social issues, to the effect that no proof of official coercion has
been presented. Prostitutes were licensed then, and it wasn’t unusual for Korean or Japanese
girls from poor families to be sold into prostitution.
24But their opinions appeared only in a very few weeklies or monthlies, and never on television
or in the newspapers. It had become taboo to print or say anything that might be construed asa criticism of the former comfort woman who had come forward.
But to shatter the taboo, a few people, myself included, continued the debate. At that point,
our biggest hurdle was Yoshida Seiji’s confession.
Yoshida had claimed he engaged in the abduction of women — “slave hunts,” he called them.
But the more research I did, the more Yoshida’s tale seemed anomalous when compared withother testimonies. Even the Foreign Ministry bureaucrat seemed to believe him: “Why would
a an admitted perpetrator lie?” It seemed very likely that Yoshida was at least partly
responsible for the prime minister’s having to apologize, even though no one had checked hisstory.

25

CHAPTER 3: A CONTROVERSY BUILT ON LIESThe Cheju Island slave hunt farce
Shortly after the periodical carrying my article came out, I received a telephone call from
Hata Ikuhiko, then professor of modern history at Takushoku University. Prof. Hata
expressed an interest in finding out the truth about the comfort women. He told me of his plan
to visit Cheju Island to find out if Yoshida’s confession was true, and also mentioned that hehad spoken to both attorney Takagi Ken’ichi and Yoshida on the telephone. Incidentally, Prof.
Hata provided some additional information about Kim Hak-sun, the comfort woman whom I
had mentioned in my article. He asked Takagi, “Couldn’t you find a former comfort woman
with a more convincing story?” The reply was: “Actually, the same thing occurred to me, so I
went to South Korea to look for some more. The ones I found are much better.”26
Normally, one would expect Takagi, as plaintiff Kim Hak-sun’s attorney, to argue that she
was not a victim of poverty but of abduction by Japanese authorities. But he didn’t; he simply
talked about new plaintiffs. Obviously, Kim Hak-sun was expendable. These people talkabout human rights, but they certainly don’t care about the human rights of the former
comfort women, who are simply pawns in the anti-Japan movement.
At the beginning of this book, I cited a portion of Yoshida’s My War Crimes: Abduction of
Koreans. His description of a comfort woman hunt on Cheju includes details like dates andplace names, and occupies about 50 pages. At the end of March 2007, Prof. Hata visited
Cheju Island, where he began an investigation into Yoshida’s account. He asked Yoshida toaccompany him; when the latter refused, he requested an introduction to one of the other“hunters,” but that was not forthcoming.
Here is the sequence of events relating to the comfort woman hunt on Cheju Island, according
to Yoshida.
DATE

EVENT

05/15/1943

Yoshida, then head of the Mobilization Section, Shimonoseki Branch, Yamaguchi
Prefecture Labor Service Association, receives an order from the Western District Army
Headquarters (in Fukuoka) to mobilize 200 Korean women to join a female volunteer corps
as comfort women in service to the Imperial Army.
Yoshida arrives on Cheju Island, accompanied by nine subordinates.

05/18
05/19

A team of 20 persons, including 10 armed soldiers attached to a local Army unit, hunts for
women at village homes and at a creek where women do their laundry; the team thenproceeds to a shell button factory at Seongwolpo, where they capture women.

05/20

Roundup of comfort women in a fishing village at Ongpo and at a dried-sardine processing
factory.

05/21

Another roundup at a sausage factory in a village at the foot of Chimak in Shinsamen(Shinsamen Cattle-Breeding Union Factory)

05/24

Roundup of female divers near Seogwipo

Total number of women abducted: 205
26

Hata Ikuhiko, Ianfu to senjo no sei (The comfort women and sex in battle zones) (Tokyo:
Shinchosha, 1999).

26

During his investigation, Prof. Hata visited the sites named in Yoshida’s account. He founddecisive evidence in the form of an article in a local newspaper (the Cheju Newspaper)signed by Heo Yeong-seon and dated August 14, 1989.
Yoshida’s book was published in Japan in 1983; it was translated into Korean and issued inSouth Korea in 1989. Heo conducted her own investigation, the results of which were, as she
wrote: “The island residents dismissed the story, saying it was nonsense” and “It has createda sensation, but no one will back it up.”
When he returned to Japan, Prof. Hata telephoned me excitedly. Here is a translation of theentire article:(Headlines)
Empire of Japan “captured 205 comfort women in Cheju”
How I Abducted Koreans ... written by a Japanese, creates a sensation
Residents of Cheju, furious at shameless Japanese commercialism, denounce it as a hoax
Former head of Mobilization Section, Yamaguchi Prefecture Labor Service Association,
claims he abducted women at button factory in Seongwolpo, and in Ongpo and Bophwan-li(Text)
Forty-four years after liberation, an account of the capture, during the imperial era, of 205
Cheju women destined to serve as comfort women has had a tremendous impact on thiscountry. However, the lack of evidence to support the account has caused an even greatercommotion.
The account in question is to be found in a book entitled How I Abducted Koreans, written
by Yoshida Seiji. As the head of the Mobilization Section of the Yamaguchi Prefecture
Labor Service Association, Yoshida was assigned to abduct Koreans from 1942 until
Japan’s defeat. The 1983 edition of the book was translated and published by Cheong-gye
Research Institute’s Modern History Division.27
The author describes abductions of men in Gwanju and of women on Cheju Island, in which
he personally participated.
He even provides the details of the order he received, as follows:$ Volunteer corps of 200 Korean women to serve as entertainers for the Imperial Army
$ Age: 18-29$ Only healthy women accepted$ Duration: One year
$ Remuneration: ¥30 per month$ Clothing allowance: ¥20 (to be paid in advance)$ Place of assignment: central China$ Recruiting areas: southwestern Korea and Cheju Island$ Departure date: 12:00 noon, 30 May 1943
$ Meeting place: Western Army, Unit 74

27

Translated by Nishioka Tsutomu.

27

“We caught all the young women in the tiny village, loaded them (in a truck) and drove off
at full speed. When we turned onto a road that runs between rocky hills, we could see
Piyangdo Island. Sailboats dotted the vast ocean, and there was a veil of mist on the horizon.
(...) The building we entered served as both office and factory. Four or five men were doingclerical work there. We were welcomed by a stocky old man who said he was head of anindustrial association. ‘We’re going to round up all women around 20 years old,’ I told him.
‘We’re going to search the factory and take the women away. I command you to assistus!’”28
The author has no qualms about using obscene, discriminatory language.
However, immediately after Japan’s defeat, the vice minister of the interior sent a
communiqué to all prefectural governors. Subsequently, an emergency order was issued toevery police station to destroy official records and other documents relating to theconscription of Koreans.
No one witnessed the abduction of 15 or 16 women at the shell-button factory on the coastof Cheju Island, or other abductions in Bophwan-li and other villages. Therefore, theseaccounts are extremely dubious.
Chon Oktan (85), a resident of Seongsan-li, told us, without hesitation: “It’s not true. There
are only a little over 250 houses in this village. If an incident that serious, where 15 people
were abducted, had taken place, everyone would have heard about it. But no one did.”
Local history specialist Kim Bong-ok, furious, said: “This is a prime example of thebrutality and barbarity of the Japanese. The author writes about acts that most people wouldfind too shameful to describe. We shouldn’t dignify what he produced by calling it a book.
When it first came out in 1983, I tried to track it down for several years, but some of it isgroundless. It is, of course, a totally immoral book that demonstrates the hatefulness of theJapanese. It reeks of commercialism.”

By the time Prof. Hata went to Cheju, Ms. Heo had changed jobs; she was now head of theculture desk at Jemin Ilbo. The first words she said to him when they met were, “Why would
anyone invent a story like that?” Hata was at a loss for an answer.
He then proceeded to interview several former officers of the shell-button factory at
Seongsan-po, but none of them could corroborate Yoshida’s story.
According to Yoshida, the order to conduct the comfort women hunt was transmitted down
the following chain of command: Western District Army → governor of Yamaguchi
Prefecture →Shimonoseki Police Department → Labor Service Association, Shimonoseki
Branch → manager of the Mobilization Division. But when Hata attempted to verify the
information, he was told that there was no such chain of command.
Later, exhaustive investigations conducted by historians Itakura Yoshiaki 29 and Uesugi
Chitoshi 30 revealed that Yoshida’s chronology and other aspects of his story were totallyimplausible.31
28
29

Description of the hunt for comfort women on Cheju Island in Yoshida, op. cit..
See Shokun!, July 1992.

28

When asked by Prof. Yoshimi Yoshiaki and others in May 1993 to see the journal he had
kept during the war, Yoshida responded: “I can’t show it to you. If I did, someone might
attack my family.” “In some cases, I changed dates and place names.” In other words, headmitted that he had stretched the truth.32
Unfortunately, Ms. Heo’s signed article in the Cheju newspaper, critical evidence in any
investigation into the reliability of Yoshida’s confession, was never picked up by any ofSouth Korea’s major dailies. In the ROK, the notion that 12-year-old schoolgirls werecompelled to become comfort women has quickly taken root. A film purporting to be adocudrama shows military police descending upon a peaceful village and abducting wailing
women and girls. Young teenagers are also abducted. Mothers with infants at their breasts are
abducted. Koreans who see these images in dramas — Koreans who never experienced thecolonial era — believe them to be genuine. We can thank Yoshida Seiji for telling lies thatspread like wildfire through the ROK, and were embraced as fact by young South Koreans.
There doesn’t seem to be any way to undo the damage he has done.
The truth is on our side, certainly, but how are we to publicize the fact that Yoshida’s
confession is spurious? It was extremely frustrating to be unable to answer this question.

More lies: “Kwantung Army Recruits 20,000 comfort women”
By around 1997, five years after Prof. Hata had conducted his investigation, it was possible todebate the comfort women issue openly, on television and in the newspapers. I will discuss
the debate in detail later. By then even Asahi Shimbun had lost faith in Yoshida, who at longlast was out of the limelight.
There was another account that attested to official coercion of comfort women. Its author was
Hara Zenshiro, a former Kwantung Army staff officer. Hara claimed that he had been asked
by the Government-General of Korea to recruit 8,000 comfort women in 1941, when theJapanese Army mobilized a large number of troops for maneuvers in preparation for war
against the Soviet Union. His testimony is included in Military Prostitutes, published in
1973.33 Author Senda Kako claims to have spoken to Hara in person.
The Army reluctantly abandoned the “special maneuvers,” actually preparation for war
against the Soviet Union, immediately before they were to take effect. What is important
here is that comfort women were to be mobilized as well as soldiers.

30
31

See Shokun! August 1992.
For details, see Hata, op. cit., Chapter 7.

32

Yoshimi Yoshiaki and Kawata Fumiko, eds. Jugun ianfu wo meguru 30 no uso to shinjitsu (Thirtylies and truths about military comfort women) (Tokyo: Otsuki Shoten, 1997).
33

Senda Kako, Jugun ianfu: seihen, zokuhen (Military prostitutes, vols. 1 and 2) (Tokyo: Futabasha,1973); (Tokyo: San’ichi Shinsho, 1978) (reissue).

29

Major (later Lt.-Col.) Hara Zenshiro, Kwantung Army rear staff officer, estimated thesexual needs of the soldiers in the tactical forces and the amount of money they had at theirdisposal, as well as the physical capacity of the women who serviced them. Hara came up
with the figure of 20,000 for the number of comfort women needed, and departed for Korea
by plane to recruit them. From his statement we can see that at that time, i.e., 1941, theKorean peninsula was already a source of supply for comfort women. Actually, they saythat only 10,000 women were recruited, but that does not change the fact that Korea was thesource of supply.
I wonder what sort of comfort women, specifically, were recruited in Korea. Hara Zenshiro
had retired to the southern part of Osaka City. He owned a modest home in a new
development. In person, he seemed like a pleasant elderly gentleman.
I opened the conversation with the following question:“When a new unit was formed to comply with mobilization orders, it was customary to
recruit the required number of comfort women in Korea, was it not?”“You want to know about the comfort women, I assume. I just happened to be in charge oflogistics then. That’s right, I was a staff officer or, more accurately, “rear staff officer.” I
belonged to the 3rd Operations Section of Kwantung Army Headquarters. But I don’t
remember much about those days, though they’re mentioned quite often now.”“So, you’re saying that comfort women were recruited in Korea for the special maneuvers.
You’re sure about that. Do you know exactly how they were recruited in Korea?”“I don’t have a clear recollection. But I think I went to the General Affairs Division of theGovernor-General’s Office and asked for their assistance. I don’t know what happened after
that. Personally, I made sure that my involvement ended there.”“Then you just stated how many women you needed and asked the Governor-General’s
Office to recruit them?”“Yes, that’s how it was.”“Then how did the Korean Governor-General’s Office, having received the request from theArmy, go about recruiting comfort women? In those days, the situation being what it was,an order from the Army ... I mean a request ... well, it might as well have been an order, waslaw, or so I’ve heard. It couldn’t be refused or ignored.”“I really can’t comment about that. My guess is that the Governor-General’s Office sent
requests to each province. The provinces passed them on to districts, and the districts to themen. You probably know men means ‘village.’”“So the village headman was ultimately responsible for recruiting the women, then? Were
the headmen Koreans?”“I don’t know the details.”“I’d like to change the subject. What were the criteria you used to arrive at the estimate that
20,000 comfort women were needed to service 700,000 soldiers? You mentioned the sexual
needs of the soldiers and the amount of spending money they had, as well as the physicalcapacity of the women who serviced them.”

30

“Well, they didn’t teach us such things at the Military Staff School, and all I was taught as arear staff officer was how to replenish supplies of ammunition, provisions and fodder. So
I’m at a loss to tell you how I did the calculations, and I don’t remember clearly, but it’s
likely that I based my calculations on prior experience — the war against China, that is.
Also, some of my colleagues said 20,000, but I don’t think they recruited more than 8,000
34
women.”

Reading this conversation, one could certainly fall prey to the delusion that the Korean
Governor-General’s Office supplied comfort women to the Kwantung Army. But this accountcrumbles under analysis. It is even possible that Senda never even met former Staff Officer
Hara, and invented this conversation.
Research done by Uesugi Chitoshi, author of “Exposé of Senda Kako’s Military Prostitutes:
Invented Kwantung Army Requisition for 20,000 Comfort Women,” 35 and historian Kato
Masao reveals that Hara’s testimony is not credible, for the following reasons.
Kato read my article in Bungei Shunju and, in the spring of 1992, came to visit me at theeditorial division of Gendai Koria (I was then editor-in-chief). Born before World War II, hebegan an impassioned speech, the point of which was that there had been no official coercionof comfort women. I met with him several times after that, and he began investigating the
doubtful portions of Hara Zenshiro’s testimony in depth. The result was a superb essay that
we published in Gendai Koria.36
Here is a summary of those errors.
$ Maj. Katogawa Kotaro, formerly attached to the Military Affairs Section, MilitaryService Bureau, Ministry of War; and Lt.-Col. Imaoka Yutaka, former staff officer of the
Kwantung Army (logistics), who had control of the budget for the Kwantung Army’s
special maneuvers, told Kato, independently, that there was no plan to recruit comfort
women.
$ Preparations for the Kwantung Army’s special maneuvers were made amidst such secrecythat even sendoffs for new draftees had to be canceled. Therefore, an act as overt as themobilization of comfort women would have been totally out of the question. The Armyestimated that the maneuvers would last for two months. In any case, there were plenty of
Korean pimps already operating in Manchuria.

34

Senda, op. cit. (San’ichi Shinsho reissue), pp. 103-4.

35

Uesugi Chitoshi, “Senda Kako cho Jugun ianfu wo kiru: maboroshi no Kan tokuen jugun ianfu ni
man nin chobo yosei” (Exposé of Senda Kako’s Military prostitutes: invented Kwantung Army requisition for
20,000 comfort women) in Getsuyo Hyoron (Monday review), 28 September 1992; summarized in Uesugi
Chitoshi, Kensho jugun ianfu: jugun ianfu mondai nyumon (The truth about military prostitutes: introduction to
the comfort women controversy) (Tokyo: Zenbosha, 1993).
36

Kato Masao, “Senda Kako cho Jugun ianfu no judaina ayamari” (Serious errors in Senda Kako’s
Military prostitutes), Gendai Koria, February and March, 1993.

31

$ In the excerpt from Senda’s book quoted above, Hara Zenshiro describes his standing as
staff officer in charge of logistics with the 3rd Operations Section of Kwantung Army
Headquarters. However, that is incorrect. Hara was attached to the 1st Operations Section.
Mr. Kato examined resources at the Archives of the National Institute for Defense Studies.
Hara’s military career progressed as follows: Between August 1, 1939 and October 5,1941, he served as staff officer with the 1st Operations Section of Kwantung Army
Headquarters. From October 6, 1941 to January 11, 1942, he was staff officer with the
Office of the Inspector General of Transportation, Headquarters of the General Staff.
From August 2, 1943 until the war ended, Hara was staff officer with the 4th Section of
Kwantung Army Headquarters, where he was responsible for Manchurian policy andinternal guidance. He was never attached to the 3rd Section of Kwantung Army
Headquarters. It is hard to believe that he would have forgotten these details of his
military career.
$ By 1992, Hara Zenshiro was no longer alive. Mr. Kato questioned Senda Kako twice bytelephone in 1992 about the comfort women mobilization plan described in his book.
Senda’s response was: “The plan to mobilize 20,000 comfort women is mentioned in abook entitled The Kwantung Army, by Musashi University Professor Shimada Toshihiko,which came out in 1965, before mine did. 37 On p. 17, Shimada describes a plan tomobilize 20,000 comfort women. I based what I wrote on his theory.” It would seem that
Senda was admitting that he had never interviewed former Staff Officer Hara.
$ In Kwantung Army, Shimada writes: “Staff Officer Hara Zenshiro recounted an episodeduring his career involving making elaborate calculations to estimate the sexual needs ofthe soldiers, the amount of spending money they had, and the physical capacity of thewomen. He then flew to Korea, where he managed somehow to recruit 10,000 (not the
20,000 planned) Korean women. He transported them to the plains of northern Manchuria,
where facilities were built for them, and they began working.” It is likely that Senda
constructed his “interview” with Hara from this passage.
$ Then what is the basis for the description in The Kwantung Army? Since Prof. Shimada
too was deceased by then, there is no way to obtain an unimpeachable answer to thisquestion. Therefore, we must conclude that Senda’s theory about a plan to recruit 20,000
comfort women is erroneous.38

Only men rounded up
After the article stating that the claim that comfort women were abducted is unsupported
appeared in the April 1992 issue of Bungei Shunju, Messrs. Hata Ikuhiko and Kato Masao
37

Shimada Toshihiko, Kanto gun (Kwantung Army) (Tokyo: Chuko Shinsho, 1965); reissued in 1965
by Kodansha).
38

In the previously cited Ianfu to senjo no sei (The comfort women and sex in battle zones), Hata
Ikuhiko’s opinion, based on a journal kept by former Sgt. Murakami Sadao, aide to Staff Officer Hara (andpublished in 1975) and the testimonies of former military police officers, is that comfort stations were
established for the exclusive use of the military during the Kwantung Army’s special maneuvers. However, theKorean prostitutes were taken there by their pimps, not abducted by authorities.

32

began their analyses of the testimonies of Yoshida Seiji and Hara Zenshiro. I participatedenthusiastically in these investigations as editor-in-chief of Gendai Koria. No evidence wasfound to corroborate accusations of abductions.
In fact, after my article appeared, four or five officers of the South Korean group known as
Association for the Pacific War Victims and some of their Japanese supporters contacted merequesting a meeting. They were in Japan in connection with a court proceeding.
I thought they might assault me, but agreed to meet them at a coffee shop in Tokyo. By
February 1992, the victims’ group had splintered into three organizations. When Ms. Aoyagi
was recruiting plaintiffs, as described earlier, there was only one organization: theAssociation for the Pacific War Victims.
The Association parted ways with Ms. Aoyagi and her group due to various differences(including disagreement about how to proceed with the lawsuit), choosing instead to cast its
lot with attorney Takagi Ken’ichi. Yang Sun-in, mother-in-law of reporter Uemura Takashi,
was executive director of the Association. This is the same group that former comfort woman
Kim Hak-sun approached. As I mentioned earlier, some people remained with Ms. Aoyagi
and her lawsuit.
There was a third victims’ group led by Kim Gyeong-seok. When he was working for a
Japanese company as a laborer during the war, Kim was assaulted by company overseers,
sustaining injuries that left him disabled. His group has instituted suit against Japanese
corporations.
It was members of this third group, Kim’s group, who had asked me to meet with them. They
told me that the Association had split again, and the chairman and accountant had been
expelled. Uemura’s mother-in-law, Yang Sun-in, was the new chair. The ousted chairperson
was now working under Kim Gyeong-seok, moving forward with a new campaign.
Mr. Kim said that the Japanese media had not printed a word about the fragmentation of the
Association; their focus was on former comfort women and Yang Sun-in. He told me that I
was the only person who had described the situation accurately (that there were now threevictims’ groups), and thanked me.
Pointing to the issue of Bungei Shunju that he had brought with him, Mr. Kim said, “Almost
everything in this is correct. Could you please sign it for me?” Then, turning more serious, hechanged the subject.
“Yoshida Seiji says he went on comfort women hunts, but he’s a liar. There weren’t any
roundups or abductions.”“How can you be so sure?”“Along with my older brother, I was conscripted to work in a munitions factory in Japan. We
are both victims, so we know what things were like then. There were roundups of malelaborers, but not of women, as Yoshida claims.”

33

“As you wrote in your article, Kim Hak-sun, the former comfort woman who came forward,
wasn’t abducted. She was sold to a kisaeng house because she was poor. I saw her the otherday in South Korea, and told her, “You have a nerve coming forward!”“Why?”“The Japanese government has an information bureau, the Cabinet Research and Intelligence
Office, right? I suspect that that office is behind the comfort women controversy. I think the
Cabinet Research and Intelligence Office arranged for former kisaeng Kim Hak-sun to comeforward and file a lawsuit in Japan, and for that guy Yoshida to make up his story.”“I think the plan was to spread these lies as widely as possible. Then they have someone likeyou write an article exposing the lies. The objective of these plots is to convince everyone
that laborers like us were never conscripted so they won’t have to pay us compensation. We
were mobilized because of a government order based on the Mobilization Act and we were
injured, but we’ve never received any compensation. We’re not trying to advertise a lie. But
if we’re lumped together with the comfort women and their claims, which are baseless, we
may not get any compensation. Liars like Yoshida and Kim Hak-sun hurt our cause.”
As I listened to Kim, I remember feeling very strange and thinking, “If the Cabinet Researchand Intelligence Office were determined to defend Japan’s honor and interests to the point ofcreating misinformation, then I wouldn’t have had to launch this desperate investigation into
the comfort women problem!”

Korean pimps hold the key to this controversy
At around the same time, several South Koreans in succession told me that there was no
official coercion of comfort women.
A Korean journalist I met in Seoul told me, “I’m not writing anything more about thiscontroversy.” When I asked him why, he said, “I’ve interviewed quite a few former comfort
women. All of them are happy to talk about how horrible life was in the brothels. But most ofthem clam up when I ask them how they got there, or got taken there. When I press them,
there always seems to be a pimp involved.”
I asked him if the pimps were Japanese. His answer: “Do you actually think Japanese would
have ventured into rural Korea during annexation?” The more women he interviewed, themore obvious it became that they had been sold and that pimps were involved in thetransactions.
He added, “At first, when I started interviewing people, I thought, ‘Japan really did a terrible
thing.’ But the interviews helped me realize that this type of situation would have existed inany country at war.”
Then he whispered, “There’s a dark side to this problem.”“In that case,” I thought, “why stop writing about it? Why not write an article that will correctthese misunderstandings once and for all?” But at that time hostility toward Japan was at a34

peak. I figured that the situation in South Korea being what it was, there was no point inmaking such a request, so I didn’t say anything.
Dark side: Those words made a strong impression on my mind, or rather, in the pit of mystomach, and I just couldn’t forget them. That may be why I named my third book ofcommentary Penetrating the Darkness.
At around the same time, Ko Jun-seok, a left-leaning South Korean intellectual residing inJapan, told Sato Katsumi, president of Japan’s Modern Korea Institute. “There were no
comfort women hunts by the Japanese military of the sort Yoshida describes. Some people
from my village became comfort women. A relative of mine, a widow, created quite a stirwhen she traveled with some girls from the village to China, set up a brothel and made a pileof money. Other girls from the village went there to work, too. At that time, Cheju Island waspoor. It wasn’t at all unusual for girls to be sold into prostitution. Why would the military go
to the trouble of rounding up comfort women? Anyway, if they had, rumors would havespread, but I never heard about any such thing.”
Moreover, a former South Korean National Assembly member, whom I’ll call Mr. K (apolicymaker in the opposition New Democratic Party in the 1970s) tells me the same thing
every time he visits me: “Japan didn’t round up comfort women. Why can’t the Japanese
understand this? The February 26 revolt occurred because soldiers from northeastern Japan
were sick of being poor and having their younger sisters sold into prostitution. Korean
farming villages were even poorer then.”
The late Lee Myeong-yeong, a distinguished scholar who specialized in North Korean
problems, and a former professor at Sungkyunkwan University, wrote a great many books,
including The Four Kim Il-sungs. He was my mentor, and he too told me that there was no
official coercion of comfort women, adding the following information.
When occupying Soviet troops invaded, Lee Myeong-yeong was on the faculty of the Keijo
Imperial University Medical School. He came from a family of physicians who practiced on
the east coast of North Korea, where Japanese were fairly numerous. Lee Myeong-yeong’s
father and the Japanese school principal were community leaders and good friends. The
principal often visited the Lee home to play go with the father. When the Soviets arrived,
Japanese were rounded up and confined in school classrooms, men and women separately.
Then the Soviets demanded women. The single women said, “You married women havehusbands, so we’ll go.” But the married women said, “No, you have no experience with suchthings. We will go.” The principal’s wife sent a messenger to Prof. Lee’s father to apprise
him of what was happening, and ask for help.
As it would happen, the Soviet commander was being treated for a venereal disease as an
outpatient at Dr. Lee’s hospital. He had gone to a private hospital rather than consulting hisarmy surgeon because he was afraid his career might suffer if word got around about his
condition.
Lee Myeong-yeong was an intern at that time. Assisting his father, he was painting medicineon the commander’s penis.
35Dr. Lee addressed the commander: “I advise you to avoid Japanese women. They don’t
understand the concept of chastity. You know those obi they wear? Well, they use them as
pillows when the need arises. The safest thing to do is to patronize professionals. They’resafe because they undergo medical examinations. If your men have sex with amateurs, they
will all end up like you.”“That sounds like good advice.” Most likely, the commander had raped Japanese women in
Manchuria; he probably believed that he’d contracted venereal disease from them. He
couldn’t bear the thought of the men in his unit being sullied by venereal disease. So herescinded the order to take women from the school, and issued another to look for denizens of
the pleasure quarters. That is how the Japanese women confined to the school were rescued.
There is another compelling story, which involves former South Korean President Lee
Seoung-man (also known in the Western world as Syngman Rhee). The first president of the
new republic, Lee chose as many anti-Japanese themes as anti-communist ones for his
national slogans. During diplomatic negotiations with Japan, he continually brought up theinjustices of Japanese annexation and demanded huge amounts of compensation. But even
President Lee never mentioned comfort women during those negotiations. He knew that they
existed, without a doubt. Everybody knew. But it never occurred to Lee to demandcompensation from Japan for the comfort women. What he demanded was compensation for
conscripts (soldiers and laborers). He believed that the Japanese government shouldcompensate those who were forced to work for the Japanese (back pay and reparations).
Official coercion of comfort women, if it had occurred, would certainly have been mentioned
at post-annexation negotiations. But since President Lee realized that poverty was the villain
in this case, he didn’t broach the subject.
After being told so many times, and by reliable sources, that there was no official coercion of
comfort women, I became convinced that I was hearing the truth.

Comfort woman saves enough to buy five houses in Tokyo
In 1992 and 1993, the Japanese government scoured documents at government agencies tolearn exactly how comfort women were recruited. Meanwhile, the media, including Asahi
Shimbun, conducted the same type of exhaustive search for proof of coercion.
The first conclusion reached was that there was no relationship between volunteer corps,
which were part of an official program, and the recruiting of comfort women.
Second, no evidence was found implicating any branch of the government in the abduction of
comfort women. However, documents were found that attest to official, well-meaning
government efforts intended to prevent private brokers from resorting to criminal recruiting
methods, as already described.
Third, the confessions of Yoshida Seiji and Hara Zenshiro were discredited. No othertestimony corroborating the coercion theory has been found.

36

What remained was the testimony of former comfort women who came forward in 1992. I
obtained as many of those testimonies as I could and analyzed them. While doing that, I
frequently was forced to ponder the inexplicable aspects of human nature.
In March 1992, I read a newspaper article about a former comfort woman named Moon Ok-ju,
who had come to Japan to request refund of the monies in a wartime postal savings account.
Ms. Moon was a comfort woman in Burma between 1942 and 1944. During that time, shedeposited cash received from soldiers at the unit’s military post office. She had lost her
passbook, but she submitted a request to the Shimonoseki Post Office for a refund of ¥6,000
or 7,000.
The post office checked her story, and on May 11, 1992, found the original accounting
records for military savings. Between June 1943 and September 1945, Ms. Moon had made12 deposits, and her account had a balance of ¥26,145. Normally, the discovery of a sum ofmoney this large would have made the news. In the 1940s, ¥5,000 would have purchased ahouse in Tokyo. She could have bought five houses!
But the newspapers gave the story very little coverage. Its shrillness about the comfort
women controversy notwithstanding, Asahi Shimbun didn’t even mention how much Ms.
Moon had in her account.
With the payment of $500 million to the South Korean government in accordance with the1965 treaty, Japan had fulfilled its obligation to compensate South Korean citizens, including
those who had had military savings accounts. Also in 1965, Japan enacted a law stipulatingthat the right of South Koreans to claim compensation for savings accounts or for any otherreason expired with that expenditure.
Moreover, the South Korean government paid compensation to holders of savings accounts
like Moon Ok-ju. Since she was ruled ineligible for compensation because she had lost her
passbook, Ms. Moon should have been negotiating with the South Korean government.
Perhaps Japan could assist her by producing a copy of the original accounts register from themilitary post office.
But she was having none of that. To the post office, she said, “Right of claim for individuals
has not expired. When I saved that money, I was a Japanese, so give it back to me rightaway.” Thinking her request was perfectly reasonable, she kept asking for the money. A
support group of Japanese was formed for her, and her ridiculous demands were publicizedby the media without comment.
Watching the reports, I realized that the comfort women controversy farce had gone as far as
it could go.
To begin with, one former comfort woman claims to be the victim of official coercion andsues the Japanese government. It comes to light that during her comfort woman career, whichlasted a bit more than three years, she made ¥26,000, a huge amount of money. Is this the sortof life a sex slave leads? Is this the fate of a victim of abduction?
Why didn’t Asahi Shimbun print the information about the ¥26,000 in her bank account? Thiswas certainly information manipulation. I suppose the newspaper couldn’t bring itself to print
37

facts, because they contradicted the previous portrait of an unfortunate comfort woman who
was abducted in a slave hunt and then raped. This is the same tactic the paper used earlier(failing to mention that Kim Hak-sun was sold to a kisaeng house). I’ll return to Ms. Moon’s
story a bit later.
Now back to Kim Hak-sun, about whom I wrote in the Bungei Shunju article: she changed
her story after the magazine came out. In the lawsuit complaint she submitted in December
1991, here is how she described having become a comfort woman.
Her adoptive father took her to China. They rode to Pyongyang in a truck. Then they rode forthree days in a train that transported only soldiers. They changed trains many times. She
remembers passing through Andong and Beijing. All she knows about her final destination isthat it was in North China, Tiebizhen. They arrived at Tiebizhen at night. It was a small
village. She said goodbye to her adoptive father there. She and her companions were taken toa Chinese family’s house by an officer. They were led to a room and the door was locked
behind them.

But when she was interviewed by South Korean scholars, beginning in July 1992, Kim said
she was abducted, and violently so, by Japanese military personnel. She also added
information not mentioned in her first account.
We arrived in Beijing. We ate lunch in a restaurant. When we came out, some Japanesesoldiers called my stepfather over. The officer with two stars on his uniform spoke to mystepfather: “Are you Koreans?” My stepfather told him, yes, we were, and that he had brought
us to China to make some money. The officer said, “If you want to make money, why don’t
you do it in your own country? You must be spies! Get over here!” Then he led my stepfather
away.
Soldiers led me and the older girl away, separately. There was a truck at the end of the roadwith no cover on the back. There were about 40 or 50 people in it. They told us to get on thetruck. When we said no, the people on both sides of us just picked us up and put us on thetruck. After a while, the officer who had taken my stepfather away came back. Then the truck
left. The officer was in the passenger seat. We were shocked and scared, so we just made39
ourselves small in the truck and cried.

If this were a true account, it would certainly make the case for abductions (slave hunts). But
when Kim Hak-sun spoke to Takagi Ken’ichi, she didn’t say anything about having been
abducted by soldiers in Beijing. Common sense tells us that she would not have omitted
information from the complaint, especially information that would help win the lawsuit. In
that case, we must, regrettably, assume that this change to her account was fictional,
prompted by my Bungei Shunju article.

Intentionally falsified testimonies

39

Volunteer Corps Research Group of the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual
Slavery by Japan, ed., Testimonies, Part 1: Korean Women Abducted and Forced To Become Comfort Women,
written in Korean and translated by Nishioka Tsutomu.

38

The Japanese government conducted its own investigation and found no evidence of official
coercion. Unfortunately, it had already issued an apology. South Korea is insisting that Japanacknowledge that there was coercion.
It is shameful for the elderly women to come forward and admit they were comfort women,
unless they say they were coerced. They can’t say, in public, that her parents sold them. Thisis something one keeps to oneself. As we demonstrated earlier, Kim Hak-sun changed her
story. Therefore, these testimonies need to be verified. The Japanese government interviewed
16 former comfort women in South Korea from July 26-30, 1993. Attorney Fukushima
Mizuho was present at the interviews, representing human rights activists. (She is currently
chairwoman of the SDP (Social Democratic Party), but had not yet been elected to the Diet in
1993.
The government’s comment about the testimonies given at the interviews was, “The women
do not have clear recollections of portions of their stories. We are not going to press them on
every little detail. We will simply accept the testimonies as given.”40 No attempt was made toverify the testimonies.
But at the same time, South Korean scholars were conducting their own investigation.
Between July and December of 1992, they interviewed more than 40 persons. Fifteen of thescholars formed a group called Volunteer Corps Research Group, headed by Prof. Ahn
Byong-jick.
Prof. Ahn (now emeritus) was on the faculty of Seoul University at the time of theinvestigation. He is one of the foremost authorities on modern Korean economic history, andhas produced many empirical works on the subject. Prof. Ahn joined the group in June 1992;
he was the practical advisor for the interviews.
When I met with Prof. Ahn in 2006, I asked him about the work the group had done in 1992.
What had motivated him to join the Volunteer Corps Research Group?
“I thought that if the group consisted solely of activists, it might be difficult to conduct
interviews that probed for the truth. Since I am very familiar with the methodologies ofhistoriography, I thought I could be of help. I was also interested in learning more about the
comfort women controversy. I was concerned about the fact that comfort women and thefemale volunteer corps had intermingled in people’ minds.
“There was some opposition from the activists to my approach. I wanted the research to bedone carefully so it would stand up to investigation. For that and other reasons, I withdrew
from the group after Testimonies, Part 1 was released.”
In June 1992, after Prof. Ahn joined the group, it began preparations for the interviews bycreating separate chronologies for the comfort women and female volunteer corps, andestablishing a record-keeping system for research and resources.

40

Statement of Tanaka Kotaro, councillor, Cabinet Councillors’ Office on External Affairs in Asahi
Shimbun, 05 August 1993.

39

At the same time, interviews of former comfort women registered with the Volunteer Corps
Research Group of the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by
Japan (hereafter abbreviated to Volunteer Corps Research Group) began in earnest. As of
December 1992, 110 former comfort women had registered with the group. Of that number,
55 women were deceased. The group managed to locate more than 40 of the 55 who werestill alive.
Prof. Ahn is a distinguished scholar, so he ensured that the verification work was done
properly. He also taught other group members the proper methods to use. He spent hours
making the chronologies. Since human memory is imperfect, but memories were important, it
was necessary to provide context by citing an event that occurred before or after a vague
memory. He could then verify (or reject) some statements by, for instance, noting that a
particular system wasn’t in place at a certain time. Each comfort woman was interviewed fiveor six times.
Between June and mid-September, the group held weekly meetings (from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00
p.m.) at which the transcripts of the interviews were examined. The result of that process was
Testimonies, Part 1.
In February 1993, when the book was released, the head of our Foreign Ministry’s Northeast
Asia Division happened to be in South Korea to discuss the comfort woman problem. The
head of the Asia Bureau of South Korea’s Foreign Ministry handed him Testimonies, Part 1
and said, “Everything is in this book.” When I heard about this, I ordered the book fromSouth Korea right away and read it from cover to cover. First I read Prof. Ahn’s preface,entitled “Thoughts on Participating in the Research for this Book.” I still remember how
deeply I was moved by it. Here is an excerpt.
One of the greatest difficulties encountered in analyzing our research was the fact thatstatements made by the witnesses frequently did not fit into historical context. It is possiblethat such lapses of memory occur because the witnesses are describing events that occurrednearly 50 years ago. It is also possible that witnesses omit events that they do not want todiscuss, or create other events to replace them. I am also aware that the situation at the timedefies present-day imaginations.
The cases that presented the most serious problems to researchers were those in which thewitnesses seemed to be intentionally distorting the facts.41

I was extremely impressed that Prof. Ahn had included this last sentence in the signed preface
to a collection of testimonies. He continues:
Anticipating such cases, we strived to overcome this difficulty by assigning one researcher
exclusively to a witness, hoping that a rapport would develop. This approach was successful
for the most part, but in some instances we had to discontinue our research on particular
individuals. We told such subjects that we would reinterview them in the future.42
41

Kankoku teishintai mondai taisaku kyogikai, teishintai kenkyukai hen (Volunteer Corps ResearchGroup, Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan), Shogenshu 1: kyosei detsurete ikareta Chosenjin ianfutachi (Testimonies, part 1: Koreans coerced into serving as comfort women),
February 1993.
42

Ibid.

40

Prof. Ahn and his associates interviewed more than 40 women, but were able to use thetestimonies of only 19. This means that they had to discontinue interviews with more thanhalf their subjects because “witnesses seemed to be intentionally distorting the facts,” or forother reasons.
He demonstrated considerable courage at a time when he was extremely likely to be labeled“pro-Japan” and accused of taking the side of the Japanese, especially since the Japanese
government had already issued an apology. Nevertheless, Prof. Ahn behaved as a scholar
should, by doing his research properly and stating the facts, even if they involved saying thatwitnesses had been devious.
In the next section of the preface, Prof. Ahn describes the principles governing his research.
These are the very same principles that I have adhered to throughout my career.
During the early stages of the process, there were some differences among us about whichapproach should be taken. Later we all agreed that our guiding principle would be theexposition of the unvarnished truth. The military comfort women problem is our colonial era
shame of shames. Therefore, our primary challenge lay in deciding how to address the
problem. Since learning the facts was now paramount in our quest for the truth, we conductedfive or six interviews with each individual.43

Analysis of 19 testimonies
I read all 19 testimonies with great care, checking each one for details about how the women
were transported to their destinations. I acquired 26 additional testimonies with names tothem. I obtained five collections of testimonies and studied them. With the exception of theinterviews conducted by Prof. Ahn’s group, all were verbatim transcripts of testimonies offormer comfort women; they had never been analyzed or checked.
Among them, Testimonies of Military Comfort Women and Female Volunteer Corps
Members, edited by Ito Takashi, contains the following disclaimer (in the afterword): “Thetestimonies contained in this book may not be 100% accurate. (...) When we asked a woman
the same question after some time had passed, she sometimes gave us a different answer, oran answer that differed from those given by other individuals.”44
In that case, let us ask how many of the 19 reliable testimonies in the collection issued by
Prof. Ahn’s group claimed they were victims of official coercion. The answer: four.
One woman said she had been transported to Toyama Prefecture; another cited a brothel in
Pusan (South Korea). These claims lack credibility, since neither of these two locations was abattle zone, and both already had pleasure quarters. There was no need for the military totransport comfort women there.

43

Ibid.
Ito Takashi. Shogen jugun ianfu, joshi kinro teishintai: kyosei renko sareta Chosenjin joseitachi(Testimonies of military comfort women and female volunteer corps members: abducted Korean women)(Nagoya: Fubaisha, 1992).
44

41

The other two, already described, were given by Kim Hak-sun and Moon Ok-ju.
Kim Hak-sun told Prof. Ahn’s group that she had been abducted, but her statement was
unreliable because she had not mentioned her abduction in the lawsuit complaint. Moon is thewoman who accumulated more than -26,000 working in a brothel in Burma. In the complaint
prepared by Takagi Ken’ichi, like Kim Hak-sun, Moon said she was deceived by a Korean
and taken to a brothel in Burma. When Prof. Ahn’s group interviewed her, she said thatseveral years before she went to Burma, she had been captured by Japanese military police
and transported against her will to a brothel in Manchuria. This part of her story is suspicious,
given its absence from the lawsuit complaint and the lack of a logical reason for said absence.
These circumstances reduce the number of women abducted by Japanese authorities to zero.
Freelance writer Morikawa Machiko interviewed Moon Ok-ju over a period of more than two
years. Morikawa checked facts as much as she could, referring to the literature on the subject,and even visiting Burma. Then she wrote Moon Ok-ju: I Was a Comfort Woman in a Shield
Division on the Burma Front.45 Like Kim Hak-sun, Moon was sold to a kisaeng house due topoverty.
Ms. Morikawa’s research also shows that Moon Ok-ju’s account of her life in Burma agrees
for the most part with division records. But it was not possible to confirm her story about
being abducted by a military policeman and transported to Manchuria. Her statement to theeffect that five Korean women who worked at the brothel in Manchuria had also worked with
her in Manchuria strains disbelief.
Later on, a few more comfort women offered their testimonies. For instance, in February
2007, a woman named Lee Yong-soo testified at a hearing at the U.S. House ofRepresentatives. Lee’s account differs each time she tells it, and certainly doesn’t present astrong case for official coercion.46
Even today, Prof. Ahn continues to speak out courageously on the comfort women issue. On
a South Korean television program, he said: “Some former comfort women have stated thatthey were recruited by force. However, there is not one objective source in South Korea orJapan that supports their claims.” Also, “There are red-light districts in South Korea, where
many comfort women work. I suggest conducting research to learn why this phenomenon
occurs. I can tell you that it is not the result of coercion.”47 Prof. Ahn has been criticized forsuch statements, but steadfastly refuses to alter them.

45

Morikawa Machiko, Mun Ok-ju: Biruma sensen tate shidan no ianfu datta watashi (I was a comfort
woman in a shield division on the Burma front) (Tokyo: Nashinoki-sha, 1996).
46

Hata Ikuhiko, “Maboroshi no jugun ianfu wo netsuzo shita Kono danwa wa ko naose!” (Howthe Kono Statement should read) in Shokun!, May 2007; translated and issued under the title “No
Organized or Forced Recruitment: Misconceptions about Comfort Women and the Japanese Military” by
the Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact” in 2007.
47“Focus on the News” aired on the MBC Network on 06 December 2006.
42

In March of 2007, Prof. Shimada Yoichi of Fukui Prefectural University met with Prof. Ahn
in Seoul. Here are some of the comments Prof. Ahn made during their conversation.
I was asked to participate in a project that involved exhaustive research, including interviews.
To the best of my knowledge, no sources exist stating that the Japanese military abducted
women and forced them to serve as comfort women. This was an era in which many girls
from poor families were sold, so why would there have been a need for coercion? Such aclaim makes no sense at all.
(...)
One of the women said that she was approached by a man who appeared to be a soldier. There
were plenty of people wearing clothing resembling uniforms then.
(...)
Last year I was castigated for expressing these same views on television, but I have nointention of retracting them. There are no resources that prove official coercion. That is a fact,
and I will not attempt to change the facts.
(...)
Prime Minister Abe must not apologize, even if apologies seem to be the easiest way to48
resolve the problem. Apologies will confuse the debate in South Korea.

Lies spread through South Korea
Two persons confessed to having committed criminal acts, but both of them were lying. The
women who claimed to be victims of official coercion made inconsistent statements wheninterviewed. Their stories often changed from session to session. The female volunteer corps
had no connection with comfort women. When the Japanese government did its own research,no wartime documents indicating that comfort women had been coerced were found,although no pains were spared searching for them.
We are left with absolutely no proof that comfort women were abducted or coerced.
Therefore, one would expect the debate to have ended for good in about 1993. But in August
1993, the Kono Statement was issued.
At this stage, the Japanese government was in a very uncomfortable position, because Prime
Minister Miyazawa had already apologized, despite the fact that no documents had beenfound to support the official coercion argument. South Korea had demanded that Japanacknowledge official coercion, but there was no evidence of official coercion.
At this juncture I would like to mention another exemplary citizen of South Korea, Oh Jaehee, who was ambassador to Japan when the controversy erupted. When he returned to South
Korea in January 1993, and made the following statements at a press conference.

48

Shimada Yoichi, report in Gendai Koria (Modern Korea), May 2007.

43

When Japanese Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi visited South Korea in January of last year,
he apologized on six occasions in connection with the volunteer corps problem. I believe
those apologies were sincere.
There is no limit to the number of “true” stories about the volunteer corps. We don’t know
when we will have heard the last one. We must decide precisely how much more we want tohear before we draw the line.
There is no limit to the number of “true” stories about the volunteer corps that tell us what acertain woman ate for lunch, and what she was wearing.
When asked, “But isn’t it true that the Japanese government has not acknowledged therecruiting of comfort women by force, as South Korean victims have stated, claiming that the
women’s testimonies are not conclusive?”: “The Japanese government is committed to athorough investigation, and cannot make decisions based on uncorroborated testimony.”
No amount of investigation by the Japanese government has yielded evidence pertaining tosome aspects of the problem. In an official investigation, it is impossible to make adetermination solely on the basis of the testimony of persons who have a vested interest in its
outcome. The same would apply to an investigation conducted in our own nation. I do notbelieve that the Japanese government is withholding documents attesting to official
coercion.49
I have asked the Japanese government several times to determine whether coercion was
involved in the recruiting of volunteer corps members, and to provide the whole truth about
the volunteer corps.
Since truth is not finite, we will have to draw the line somewhere.
We cannot delay settling our differences indefinitely if Japan and South Korea are to havefriendly relations in the future.
What we need to do now is put our emotions aside and engage in a civil public debate. Then
we can agree on criteria that will enable us to find a balance between the real and the ideal,
reach a consensus about what differences need to be settled, and apply that to our foreign50
policy toward Japan.

I applaud Mr. Oh for his realistic, cool-headed argument. Unfortunately, when his remarks
were made public, activist groups protested. Kim Young-sam, who was elected president in
December 1992, and whose inauguration was to take place in February, reprimanded theambassador. Mr. Oh was ordered to visit groups of former comfort women and apologize tothem, which he did. When the new president took office, he replaced Mr. Oh.
In January 1992, at an ROK government meeting prior to Prime Minister Miyazawa’s visit toSouth Korea, Mr. Oh made another fair-minded statement: “We must not broach the comfort
women problem at top-level meetings.”
49
50

JoongAng Ilbo (JoongAng Daily), 07 January 1993.
Toitsu Nippo (Onekorea News), a periodical published by Korean residents of Japan, 08 January

1993.

44

According to a report in the July 1992 issue of Monthly Chosun, the head of the South
Korean president’s Secretariat called a meeting prior to Prime Minister Miyazawa’s visit. The
topics of discussion, in which representatives of relevant departments participated, were the
comfort women problem and the trade deficit with Japan. That was the occasion on which
Ambassador Oh recommended that the comfort women problem not be discussed at top-levelmeetings, but at working-level meetings. His recommendation was rewarded with harsh
criticism: “People who have worked in Japan seem to have succumbed to Japanese logic.”
Other participants (the president’s office staff and representatives of ministries witheconomic concerns) argued that the comfort women problem should be broached at top-levelmeetings to extract concessions from the Japanese on the trade deficit.
If we value the disclosure of facts more than anything else, we cannot acknowledge theabduction or coercion of comfort women unconditionally. But those who took that position
were accused of having “succumbed to Japanese logic” and branded pro-Japanese, or traitors
to their race.
At the heart of the problem is the fact that a huge number of South Koreans believe thefabricated stories about official coercion of comfort women. Lies have been given so much
exposure that they have become truth. But they are still lies, like the emperor’s new clothes.
It is time to declare that the emperor is naked.
If they wish to improve Japanese-Korean relations, the South Koreans must expose the lies
for what they are. Neither Japanese nor Korean diplomats have faced this problem squarely,
the former delaying resolution by issuing a statement that more or less concurs with the lies.
Once there was a South Korean diplomat who said, “The emperor is naked.” Once there wasa South Korean scholar who interviewed former comfort women and revealed the untruths intheir testimonies. But we have yet to see a Japanese diplomat as courageous or conscientious
as Oh Jae-hee.

45

CHAPTER 4: JAPANESE DIPLOMACY STUMBLES
Career bureaucrat’s brainstorm: “coercion in the broad sense”
Overseeing the Japanese government’s investigation in 1993 was Ishihara Nobuo, deputy
chief Cabinet secretary. Assisting Ishihara was Tanino Sakutaro, head of the Cabinet
Councilors’ Office on External Affairs. It was Tanino, who had begun his career in theForeign Ministry’s Asia Bureau, who was responsible for the brilliant “solution” to the
comfort women controversy. The proverb “geniuses destroy nations” appears to be apt in thiscase.
The investigation yields no evidence of official coercion. But South Korea demands thatJapan acknowledge official coercion. The prime minister of Japan has already apologized.
The government must announce the findings of its investigation, i.e., that there was no
official coercion. Such an announcement will aggravate Japanese-Korean relations. But theJapanese government cannot admit to past sins for there are only allegations, no proof. Whichleads us to Tanino’s brilliant solution: the expansion of the definition of the word coercion
and the birth of “coercion in the broad sense.”
If you force people to do something against their will, you are coercing them. When the word
coercion is used in connection with the recruiting of comfort women, people generally
assume official coercion (coercion by government or military authorities). The matter of who
does the coercing is objective fact. But according to the Kono Statement, coercion (or thelack thereof) was the subjective judgment of the comfort women. When asked if they wanted
to become comfort women, and they say (subjectively) no, I didn’t, then they were coerced.
Let us extend this definition and apply it to a company employee. He probably doesn’t like to
get up early. If his mother (or his wife) wakes him, then that is coercion. The same logic is atwork here.
All right, then. The government absolutely must use the word coercion. It is acknowledging
coercion, but must acknowledge it in a way that is consistent with examined sources. For thispurpose, the Kono Statement uses “against their own will.”
Now let us examine the Kono Statement, reproduced below in its entirety.
Statement by the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Konoon the result of the study on the issue of “comfort women”
August 4, 1993
The Government of Japan has been conducting a study on the issue of wartime “comfort
women” since December 1991. I wish to announce the findings as a result of that study.
As a result of the study which indicates that comfort stations were operated in extensive areas
for long periods, it is apparent that there existed a great number of comfort women. Comfort
stations were operated in response to the request of the military authorities of the day. The
then Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment andmanagement of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women. The recruitment of
the comfort women was conducted mainly by private recruiters who acted in response to the46request of the military. The Government study has revealed that in many cases they wererecruited against their own will, through coaxing coercion, etc., and that, at times,
administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitments. They lived in miseryat comfort stations under a coercive atmosphere.
As to the origin of those comfort women who were transferred to the war areas, excluding
those from Japan, those from the Korean Peninsula accounted for a large part. The Korean
Peninsula was under Japanese rule in those days, and their recruitment, transfer, control, etc.,
were conducted generally against their will, through coaxing, coercion, etc.
Undeniably, this was an act, with the involvement of the military authorities of the day, thatseverely injured the honor and dignity of many women. The Government of Japan would liketo take this opportunity once again to extend its sincere apologies and remorse to all those,irrespective of place of origin, who suffered immeasurable pain and incurable physical andpsychological wounds as comfort women.
It is incumbent upon us, the Government of Japan, to continue to consider seriously, while
listening to the views of learned circles, how best we can express this sentiment.
We shall face squarely the historical facts as described above instead of evading them, andtake them to heart as lessons of history. We hereby reiterated our firm determination never torepeat the same mistake by forever engraving such issues in our memories through the study
and teaching of history.
As actions have been brought to court in Japan and interests have been shown in this issue
outside Japan, the Government of Japan shall continue to pay full attention to this matter,
including private researched [sic] related thereto.

The first mention of official coercion is in the sentence that begins “The Government study
has revealed that in many cases they were recruited against their own will ... .” Here it statesthat women were recruited from other areas of the world, not just the Korean peninsula.
Then we have: “The recruitment of the comfort women was conducted mainly by private
recruiters who acted in response to the request of the military.” This locution makes it clearthat brokers, private citizens, were the main recruiters. But it places too much emphasis on
the military, giving the impression that the brokers were responding to military requirements,
when they were actually recruiting comfort women simply to make money. It also invites
suspicions of official coercion.
The statement goes on to describe the circumstances of recruitment: “... in many cases they
were recruited against their own will, through coaxing, coercion, etc. ... .” This is coercion in
the broad sense. However, this description also makes it clear that there were many cases, inall recruitment areas, in which comfort women were not recruited against their will, but
voluntarily sought such work. Perhaps the drafters of the statement were thinking of Japanese
comfort women.
The serious flaws in the statement begin with “... at times, administrative/military personnel
directly took part in the recruitments.” We shall return to this later. For the moment, I would
like to focus on the portion that mentions their being transported to “war areas,” which
describes recruitment on the Korean peninsula. Here again, we have coercion in the broad47

sense: “their recruitment, transfer, control, etc., were conducted generally against their will,through coaxing, coercion, etc.”
But the presence of the adverb generally distinguishes this portion of the statement from thatin the preceding paragraph about recruitment, which is less specific. Possibly the word wasinserted so that the sentence would conform to the apocryphal notion that all comfort womenfrom Korea were victims of official coercion, as the great majority of South Koreans believe
they were.
According to media reports, the writers of the statement vacillated over whether or not toinsert generally until the very last minute. The word has fine shades of meaning. If the writers
had used in every case, they would be saying that every single comfort woman recruited in
Korea was coerced. They used generally, however, which means that judging from the whole,on the average, it seems as though they were all coerced, but there were exceptions — there
was at least one woman on the Korean peninsula who voluntarily became a comfort woman.
But the South Koreans interpreted generally as in every case; in their eyes, the Japanese
government had admitted that all comfort women had been coerced.
Now let us return to the recruiting of the comfort women, and the third mention of coercion
in the broad sense: “[The comfort women] lived in misery at comfort stations under acoercive atmosphere.”

Kono Statement: sowing the seeds of future discord
At a press conference held subsequent to the issuance of the Kono Statement, Chief Cabinet
Secretary Kono was asked, “Are you acknowledging official coercion of comfort women?”
Kono answered, “Yes.” The Japanese term used, kyosei renko (literally, forcibly escorted)
usually implies that the entity exercising the force is some sort of authority, but it is the typeof term favored by bureaucrats because of its nuance: one can also interpret it as coercion by
an unspecified entity or individual. Here it refers to facts gleaned from relevant documents,
and no more. However, the statement is worded in such a way that when the Koreans read it
for the first time, they interpret it as an admission of official coercion.
At the heart of the problem is the fact that so many South Koreans believe the comfort
women were victims of official coercion and, even more improbably, that they were sex
slaves. The Kono Statement, with its equivocation “coercion in the broad sense,” doesnothing to dispel their suspicions. It simply leaves the problem unresolved. The Foreign
Ministry bureaucrat was clever. Since the ministry didn’t acknowledge official coercion, he
had hit the ball in bounds, but just by a hair.
I absolutely must take issue, however, with “at times, administrative/military personnel
directly took part in the recruitments.” What is being said here is that government andmilitary authorities took part in the recruiting of comfort women against their will. This istantamount to acknowledging official coercion (coercion in the narrow sense).
After the Kono Statement was issued, I went to the Northeast Asia Division of the Foreign
Ministry, and asked one of the bureaucrats there what formed the basis of the statement. I
48

said I was particularly interested in the basis for “administrative/military personnel directly
took part in the recruitments.”
Since the ministry was aware of my article in Bungei Shunju, I was told that the relevant
bureaucrat was not there or given some other excuse. When I finally spoke to him, he said,“We couldn’t find any documentary evidence of official coercion, so we relied on thetestimonies of the comfort women and on interviews with them.”
In that case, the inclusion of the portion referring to administrative/military personnel was
gravely erroneous and irresponsible, since there was no corroboration for the admission. I
was furious at the infringement of the human rights of those who were government or
military authorities before the war. I wrote several magazine articles on the subject, but there
was very little reaction.
It wasn’t until four years later that I learned what “administrative/military personnel directly
took part in the recruitments” really meant. The Kono Statement contains a promise toinclude the comfort women controversy in the history education curriculum. Incredibly, in
1996, all middle school history textbooks that passed the screening process included
descriptions of military comfort women. That phenomenon was the impetus for the formationof the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform by Nishio Kanji, Fujioka Nobukatsu
and Kobayashi Yoshinori. It also marked the beginning of the second round of comfort
women controversy debates.
At about the same time, some younger Diet representatives formed the League of Young
Legislators Concerned about Japan’s Future and History Education. 51 The group began
holding hearings involving persons familiar with the comfort women controversy.
At their invitation, I described some of the information I had acquired during the earlier
debate in 1992-1993. I had the opportunity to ask councilor Higashi Yoshinobu of the
Cabinet Councilors’Office on External Affairs some questions. My first question pertained tothe portion of the Kono Statement that reads “The Government study has revealed that inmany cases they were recruited against their own will, through coaxing, coercion, etc., andthat, at times, administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitments.” I wastold that that portion refers not to Korean women who were victims of official coercion, but
to war crimes committed by military personnel on an outpost in Java, Indonesia.
Looking into that incident, I discovered that five members of the Japanese military had forced
a Dutch woman interned in a private detention center to work as a prostitute forapproximately two months (late February to April 1944). The Allies tried them and four
civilians for war crimes. Some of the accused were executed, others received prison
sentences.
In the Kono Statement, the reference to the involvement of “administrative/military
personnel” begins: “The recruitment of the comfort women ... .” There is no reference toadministrative/military personnel in the description of the recruiting of comfort women in
51

Officers are Nakagawa Shoichi (chairman), Eto Seiichi (managing director), Abe Shinzo(secretary-general).

49

Korea, which begins: “As to the origin of those comfort women who were transferred to thewar areas ... .” Therefore, there were no cases in which administrative/military personnel
were involved in the recruitment of comfort women against their will.
Besides giving rise to a multitude of misunderstandings, the Kono Statement is an exercise insophistry. A replacement statement is urgently needed. But flawed as it is, at least the Kono
Statement does not admit to coercion in the narrow sense, or official coercion.

Payments a foregone conclusion with Asia Women’s FundI have written in detail about the debate that raged from 1992 into 1993, from which those of
us who argued that there was no official coercion of comfort women emerged victorious.
That debate took place in a rather small arena among a few specialists — private citizens. We
were quite isolated, but we fought well and hard. We had courageous allies, even in South
Korea, in Prof. Ahn and Ambassador Oh, people who are vehemently opposed to the
distortion of facts.
But then the Miyazawa administration issued the Kono Statement, which fails to confront thelies that have been spread about comfort women. Soon accusations that comfort women werevictims of official coercion, or were forced to become sex slaves were resurrected, likezombies, and gradually penetrated Japan and South Korea.
We won the debate about the facts by a fair margin, but we lost the publicity battle because
we failed to disseminate the outcome of the debate to a wide audience. Largely due to the
Kono Statement, the fact that there was no official coercion was not communicated to the
public. Instead, the official coercion lie, and other lies, swept through both nations likewildfire.
In 1994, the Murayama administration took office in Japan. In 1995, the Asia Women’s Fundwas established, and the task of compensating former comfort women began. The Kono
Statement had acknowledged coercion in the broad sense and apologized. But then thequestion was raised as to how the women were to be compensated. The Asia Women’s Fund,supported by donations from private citizens, was created to assist former comfort women.
However, the donations didn’t amount to much. Tax revenue was used to cover overhead andlabor. Ultimately, each former comfort woman received ¥2 million and a letter of apology
from the prime minister of Japan. Government funds amounting to ¥3 million were
earmarked for medical care and other benefits for the women. This gesture was tantamount to
the Japanese government’s paying compensation a second time, since the matter ofcompensation had already been settled diplomatically years ago.
The Asia Women’s Fund caused serious problems in South Korea. Members of the Volunteer
Research Group of the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by
Japan and others opposed accepting money from the Asia Women’s Fund. They said theywould not be satisfied until they had won litigation against or collected compensation fromthe Japanese government. They said that the Asia Women’s Fund was a fraud, since it wascollecting donations from the Japanese people and calling them compensation (because themoney wasn’t coming from the government). Consequently, some of the former comfort
50women accepted the money, while others did not. Those who did not cursed those who had,calling them traitors.
Japan had apologized when an apology was demanded, and handed over money when it was
asked to show good faith. Its efforts were rewarded by being labeled frauds. Perhaps activists
take up causes simply because they like being activists; when a problem is solved or a cause
is won, they don’t know what to do with themselves.
Eventually, the South Korean government decided to make a lump-sum payment roughly
equivalent to the Asia Women’s Fund contribution to those women who had refused to accept
money from the latter. South Korea had paid absolutely no compensation to conscripted
laborers who were now disabled. But when former comfort women refused to accept moneyfrom Japan, the ROK government used funds from the national budget to pay them. Since thegovernment had, in 1993, already paid former comfort women a lump sum of 5 million won,a monthly stipend of 150,000 won (later increased to 500,000 won), and granted them
permission to reside in public housing, this was its second outlay.
Nevertheless, activists continued to hold demonstrations, demanding an apology from theJapanese government. Their lawsuits had been defeated in Japanese courts, their accusations
were disappearing from textbooks, and a consensus that the comfort women had not been
victims of official coercion was near. But then the flames of controversy were fueled once
again, this time in an international arena extending to the United Nations and even the U.S.
House of Representatives.
In a South Korean television broadcast aired in December 2006, Prof. Ahn Byong-jickcriticized activist groups:
At first, I was among those who believed that comfort women were victims of official
coercion. I engaged in joint research on the subject with the Volunteer Corps Research Groupof the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan [hereafter
abbreviated to Volunteer Corps Research Group], but withdrew from the project after three
years. I withdrew because I realized that the purpose of the Volunteer Corps Research Groupwas not to acquire a thorough grasp of the comfort women controversy for preventive reasons,but simply to make trouble for Japan.

Chung Chin-sung, a Seoul National University professor who specializes in women’s studies,is the chairwoman of the Volunteer Corps Research Group of which Prof. Ahn was so critical.
Ms. Chung spent two years at Tokyo University doing research, and reportedly established ananti-Japanese network together with Japanese Japan-haters. Since her research was politicallymotivated (unlike Prof. Ahn, who was committed to uncovering the truth, she was moreinterested in making trouble for Japan), she was certain to find kindred spirits in Japan.
Prof. Chung’s husband is editor-in-chief of the Chosun Ilbo newspaper. The publication has aconservative outlook, but normally its editorials are rational. Unfortunately, when it comes to
comfort women, more often than not it spews the same fiction as its left-wing counterparts.
Having observed the controversy for so long, I realized that neither apologies (no matter howmany) nor additional compensation (no matter how much) is going to resolve the emotional
conflict that has soured Japan-ROK relations. On the contrary, such efforts will cause them to51

deteriorate even further. Our first priority is to uncover the truth and to communicate it tothose who have embraced the lies. To do otherwise would be meaningless.

Japanese Japan-haters and the media
To describe my thoughts at the time, I am reproducing a critique of Japanese Japan-haters (aterm that I coined) from my book The Mountain of Misconceptions Separating Japan and
Korea, released on August 5, 1992.
At the vanguard of those hell-bent on denouncing “evil deeds” perpetrated by Japan prior toWorld War II are Japanese (Asahi Shimbun, the monthly Sekai and “progressive thinkers”).
These elements have launched countless campaigns, all based on lies. In the 1970s, the truth
came out about China’s Cultural Revolution. When Vietnam and Cambodia went to war with
China, they took shelter in the two Koreas, didn’t they?
They probably thought that, at those two destinations, they would find many people whoshare their perception of the U.S. and Japan as the enemy. They spread a lot of lies in Northand South Korea. But campaigns motivated by lies are weak. Now that the collapse of theSoviet Union has brought the Cold War to an end, with the West (mainly the U.S.) emerging
victorious, their scheme is no longer viable. They should have been repenting for their sins,rather than looking to start another conflict.
Their last stronghold was the denunciation of Japan’s past evils in the two Koreas. Therefore,
their primary purpose was the condemnation of Japan; it is very unlikely that they had given
serious thought to supporting Korean victims. Why? Because if they had wanted to help thevictims, the very first step they would have taken was to learn about them: who they were andhow they had suffered.
But that’s not what they did. They ran campaigns, selecting evidence and witnesses thatmatched their objectives, or failing that, lying (e.g., equating the volunteer corps with comfort
women). A great number of Japanese who were unaware of the facts donated money or atleast provided moral support, believing that the activists were sincere.
Meanwhile, in South Korea, there are former comfort women, former soldiers and civilians
who worked for the military, and conscripted laborers who have aligned themselves withJapanese Japan-haters. These people, in actuality, have been stigmatized in South Korea andlabeled pro-Japan or Japan collaborators. These are people who were forced to collaborate.
They were not part of the liberation movement, and did not fight against the Japanese military.
Consequently, their denunciation of Japan was bound to intensify.
(...)
Moreover, the climate in the South Korean media is such that it is perfectly all right to print
anything critical of Japan without checking the facts. And South Korea’s Japan specialists areeasily swayed by criticism of Japan and quick to make anti-Japanese statements. In otherwords, there’s plenty of fuel for the anti-Japan fire. All the circumstances are right for it toblaze brilliantly. When the Japanese Japan-haters attack Japan, the South Korean media givethem a huge amount of coverage. Such reciprocity has opened up a rift between the twonations, and caused irreparable damage to Japan-ROK relations, which should by rights befriendly.

52

Another problem stems from the governments of Japan and South Korea, both of which makethe situation worse. One of them makes demands without regard for past events, while theother reacts to those demands piecemeal, instead of opposing them squarely.
(...)
Japanese Japan-haters, whose sole purpose in life is to condemn Japan, have joined forces
with South Koreans who feel the need to criticize everything that Japan does. They are aided
by the media of both nations, which intentionally misinform the public. The two governments
are sucked into the whirlpool and react without thinking. The result is that those who love
Japan and once wanted to maintain friendly relations with South Korea, gradually lose any
affection they had for South Korea. Koreans who love their nation and are well-suited tobuilding a rational, friendly relationship with Japan are branded as traitors, and are losing theright to voice their opinions. This is an extremely unfortunate situation, which affects thepeace and security of both nations, and that of all of East Asia, for that matter.
At no time has it been more important to conduct a rational debate based solely on the facts
than now. Everyone with an interest in Japan-Korea relations, including this writer, must52
ensure that it takes place.

All-night debate on television
In the midst of the debate over whether there was official coercion of comfort women, I
appeared twice on a television show called “All-Night TV.” The theme on both occasions
was comfort women.
The first time I participated, in 1993, attorney Takagi Ken’ichi, Diet representative (SDP)
Tsujimoto Kiyomi, and social commentator Ozawa Ryoko were also on the panel.
I had appeared on the program once before when the theme was the fingerprinting of North
Korean residents of Japan. This time, however, the request had come from Prof. Nakagawa
Yatsuhiro, a member of the faculty of Tsukuba University. He had telephoned me, saying,“They asked me to appear on a program about comfort women, but that’s not my specialty. I
told them I’ll do it if you appear too. How about it?”
I had written essays and articles on the subject, but I hadn’t spoken about it on television. I
hesitated because I anticipated being treated like a villain once I said that there had been no
official coercion. But Prof. Nakagawa said he wouldn’t appear unless I did, and I didn’t want
to lose face, so I agreed.
The debate began strangely, with a clip from an interview with Yoshida Seiji, followed byanother showing comfort women crying and screaming.
Immediately, I spoke up: “You just showed footage from an interview with Yoshida Seiji.
His tale of abduction is not credible. Soon after the Korean translation of his book was
released, it was lambasted by a woman reporter for the Cheju Newspaper. She conducted an
52

Nishioka Tsutomu, Nikkan gokai no shin’en (The mountain of misconceptions separating Japan and
Korea) (Tokyo: Aki Shobo, 1992).

53

investigation of Yoshida’s claim that he rounded up comfort women on Cheju Island with theaid of some soldiers. When she interviewed local people, they unanimously dismissed
Yoshida’s story, calling it ridiculous. Also, a local historian has declared Yoshida’s book awork of fiction, and called its author immoral.”
Then I made a comment about how much importance had been placed on the testimonies offormer comfort women’s testimonies. I had brought my copy of Testimonies, Part 1,
compiled by Prof. Ahn’s group, with me.
“The South Korean government has said that everything is in these testimonies. Only four of
the 19 former comfort women interviewed said they were victims of coercion. Two of themsaid that they were transported to Pusan and Toyama, respectively, where they were forced to
become comfort women. But neither Pusan nor Toyama was a war zone. The other two
women’s testimonies differ from lawsuit claims filed, where they concern coercion. Thatmeans that there is no proof that any of these women was coerced.”
I expected Takagi to argue that there was indeed coercion, but he didn’t. Instead, heattempted to change the subject, saying, “There is more to the problem than how they weretransported. What their lives were like afterwards is more important.”
I’m certain that the other guests had intended to focus on official coercion of comfort women.
But by that time, I think they knew that Yoshida’s confession no longer had any credibility,
and that of the many official documents examined, none had yielded any evidence of official
coercion. The debate among specialists in the area about the official coercion of comfort
women had already subsided, in 1993, right after the Kono Statement was issued.
However, I doubt that I convinced any of the panelists other than the moderator and Takagi,
perhaps because my explanations were over their heads. The two of them seemed at a loss forwords after I presented my case, but the others didn’t seem to understand what was being said.
But I thought to myself, “The comfort women debate is over. Now that the official coercion
argument has been discredited, and we have established the fact that poverty prompted the
comfort women’s parents to sell them, this is no longer a diplomatic problem, nor is there anyneed to debate it on television.” But I was annoyed at the moderator and the other panelists
for not addressing this important point. I waited patiently for my next opportunity to speak.
Ozawa Ryoko was making comments like, “All men are evil. They should be castrated before
they’re sent to the front lines.” I honestly couldn’t tell if she was serious.
I had been devoting all my energy to a quest for the truth, poring over documents,
interviewing and reinterviewing people connected with the controversy, traveling to South
Korea. But the television studio is not the proper arena for a serious debate.
Still, I thought it was better to speak out. I said as much as I could. After the program ended, I
received a telephone call from the television network. Apparently Yoshida Seiji had
registered a complaint. A representative of the network was going to visit him to explain
things. Right away, I said, “I’m not going to apologize, and I will be very upset if you
apologize on my behalf. Tell Mr. Yoshida that he’s welcome to sue me for defamation ofcharacter.”54

Television networks shun Yoshida Seiji
In 1997, the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform was established, in part becauseof members’ objections to the inclusion of references to comfort women in middle school
history textbooks, beginning in April of that year. In January 1997, leading members of theSociety and its opponents appeared on a television program advertised as follows: “War ofwords! References to comfort women in textbooks: right or wrong?” I wasn’t even a memberof the Society, but one of its officers asked me to appear.
Representing the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform were Nishio Kanji, Fujioka
Nobukatsu and Kobayashi Yoshinori. Opposing them were Prof. Yoshimi Yoshiaki (Chuo
University), Uesugi Satoshi (secretary of the Center for Research and Documentation on
Japan’s War Responsibility), Kajimura Taiichiro (a journalist residing in Germany),
journalist Nishino Rumiko, and Prof. Takashima Nobuyoshi (University of the Ryukyus).
Also present were Prof. Hata Ikuhiko (Chiba University), Prof. Yoon Keun-cha (Kanagawa
University) and Dave Spector (television commentator).
Spector was seated next to me. He placed a copy of The Comfort Women53 by George Hicks,
an Australian scholar, on the table in front of us, saying, “[The debate] is over now, isn’t it?”
Hicks’ book is largely based on Yoshida Seiji’s testimony; it is totally irresponsible, and does
not reflect recent developments in the debate in Japan. But it was apparently the source ofSpector’s “wisdom” on the subject. Prof. Yoon too was ill-prepared: he said that comfort
women were mobilized as members of female volunteer corps —and this in 1997!
As this was the second debate on the comfort women on “All Night TV!” I was prepared. As
I mentioned earlier, the 1993 program featured a lengthy excerpt from an interview with
Yoshida Seiji. During that debate, I quoted from the Cheju Newspaper article, and stated that
Yoshida’s testimony was not reliable.
Perhaps the television network people had done some investigating on their own and realized
their errors. Whatever the case, TV Asahi stopped using Yoshida Seiji’s testimony. They may
have been convinced when news of the aforementioned newspaper article got around, but inany case, they distanced themselves from Yoshida. They did not, however, issue corrections
on the air.
When there was a lull in the conversation, I pounced: “There’s something wrong with thisnetwork. There’s something wrong with this program.
“The previous time I appeared on this program, you showed part of an interview with
Yoshida Seiji. I told you that his testimony was a fake. But TV Asahi never issued acorrection. The fact that you never issued a correction means that you still believe Yoshida,and that makes me a liar.
53

George Hicks, The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second
World War (New York, W.W. Norton, 1995).

55

“Before asking me to make a second appearance, the officers of TV Asahi and the producersof this program should have told their viewers that the Yoshida interview was suspect, andissued an apology.”
That program was the farthest thing imaginable from a rational debate. It was simply a venue
for a large number of people to say whatever they wanted. I had very few opportunities to
speak, so I had to speak quickly, but I was determined to voice my disapproval of the
television network and the program.
When I was preparing to write this book, I purchased additional books about comfort women.
Among them was one by Ishikawa Itsuko, entitled Girls Forced To Become Military Comfort
Women.54 First published in 1993, it went into its 15th printing in 2005, but is still sold inbookstores. The author cites Yoshida Seiji’s book at great length, as though it were fact.
Iwanami Shoten should be censured for continuing to sell this lie-riddled book, especiallysince it is intended for young adults.

Yoshimi Yoshiaki pronounces comfort women “sex slaves”
The first topic of discussion on the program was official coercion. I addressed a question to
Yoshimi Yoshiaki, “Professor Yoshimi, has evidence been found indicating that there wasofficial coercion on the Korean peninsula?” “No, no evidence to that effect has been found.”
Later, Kobayashi Yoshinori reproduced our dialogue in a comic strip, with the caption: “Thisdebate is truly over.” My thoughts precisely.
In the February 27, 1997 issue of The People’s Korea, a magazine issued by Chosen Soren(General Association of Korean Residents in Japan), Yoshimi wrote, “Official documents
attesting to coercive recruiting of women (slave hunts) by government or military authorities
have not yet been discovered.” Even Wada Haruki (Tokyo University professor emeritus),
one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Asia Women’s Fund, has stated that “there is
no documentary evidence for the claim that there was direct coercion by government or
military authorities.”55
Later, Yoshimi and others who share his views sought refuge in emphasizing “coercion in the
broad sense” (an equivocation created by a cornered government) typified by the line in the
Kono Statement that reads “They lived in misery at comfort stations under a coercive
atmosphere.”
Incidentally, in commentary in Documents Relating to Military Comfort Women (published in
1992, prior to the issuance of the Kono Statement), Yoshimi writes: “Many Japanese assume
that comfort women were victims of official coercion — that would be coercion in the
narrow sense. However, I would urge them to give serious thought to coercion in the broad
54

Ishikawa Itsuko, Jugun ianfu ni sareta shojotachi (Girls forced to become military comfort women)(Tokyo: Iwanami Junior Shoten, 1993).
55

See Ajia josei kikin nyu-su (Asia Women’s Fund news), No. 8, 05 March 1997.

56

sense, meaning that they were tricked or otherwise deceived.”56 Kobayashi Yoshinori cites
this statement in Volume 4 of his New Arrogance Manifesto,57 and credits Yoshimi for giving
birth to this deceptive phrase (and argument).
As Kobayashi indicates, common sense does not help us follow Yoshimi’s logic. He
concedes that comfort women were not victims of official coercion, but insists that they were
nonetheless sex slaves.
The comfort women system was slavery of a sort more insidious than state-licensed
prostitution, which at least had safeguards. The military, however, established no safeguards
for the comfort women, who were the victims of slavery of the worst sort, a violation ofinternational law, which Japan recognized.58

Prof. Yoshimi offers the following evidence for his claim that the comfort women wereenslaved:
1. There were specific formalities that potential comfort women were required to complete inJapan, but not in Korea.
2. In accordance with international law, licensed prostitutes had to be at least 21 years old. In
Korea, however, the minimum age was 17, meaning that minors were not protected byinternational law there.
The treaties in force at the time allowed for some exceptions in their application in colonies.
These were meant to allow for differences in economic and social situations, and Japan
simply chose to apply them in that way. It is possible to characterize such behavior as
discrimination, but it takes a great leap of faith to call it sex slavery.
I offer the following description of true slavery by way of an excerpt from a recent newspaper
article.
Madala (32) has brown skin. His eyes and the contour of his nose tell us that both Arab andblack blood flow in his veins. He tells his story in a quiet voice.
“I was born a slave. My master’s ancestors bought my great-grandmother.”
Madala lives in Mauritania, Northwestern Africa. Even in the 21st century, he was one of theseveral thousands (some say ten thousands) of slaves in that nation. Three years ago, heescaped from his master, a camel herder in an arid region in the north.
When Madala was a boy chasing herds of camels, his master made sure he knew he was apossession. He was forbidden to sit on the same carpet with his master’s family, to look them
56

Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Jugun ianfu shiryoshu (Documents Relating to Military Comfort Women)(Tokyo: Otsuki Shoten, November 1992).
57

Kobayashi Yoshinori, Shin go-manizumu sengen: dai yonkan (New arrogance manifesto: vol. 4)(Tokyo: Shogakukan, 1998).
58

Yoshimi Yoshiaki, article in Chosen jiho (The people’s Korea), 27 February, 1997.

57

in the eye, or to watch them eating. He was fed scraps of leftover food, and his bed was a maton the floor in the back of a stable. He received no pay, and had never gone to school.
If he lost a camel, he was beaten. Scars on his left cheek were reminders of such punishment.
“I saw my mother and my elder sister beaten many times. Some slaves who tried to escapewere caught and killed.”59

Slaves are possessions of their masters. They are made to work without remuneration, andthey cannot complain if they are beaten. Madala, the central figure in the newspaper story,
was born into slavery in the 1970s. His mother and 12 siblings are still slaves —possessionsof their master.
In contrast, Korean comfort women were able to return home if they returned advances that
had been paid them. Mun Ok-ju saved ¥26,000 in three years — a huge amount of money —and she was not the only one. How does one justify calling them slaves?
Prof. Yoshimi has become the leader of a team of nine researchers who are doing cooperative
research on the comfort women controversy. The results of their work can be found in Joint
Research: Comfort Women Servicing the Japanese Military.60 The book describes empiricalresearch relating to the recruiting of comfort women in Korea. It states that recruiting there
was done not by authorities (the military, the police or the Governor-General’s office), but byprivate brokers.
Among the brokers were men who had received authorization from the military to operate
brothels. There were also procurers (pimps), who worked for the brokers. The procurers
would travel around Korea recruiting women and take them to brokers in large cities. Their
recruiting methods involved purchasing women from their parents, and deceit (lies about thetype of work they would be doing, etc.). These were the same methods used to recruit womenfor the entertainment industry in Korea. The Governor-General’s office punished frauds
committed by procurers as criminal acts.
The book also mentions advertisements for comfort women in Korean newspapers, anddescribes Korean pleasure quarters of that time. When warfare intensified, fewer men visited
red-light districts, since they didn’t want to be accused of decadence. Records show thatbrokers transported comfort women to war zones. This is not speculation, it is evidence.
From this book we can deduce that comfort women were not recruited coercively in Korea by
government or military authorities, and that some of them were sold to brokers by theirparents. Nevertheless, Yoshimi persists in calling comfort women “sex slaves.”
Because Yoshimi is considered the authority on comfort women, he often receives inquiries
and requests for interviews from overseas. He continues to describe the comfort womensystem as a type of slavery more evil than licensed prostitution. The result is that the U.S.

59

Sankei Express, 13 May 2007.

60

Yoshimi Yoshiaki and Kawata Fumiko, eds., Kyodo kenkyu: Nihongun ianfu (Joint research on
prostitutes who serviced the Japanese military) (Tokyo: Otsuki Shoten, 1995).

58

Congress came to view comfort women as sex slaves, and drafted a questionable resolution
unilaterally condemning Japan.
From an international perspective, if members of the Japanese military had abducted comfort
women, as Yoshida Seiji claims, they would indeed have been sex slaves. However, it isludicrous to claim that they were sex slaves because they were not afforded the same
safeguards as Japanese comfort women.
Does Prof. Yoshimi deserve to be called a scholar? Or is he a professional Japan-hater?
At about the same time as Yoshimi was doing his joint research in Japan, the aforementioned
Prof. Ahn Byong-jick was guiding young Korean researchers through another project.
Yoshimi’s methods pale in comparison with Ahn’s.
Still, there have been Japanese scholars who are conscientious about research. One of them isProf. Kurahashi Masanao (Aichi Prefectural University). In August 1994, his book Historical
Research on the Comfort Women Controversy: Prostitutes or Sex Slaves?61 was published inAugust 1994. Prof. Kurahashi has been involved in research on karayuki-san62 for many
years. He proposed classifying military comfort women as either prostitutes or sex slaves:
one or the other. However, when he explained his theory to Prof. Chung Chin-sung, an antiJapanese activist who does research on comfort women, she said, “This will never gain
acceptance in South Korea.”Prof. Kurahashi’s response was: “It’s true that they needed the money, but these Korean
women voluntarily went to battle zones, knowing why they were going, and became military
comfort women. South Koreans are unable to accept these simple facts. They desperately
want to believe that the comfort women were victims of violent abductions, transported to
war zones against their will.63“I can certainly understand their need to come up with the coercion argument. But we must
remember that the quest for historical fact must be dispassionate and rational. I believe thatsuch a quest will deepen mutual understanding and promote friendly relations between our
two nations.”64
Prof. Kurahashi indicates that advertisements for comfort women appeared twice (in Octoberand November of 1944) in the Mainichi Nippo, a newspaper published in Korea. Therefore,
comfort women of the prostitute classification were being recruited as late as 1944. Had all

61

Kurahashi Masanao, Jugun ianfu mondai no rekishiteki kenkyu: baishunfu gata to seiteki dorei gata(Historical research on the comfort women controversy: prostitutes or sex slaves) (Tokyo: Kyoei Shobo, 1994).
62

Literally, “Miss Go-to-China,” this term is used to describe Japanese women who were sold into
prostitution or voluntarily became prostitutes, and worked in countries other than Japan, mainly China andKorea.
63
64

Kurahashi, op. cit., p. 89.
Ibid., p. 90.

59

comfort women been coerced, there would have been no need for advertisements (which are
proof that there was no official coercion).
When you delve even moderately deeply into this subject, you soon run into darkness. You
cannot, in good conscience, accept South Korean claims. In the face of darkness, intellectualhonesty prevails. Only people like attorney Takagi Ken’ichi and Yoshimi believe that theymust protect their political stance at all cost. They are trapped with their fictions and their
sophistry, which they are willing to use to destroy Japan.
However, Prof. Kurahashi also claims that at the end of the war, military and government
authorities recruited comfort women in slave hunts, and abused them like sex slaves at thebrothels. This is the other half of his theory: the sex slave type of comfort woman. But there
are no documents attesting to the existence of sex slaves. Here, Kurahashi crosses the line ofintellectual honesty. Some former comfort women say that they were victims of official
coercion, had no freedom whatsoever at the comfort stations, were not paid for their work,
and if they didn’t obey were assaulted or killed. Kurahashi seems to believe them. When
asked why there is no evidence to support these claims, he says a concerted effort was madeto destroy any documentary evidence; this does not make sense.
For Kurahashi’s sex slave theory to hold water, we must assume that women were victims ofofficial coercion, and not hide behind the “coercion in the broad sense” excuse. But Prof.
Kurahashi swears that evidence to that effect has yet to be found. Whatever his sins, he is atleast innocent of the sophistry so dear to Yoshimi.

Kono Statement debate extends to Diet
Like Prof. Yoshimi, Asahi Shimbun also did an about-face, shifting its focus from coercive
recruiting of comfort women to the miserable lives they led in the brothels. We had won thebattle over coercion waged since 1992. However, the losers ran to hide in the shelter of“coercion in the broad sense” as used in the Kono Statement, and wouldn’t allow thecontroversy to die a natural death. Then they began writing editorials about conscientious
scholars who had disproved the official coercion argument, along the lines of “Some would
have it that there were never any military comfort women at all” in a reverse sort of attack.
The Japanese government had used the expression “coercion in the broad sense” in the Kono
Statement as an expedient. This was a gesture of diplomatic consideration toward South
Korea, and its intent was to keep the South Koreans from bringing up the subject of comfort
women again. But Asahi Shimbun belabored “coercion in the broad sense,” using the comfort
women controversy as ammunition for further Japan-bashing.
Ultimately, the comfort women controversy boils down to how the fraudulent press coverageof Asahi Shimbun is amended. The newspaper has not issued even one retraction for its
willful fabrications. Conversely, it continues to harp on more compensation for the comfort
women, more accounts of comfort women in history textbooks, and calls anyone who
protests “evildoers who refuse to face history.”60

Even so, the comfort women taboo was shattered in about 1997; since then it has beenpossible to debate the subject openly. Judging from the progress we have made since 1992 indetermining the facts, we should be able to bring this matter to a reasonable conclusion.
The Japanese government gets no credit for this progress, nor does the Foreign Ministry. The
credit goes to the scholars and researchers who investigated and interviewed, and thendisseminate the knowledge they had acquired to the Japanese people: there was no coercionof comfort women by government or military authorities.
Asahi Shimbun and Prof. Yoshimi are still caught up in “coercion in the broad sense.” Now
they’re saying that even if there was no official coercion, there was certainly serious
infringement of human rights. But the debate is nearly over, and I am feeling optimistic.
Kobayashi Yoshinori, who appeared with me on “All-Night TV,” has been of immeasurable
help to our cause. One reason his graphic novels (New Arrogance Manifesto and On War, forinstance), are so immensely popular is his breaking of taboos by addressing a topic head on.
At first, he wasn’t sure whether or not there had been official coercion, so he presented bothsides of the argument.
But research proved that there was no official coercion. Kobayashi is not afraid of taboos; hesaid, “The emperor is naked.” Many young people believed him, and the facts finally began
to receive an audience.
The message Kobayashi conveys is, for the most part, the same one that we have been
debating for four or five years. But discovering the facts and communicating them to a wide
audience are two different things. As already described, we won the first round of the debate
in 1992, but we lost the publicity battle. That is where Kobayashi stepped in.
At about the same time that the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform was formed,
Diet members awakened to the incongruities in the textbook controversy. As a result, theLeague of Young Legislators Concerned about Japan’s Future and History Education wasestablished. It is headed by Nakagawa Shoichi, chairman of the LDP (Liberal Democratic
Party) Policy Research Council; Prime Minister Abe is secretary-general.
The League started out as a group of young Diet members who believe that common sense
should prevail in Japan, not masochism. To determine whether or not there had been official
coercion of comfort women, the League held hearings to which it invited speakers. At these
hearings, legislators asked the questions. I was invited to one of them. Seated next to me wassomeone from the Cabinet Councilors’ Office on External Affairs, with whom I had aconversation. Apparently, language in the Kono Statement that I had assumed was an
acknowledgement of official coercion was a reference to war crimes committed in Indonesia
by Japanese military personnel, which I have already described.
In March 1997, there was a debate in the Diet. At that time, Koyama Takao, a member of theHouse of Councillors, told me that the Budget Committee was planning to address the
comfort women controversy in earnest, and asked for my assistance. I laid out the facts that
had been uncovered during the debate that began in 1992. Then I asked Koyama for his help
in determining the basis for the Kono Statement, especially the part that reads“administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitments.” I also told him that61

I was very interested in learning whether any official documents had been located that attest
to official coercion of comfort women.
Representative Koyama took great pains to respond to my requests. He made a complete
examination of the documents relating to comfort women located and disclosed by thegovernment.
At about the same time, journalist Sakurai Yoshiko issued a report entitled “Paying the Pricefor Back-Room Diplomacy.” It describes interviews with former Deputy Chief Cabinet
Secretary Ishihara Nobuo and former Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono Yohei, and points toflaws in the Kono Statement. 65 As a result, there was heightened interest in the Kono
Statement.
On March 12, 1997, with Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryutaro, Chief Cabinet Secretary
Kajiyama Seiroku and most of the Cabinet (including the foreign minister and minister ofeducation) in attendance, Rep. Koyama began his inquiry. Seated in the gallery, I listened tothe entire proceedings, of which highlights of the portion pertaining to the Kono Statement
follow.
Koyama: What documents were the basis for the determination that there had been official
coercion, as stated in the government report?
Hirabayashi Hiroshi (chief Cabinet councilor for external affairs): Among the documents
discovered by the government, there was none that indicated abduction by military or
government authorities.
What I mean to say is that, taking all sources into account, including other testimonies anddocuments, we found factors that suggest coercion.
Koyama: I have a copy of the report here. Please tell us which portions of it have been
disclosed, and which have not.
Hirabayashi: The report you have mentions documents located in Japanese ministries andagencies, the National Diet Library and the United States National Archives. It also mentions
interviews with relevant individuals, internal and external documents, and other types ofpublications issued by other nations. We have disclosed everything except for interviews withindividuals.
Koyama: Then you have disclosed all internal and external Japanese documents referred to in
the report?
Hirabayashi: Yes, in principle. A South Korean organization, Association for the Pacific War
Victims, provided us with some documents designated “for internal use only.” In their case,
we made an exception, and did not disclose the content.
Koyama: Then, you have disclosed the content of all documents emanating from Japaneseadministrative organs, the National Diet Library and the U.S. National Archives. And fromthem you ascertained that there are no documents indicating official coercion.
65

Sakurai Yoshiko, “Misshitsu gaiko no daisho” (Paying the price for back-room diplomacy) in
Bungei Shunju, April 1997.

62

In that case, what remains are interviews with relevant individuals, in other words, mainly
former comfort women, which you have not disclosed. Additionally, you have not disclosed
testimonies of former comfort women compiled by the Association for the Pacific War
Victims.
Hirabayashi: That is correct.
Koyama: Have those testimonies been verified?
Hirabayashi: I will answer that question. You ask if we have checked testimonies for veracity.
No, we have not. Some of them were provided by former military comfort women, others byformer prostitutes, and still others by military personnel. We did not check them for accuracy.
Koyama: In that case, the government based its August 4, 1993 decision on undisclosed,
unverified sources. [Italics supplied.]
Hirabayashi: Ultimately, yes. But we arrived at the decision only after having examined all
the sources, each one in detail. [Italics supplied.]Koyama: That is exactly why the work of the people who conducted that investigation inaccordance with government policy is being called into question from many quarters.
Scholars like Prof. Hata Ikuhiko of Chiba University and Prof. Nishioka Tsutomu of Tokyo
Christian University have done in-depth investigations into publicly available sources, andhave proved that very few of them are reliable.
For instance, I have already mentioned the report by Sakurai Yoshiko, which can be found in
the issue of Bungei Shunju currently on sale. There is also an interview in Sankei Shimbun (Ibelieve it was in last Sunday’s newspaper). In it Ishihara Nobuo, then deputy chief Cabinet
secretary says, after acknowledging that the interviews done by the government in South
Korea were decisive, says, “We vacillated until the very last minute. Since all thoseinterviewed were telling their own stories, it was entirely possible that they altered theiraccounts to their advantage. It is unfortunate that we were forced to base our decision on
them.”
Furthermore, the person who headed the Cabinet Councilors’Office on External Affairs (nowan ambassador) said, “If pressed, I’d have to say that I have doubts about them.”
Tanaka Kotaro, who was present at the interviews with former comfort women, spoke at apress conference in Seoul on the day the interviews ended: “The women do not have clear
recollections of portions of their stories. We are not going to press them on every little detail.
We will simply accept the testimonies as given.” His statement was carried in the Japanese
media as well.
The process having been what it was, there is bound to be a great deal of suspicion. We are
wondering how you could possibly make such a decision, given the nature of your sources.
I would like to hear the chief Cabinet secretary’s opinion on the following: in the drafting of
the Kono Statement, decisions were made on the basis of the process that I have justdescribed. How are we to address the insult to the honor of the military personnel and policeof that era, who devoted their lives to their nation?

63

Kajiyama Seiroku: The statement issued by the chief Cabinet secretary pertaining to themilitary comfort women controversy was based on the outcome of a tireless investigation
conducted conscientiously by the administration of the time. I stand by that statement.
Having heard the committee member’s concerns about the matter, and having reread a varietyof news reports and other resources, I am reminded of the difficulties presented by thisproblem.
Koyama: In closing, I would like to ask the prime minister for his opinion on this problem.
Hashimoto Ryutaro: I believe that everyone agrees with me that the comfort womencontroversy infringes on the honor and dignity of all women. Additionally, if I were to givemy personal opinion, I would say that the weight of history rests ever heavily upon us.
Mindful of that, we bear the responsibility of communicating that history to future
generations.

As I listened to the representative’s questions and the government’s responses, I
wondered how much we should reveal to our citizens at the various stages of their lives,
and realized that we have a duty to communicate the history of this nation to them.
The atmosphere at this question-and-answer session was extremely charged. Especiallyshocking to me was the admission (italicized above) that the reference in the Kono Statement
to official coercion was based on undisclosed, uncorroborated testimonies supplied by andinterviews with former comfort women.
Cabinet members who were not being questioned, among them former Prime Minister
Koizumi (then minister of health and welfare), listened carefully, leaning forward in theirseats. This was probably the first time they had heard this very important information.
Also shocking were the comments from Chief Cabinet Secretary Kajiyama and Prime
Minister Hashimoto. They now knew that the Kono Statement, which had seriously injured
Japan’s honor, rests on a very shaky foundation. Even so, they mentioned nothing about
taking steps that seemed so obvious to me: revising the statement and interrogating Kono
Yohei and everyone else involved in its drafting. Instead, both men read abstruse statements
prepared by bureaucrats.
However, it was obvious from Kajiyama’s comments and his demeanor that he had been
impressed by the complexity of the controversy. He had said that any discussion of the
comfort women controversy must reflect the knowledge that licensed prostitution existed atthat time, a remark that was greeted with vehement criticism from South Korea.
I was shocked once again the next day when I read the newspapers and discovered that,
despite the importance of the question-and-answer session at the Diet, only Sankei Shimbun
mentioned it.
I would have expected them to write that the Kono Statement should be invalidated, or thatformer Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono should be summoned and a hearing held in the Diet.
But they wrote nothing.

64

Also strange was the fact that Prime Minister Hashimoto commented only on women’shuman rights, after such an intense exchange. Normally, it would be reasonable to say that
the Kono Statement is flawed, that there was no official coercion, or that the assumption that
there was official coercion is inaccurate.
But no one said anything. This was Japan’s Diet, but it seemed as though diplomatic forces
had paralyzed it. Is there freedom of speech in Japan? Then there is Japan’s media, acting as
though the question-and-answer session had never taken place.
This is exactly what happened with the North Korean abductions. In 1988, when Kajiyama
Seiroku was head of the National Public Safety Commission, such a session was held relating
to the disappearance of six Japanese citizens, he uttered an historic response: “It is very likelythat these people were abducted by North Korea.” But of the major dailies, only the Sankei
and Nikkei newspapers covered it, and even they only superficially.

Interference in Japanese internal affairs: déjà vu
Anti-Japanese forces lost the debate in Japan. Since then, they have launched a new assault,
spreading their official coercion fiction to other parts of the world. Here is how the assault
proceeds: When a Cabinet member or someone of equal stature makes a statement about
comfort women, that statement is immediately and widely publicized. Then the South Korean
government (or the government of another nation) issues a protest. Japanese correspondents
in South Korea interview South Koreans, starting out with “What is your opinion about thecomment made by the Japanese politician?”
When one of our politicians attempts to voice an objection, he is told that such an objection
would cause a scheduled Japan-ROK summit meeting to be canceled, so he ends up
refraining from stating it, or retracting it.
Thus, when historical events pertaining to Japan are at issue, it is impossible to debate themin Japan’s own Diet. South Korea might get angry, or China might get angry, so there can’teven be a debate.
This is the same sort of scheme that took shape in 1982 during the first textbook controversy.
The “history masochists” teamed up with forces critical of Japan in South Korea and China,
and then proceeded to produce a great number of fictional accounts that put Japan in a badlight.
When the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform published a new textbook devoid of
the masochistic historical perception, the South Korean government, through diplomaticchannels, told us not to use it. Members of the Korean Residents Union in Japan crowded into
school board meetings to voice their objections to the new textbook. No one asked the
Koreans to use it. Foreigners have no business interfering so brazenly in Japanese history
education. The Japanese decide on the content of Japanese textbooks. Foreign attempts to
influence Japanese decisions are intervention in the internal affairs of another nation.
Despite the fact that history education is of great importance to the overall education of
citizens of Japan, it has become almost impossible to debate this subject, even in the Diet.
65

This situation is the creation, the intentional creation, of Japanese Japan-haters. The comfort
women controversy and similar problems were created by those Japan-haters when they went
to South Korea seeking former comfort women to serve as plaintiffs in litigation.
Soon after Yoshida Seiji’s book was released, he went to South Korea and apologized on atelevision program there created for that purpose. Since I was living in Seoul at the time, I
viewed the program in my home. I remember that it was aired sometime in February 1983;
the program ended with Yoshida bowing deeply in apology.
Afterwards, I went out to eat at a restaurant I patronized frequently. One of the female
employees asked me if I had seen the television program. Yes, I said. Then she asked, “Is it
safe for Mr. Yoshida to return to Japan?”“What?”“He came all the way to South Korea to apologize, so he must be a good person. But I waswondering if he is going to get in trouble for saying bad things about his country.”
I realized that all ordinary South Koreans must be thinking the same thing. Before JapaneseJapan-haters ignited the controversy, the South Korean conventional wisdom was: people ofevery nation can be expected to speak well of their own country. Most people are patriotic,
including the Japanese. Therefore, South Koreans worried that someone who traveled toanother country and spoke ill of Japan would be attacked by angry crowds when he returned
to Japan, even if he was speaking the truth.
That is also why South Koreans normally wouldn’t contemplate going all the way to Japan toinstitute a lawsuit. After all, from their point of view, Japanese courts would never accept
such litigation, nor would there be a Japanese media frenzy over it.
Actually, there are masochists in every nation, but they are usually a very small minority. In
Japan, there are many. Remember that the comfort women controversy wasn’t the work ofSouth Koreans, but of Japanese.

66

CHAPTER 5: SEX-SLAVE IMAGE RUNS RAMPANT
The New Left: masochist demolishers of culture
Among the various types of leftists in today’s world is a breed that condemns its own country.
One group that fits this description is the Frankfurt School, named after its base at the
University of Frankfurt in Germany. The student members of this New Left group have comeout with a new theory of revolution.
The age in which workers unite and overthrow the capitalists is past. Now that we are in anadvanced state of capitalism, we must destroy culture as we embrace the information age.
Therefore, intellectuals and students are in the mainstream of revolution.

This theory involves destroying the underlying value system of a nation, and bringing about arevolution amid the resulting chaos. This philosophy gained ground among the world’s
student movements in the 1960s, but did not extend beyond the West. Since the nations of theEast cherished their pasts, the old-style communists of the East joined hands with the New
Left masochists in the West in opposition to the Vietnam War. The masochists gained
strength even in Great Britain, whose textbooks contain extensive accounts of the British
exploitation of India.
In the early 1970s, radical groups planted bombs at the offices of Mitsubishi and other major
corporations located in Marunouchi, Tokyo. The reason cited for these terrorist acts was thecoercive recruiting of Korean workers during World War II.
This huge current swept throughout the world, materializing in various incarnations: thefeminist movement and radical environmentalism, to name two. Many young people wereinvolved in these movements. Since they do not fit the description of classic Marxists, they
were not as disillusioned as the leftists of the previous generation, even when the Soviet
Union crumbled.
They were not Communist Party members. The Vietnamese Communist Party used membersof the New Left throughout the world to launch an antiwar movement in the U.S., andemerged victorious.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist Party used the New Left, thedestroyers of culture, in its fight for world domination. Since then, Japan-bashing has beenrelentless, the excuse for it being that Japan has not apologized sufficiently for its past.
We must determine the best way to counter the comfort women controversy in the context ofthe larger framework that I have just described.

Former Asahi Shimbun reporter’s choiceSome of the radicals have joined hands with North Korea over the comfort womencontroversy. In June 2000, Kim Dae-jung and his wife traveled to North Korea for the NorthSouth presidential summit. During his visit, Mrs. Kim met with a North Korean woman
67

activist and discussed the possibility of a joint North-South approach to the comfort womencontroversy.
Their conversation resulted in the formation in Pyongyang of a North-South network ofactivists interested in the comfort women controversy. Other networks have formed as well,involving Dutch and Chinese. Now there is a group in Japan, VAWW-NET (Violence
Against Women in War Network Japan), which leans slightly more to the left than the others;
it is opposed to the Asia Women’s Fund.
The organizer of VAWW-NET is a former Asahi Shimbun reporter named Matsui Yayori,
who subscribes to the doctrine of the New Left. The objective of Takagi Ken’ichi’s group
was to compensate former comfort women via the Asia Women’s Fund. Farther left than
Takagi, Matsui is intent on condemning Japan for its actions during World War II.
Matsui’s group held an international tribunal at which Japan’s crimes, all attributed toEmperor Showa, were enumerated. They called it the Women’s International War Crimes
Tribunal, but since there were no defense attorneys, it wasn’t a tribunal; it was a kangaroo
court similar to those held in revolutionary times. If she and her cronies came into power,
they would surely establish a dictatorship whose subjects had no human rights.
They put someone who is no longer of this world on trial. They used the defendant’s real
name, but didn’t afford him the benefit of a defense lawyer. The tribunal was a one-sided
denunciation. Their actions demonstrate their total disregard for human rights. VAWW-NET
created an international network and held a tribunal — in Tokyo, of all places. To makematters worse, NHK was planning to broadcast the “proceedings” without comment.
NHK executives finally came to their senses right before the tribunal commenced; theprogramming plan was modified slightly. Even as aired, the program made no mention of thedebates that had begun in 1992. NHK cannot claim that its broadcasts are neutral andnonpartisan, because viewers were not informed about the outcome of the debate, or the facts
to the extent that they are known.
Nevertheless, the program, just as biased as propaganda, was produced and broadcast.
Minimal changes were made when some thought was given to accountability. But then Asahi
Shimbun reported that program content was altered due to political pressure. The issue
became one of politicians pressuring a television network. A much more serious problem,
however, is NHK’s broadcasting of a program whose message was severely biased andcontrary to fact.

Japanese attorney takes comfort women controversy to UN
Meanwhile, Japanese leftists, not content with destroying the Japan-ROK relationship, began
focusing on the UN (United Nations). Since the U.S. is a member of the UN Security Council,
and members have veto power, topics that are preposterous in nature are not debated there.
But other UN organizations are, in fact, seriously flawed, primarily because many of theirstaff members espouse leftist ideas.

68The comfort women controversy was first brought to the attention of the UNCHR (UNCommission on Human Rights) in 1992 by a Japanese attorney named Totsuka Etsuro. On
February 25 of that year, Totsuka petitioned the Commission on Human Rights to take up the
comfort women controversy. At that time, South Korean activist groups were also submitting
petitions and other documents to the UN. However, as representative of an NGO called
International Education Development (IED), which is qualified to participate in Commission
on Human Rights conferences, Totsuka had the right to speak before the UNHCR. This was
the first time the comfort women controversy was broached at the UN.
Totsuka launched an attack on the Japanese government, claiming that comfort women weresex slaves. That was the first entrance of this bizarre equation (comfort women = sex slaves),
which also appears in a resolution submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives, into theinternational arena.
Attempts to win sympathy from the international community for former comfort women
would be fruitless if people were told that women were sold into prostitution because ofpoverty. Totsuka’s case needed to be presented as a heinous crime perpetrated by Japan, even
if it did not violate international law prevailing before World War II. Totsuka voiced histhoughts in a newsletter entitled “War and Sex,” published in 2006.
Because no analysis of the military comfort women controversy had been done in the light ofinternational law, a new one was needed in order to assess it in a legal context. Ultimately, I
defined comfort women as sex slaves of Japanese imperialism. I concede that this was an
intuitive assessment, but perhaps the victims’ accusations may have prompted a paradigm
change in my perception of the problem.

Totsuka’s sex-slave theory, which arose from his “intuition,” was at first dismissed by theUN, for obvious reasons. However, in addition to the UNCHR national delegates, NGOs that
fulfill specific conditions are permitted to participate in conferences. Totsuka and his allies,
along with South Korean activist groups, took advantage of this system to lobby persistently,
year after year to the UNHCR’s SPDPM (Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination
and Protection of Minorities), as well as the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of
Slavery.
Human rights specialists at the UN see Japanese coming to conferences year after year, anddenouncing their own government. Therefore, they began to think that the comfort women
were subjected to truly savage acts.

The Coomara-swamy Report
In 1994, two years after Totsuka’s first filing, UNCHR appointed Radhika Coomara-swamy,
a citizen of Sri Lanka, special rapporteur on violence against women, its causes andconsequences.
In July 1995, Coomara-swamy did fieldwork in Japan and the two Koreas. In April 1996, the
UNCHR accepted Coomara-swamy’s “Report on the Mission to the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea, the Republic of Korea and Japan on the Issue of Military Sexual Slavery
in Wartime.”
69

The report is rife with errors and assumptions. Here is its table of contents.
I. Definition
II. Historical backgroundIII. Working methods and activities of the special rapporteur
IV. Testimonies
V. Position of the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
VI. Position of the government of the Republic of Korea
VII. Position of the government of Japan
VIII. Moral responsibility
IX. Recommendations66

In “I. Definitions,” the author defines comfort women as “sexual slaves,” and it is on thatdefinition that she bases her report. She adopted Totsuka’s two-year-old intuition for an
official UN document.
6. The Special Rapporteur would like to clarify at the outset of this report that she considers
the case of women forced to render sexual services in wartime by and/or for the use of armed
forces a practice of military sexual slavery.
(...)
10. Finally, for the purpose of terminology, the Special Rapporteur concurs entirely with theview held by members of the Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, as well as
by representatives of non-governmental organizations and some academics, that the phrase“comfort women” does not in the least reflect the suffering, such as multiple rapes on an
everyday basis and severe physical abuse, that women victims had to endure during theirforced prostitution and sexual subjugation and abuse in wartime. The Special Rapporteur,
therefore, considers with conviction that the phrase “military sexual slaves” represents a much
more accurate and appropriate terminology.

The report begins from this standpoint; eight chapters later, it ends with recommendations for
the Japanese government.
(a) Acknowledge that the system of comfort stations set up by the Japanese Imperial Army
during the Second World War was a violation of its obligations under international law andaccept legal responsibility for that violation;(b) Pay compensation to individual victims of Japanese military sexual slavery ... .
66

Coomara-swamy Report on the mission to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, theRepublic of Korea and Japan on the issue of military sexual slavery in wartime
http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/(Symbol)/E.CN.4.1996.53.Add.1.En?Opendocument70

(c) Make a full disclosure of documents and materials in its possession with regard to comfort
stations and other related activities of the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World
War;(d) Make a public apology in writing to individual women who have come forward and can besubstantiated as women victims of Japanese military sexual slavery;(e) Raise awareness of these issues by amending educational curricula to reflect historicalrealities;(f) Identify and punish, as far as possible, perpetrators involved in the recruitment and67
institutionalization of comfort stations during the Second World War.

Why in the world should Japan be subjected to these vicious “recommendations” from the
UN? The answer lies in the fact that the report views the comfort women not as the victims ofhuman traffic resulting from poverty, but as victims of official coercion. Totsuka andcompany lobbied the UNCHR energetically in favor of this point of view. And because it
rests on that point of view, the report describes the comfort women system as an illegal act inviolation of international law prevailing at the time of World War II.
The very foundation of the report is a theory (official coercion) that has lost all credibility inJapan after being exhaustively debated (that theory, in turn, is based on the argument thatwomen were told they would be serving in female volunteer corps, and on Yoshida’s
confession).
Here is what the report says about recruiting.
27. As already mentioned, this information is, however, abundant in the stories of former“comfort women” and presents a reasonably clear picture. Three types of recruitment are
identified: the recruitment of willing women and girls who were already prostitutes; the luring of
women with the offer of well-paid work in restaurants or as cooks or cleaners for the army; and,
finally, large-scale coercion and violent abduction of women in what amounts to slave raids incountries under Japanese control. [(G. Hicks, “Comfort women, sex slaves of the Japanese Imperial
Force”, Heinemann Asia, Singapore, 1995), pp. 20, 21, 22 and generally.]

28. In the quest for more women, private operators working for the military, as well as
members of the Korean police force who worked in collaboration with the Japanese, would
come to the villages and deceive girls with the promise of well-paid work. Alternatively, inthe years preceding 1942, Korean police would arrive in a village recruiting for the“Women’s Voluntary Service Corps.” This made the process official, sanctioned by theJapanese authorities, and it also implied a certain level of compulsion. If the girls
recommended as “volunteers” failed to turn up, the kempeitai or military police would
investigate their reasons for doing so. In fact, the “Women’s Voluntary Service Corps” gave
the Japanese military the opportunity to make use of local Korean operators and police to put
pressure on local girls to “join the war effort” under false pretexts, as described above. [Ibid.,
pp. 23-26 (and elsewhere in the testimonies of the “comfort women” themselves).]

67

Ibid.

71

29. In cases where even more women were needed, the Japanese military resorted to violence,
undisguised force and raids which involved the slaughter of family members who tried toprevent the abduction of their daughters. These methods were facilitated by the strengtheningof the National General Mobilization Law, which had been passed in 1938 but was only used
for the forcible recruitment of Koreans from 1942 onwards. [Ibid., p. 25] The testimonies ofmany former military sexual slaves bear witness to the widespread use of violence andcoercion in the recruitment process. Moreover, the wartime experiences of one raider,
Yoshida Seiji, are recorded in his book, in which he confesses to having been part of slaveraids in which, among other Koreans, as many as 1,000 women were obtained for “comfort
women” duties under the National Labour Service Association as part of the National General
Mobilization Law. [Yoshida Seiji, My War Crimes: the Forced Draft of Koreans, Tokyo, 1983.]68

George Hicks’ worthless book
The Coomara-swamy report, released as it was in 1996, certainly could have benefited fromthe debate that had taken place in Japan up to then. Coomara-swamy interviewed Hata
Ikuhiko and Yoshimi Yoshiaki about their research. Prof. Hata showed her records ofinterrogations of Korean comfort women and procurers done by the U.S. military, and told
her that there was no employer-employee relationship between the comfort women and theJapanese military. Nevertheless, what she wrote in her report was exactly the opposite: “Dr.
Hata also believed that most ‘comfort women’ were under contract with the Japanese army.”
Prof. Hata lodged a protest through the Foreign Ministry. He also told Coomara-swamy indetail that Yoshida Seiji is a professional liar, explaining his reasons in detail. Still, she clings
to the assumption that Yoshida’s confession is factual.
As the previous citation demonstrates, Coomara-swamy relied almost completely on George
Hicks’ The Comfort Women for factual information. In “II. Historical background,” there are
11 footnotes. Ten of them cite Hicks’ book and the eleventh Yoshida’s.
Therefore, the report’s credibility rests on the reliability of Hicks’ book. My examination of it
reveals that it is a shoddy piece of work. The Hong Kong-based Australian economist reads
neither Japanese nor Korean, meaning that neither primary sources nor most of the literatureon the subject is accessible to him. Apparently, Hicks acquired 80% of his source material
from a North Korean woman residing in Japan.
Just to give one example, Hicks quotes from Yoshida Seiji’s confession as though it were fact.
He is not even aware of the refutation in the Cheju Newspaper. Hicks also cites a book by
Kim Il-myon, a resident of Japan with North Korean sympathies, many times. However, mostof Kim’s assertions are unverified rumors. Japanese specialists have deemed his bookunworthy of their attention.
Hicks completely ignores the considerable research on comfort women done in Japan. He
simply had the rumors conveyed to him translated into English and included them in his bookwithout comment.

68

Coomara-swamy, op. cit.

72

Like Hicks, Coomara-swamy reads neither Korean nor Japanese. When she was working on
her report, there was very little material available in English on the comfort womencontroversy. That, however, is no excuse for the special rapporteur’s relying solely on one
book in English on the controversy, which inspired a heated debate among Japanese andSouth Korean specialists. Even Prof. Yoshimi wrote a letter to Coomara-swamy urging her toremove portions referring to Hicks’ book and Yoshida’s confession.
Coomara-swamy’s work is slipshod; she presumes that there was official coercion anddefines comfort women as sex slaves. We are left dumbstruck by her highhanded
recommendations to the Japanese government: acknowledge that it violated international law,
pay compensation to individuals, and punish anyone associated with the comfort womensystem. She reached her conclusion (sex slaves) first, and then collected resources that jibedwith it.

North Korean propaganda presented as fact
Another influence on Coomara-swamy’s report that we must not overlook is the North
Korean government, which was enthusiastically helpful in providing information. In June
1992, former comfort women living in North Korea began coming forward. The North
Korean government demanded apologies and compensation for North Korean comfort
women, since they had been offered to South Koreans. When Coomara-swamy visited North
Korea, the government told her, “Japan used force to recruit 200,000 North Korean women as
sex slaves, subjected them to brutal sexual abuse, and then killed most of them.” These
accusations of crimes against humanity and mass murders in violation of the Convention on
the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide were described in the report as theofficial stance of the North Korean government. The part about Japan’s killing the great
majority of 200,000 comfort women is total nonsense, but we must take it seriously because
it was included in an official UN report. In North Korea political propaganda carries far moreweight than historical research or diplomacy. The report contains the following improbabletestimony of a former North Korean comfort woman.
54. The testimony of Chong Ok Sun, who is now 74 years old, reflects in particular the brutal
and harsh treatment that these women had to endure in addition to sexual assault and dailyrape by soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army:
One day in June, at the age of 13, ... I went to the village well to fetch water. A Japanesegarrison soldier surprised me there and took me away, so that my parents never knew what
had happened to their daughter. I was taken to the police station in a truck, where I was rapedby several policemen. (...) The head of the police station hit me in my left eye because I was
crying. That day I lost my eyesight in the left eye.
(...) There were around 400 other Korean young girls with me and we had to serve over 5,000
Japanese soldiers as sex slaves every day — up to 40 men per day.
(...) One Korean girl who was with us once demanded why we had to serve so many, up to 40,
men per day. To punish her for her questioning, the Japanese company commander
Yamamoto ordered her to be beaten with a sword. While we were watching, they took off her
clothes, tied her legs and hands and rolled her over a board with nails ... . In the end, they cut
off her head. Another Japanese, Yamamoto, told us that “it’s easy to kill you all, easier than73

killing dogs.” He also said “since those Korean girls are crying because they have not eaten,
boil the human flesh and make them eat it.”One Korean girl caught a venereal disease from being raped so often and, as a result, over 50
Japanese soldiers were infected. In order to stop the disease from spreading and to “sterilize”
the Korean girl, they stuck a hot iron bar in her private parts.
Once they took 40 of us on a truck far away to a pool filled with water and snakes. The
soldiers beat several of the girls, shoved them into the water, heaped earth into the pool andburied them alive.
I think over half of the girls who were at the garrison barracks were killed. Twice I tried torun away, but both times we were caught after a few days. We were tortured even more and I
was hit on my head so many times that all the scars still remain. They also tattooed me on theinside of my lips, my chest, my stomach and my body.69

I found the simple act of copying this material nauseating, but Coomara-swamy accepts
Chong’s testimony unconditionally, without doing any fact-checking. She adds:
52. At the outset, the Special Rapporteur wishes to extend her sincere gratitude to all women
victims who had the courage to speak to her and give their testimonies, although this meant,without doubt, the reliving of the most humiliating and painful moments in their lives.
53. (...) The following testimonies have been selected to illustrate the various aspects of thephenomenon of military sexual slavery, leading the Special Rapporteur to believe that such
military sexual slavery was conducted in a systematic and coercive manner by and with the70
knowledge of leaders of the Japanese Imperial Army.

Another problem that must be addressed is the Japanese government’s failure to issue ameaningful rebuttal concerning the factual errors in the report.
In The Comfort Women and Sex in Battle Zones Hata Ikuhiko writes that in March 1996,
when the UNCHR was deliberating Coomara-swamy’s report, Japan’s Foreign Ministrysubmitted a 40-page rebuttal entitled “The Japanese Government’s Position.”
The rebuttal stated that the neutrality of the Yoshida and Hicks books, on which Coomaraswamy had relied heavily, was doubtful. But the government suddenly withdrew the
document without disclosing its content. In its place was submitted a pro-forma document
entitled “The Japanese Government’s Policy concerning the ‘Comfort Women’ Controversy,”
which does not examine historical fact.
The UN special rapporteur intentionally used horrific terms like “sex slaves” in her report,
which is a direct attack on the Japanese government. But even under attack, all the Japanese
government did was withdraw its mordant rebuttal, which dealt with specifics; it thenapologized via the Kono Statement, in which it acknowledged moral responsibility, andexplained at great length about reparations paid to victims via the Asia Women’s Fund. The
69
70

Coomara-swamy, op. cit.
Ibid.

74

conventional wisdom of the international community is that if you don’t issue a rebuttal, youhave acknowledged the accusations.
Meanwhile, North Korea responded to Japanese censure in connection with the abductions ofJapanese citizens at the UN and other venues, as follows: “Prior to World War II, Japan
forced 200,000 Korean women to become sex slaves.” The Foreign Ministry’s response tothat accusation was only, “The numbers are inflated. Japan has already apologized.” But there
was no rebuttal.
It is not surprising that diplomats from other nations, upon hearing this exchange, believe that
if North Korea inflated the figures, then Japan must have forced about half that number, or
100,000 Korean women, into sex slavery.

“Sex slave” lies infiltrate U.S. House of Representatives
In fact, by September 13, 2006, the U.S. House of Representatives had already adopted aresolution condemning Japan in connection with the comfort women controversy at thecommittee level. The House Committee on International Relations (now Committee on
Foreign Affairs), headed by (former) Rep. Henry Hyde, voted unanimously in favor of theresolution (H. Res. 759).
This resolution was first submitted jointly by Rep. Lane Evans (Democrat) and Christopher
Smith (Republican). Both Smith and Hyde are leading conservative congressmen, and bothhave been very sympathetic to the North Korean abduction problem. In 2005, the House ofRepresentatives adopted a resolution condemning North Korea in connection with that very
problem. Its passage was due to Hyde’s strong leadership. In April 2006, Rep. Smith chaired
a hearing at the House of Representatives, at which Yokota Sakie, mother of abductee Yokota
Megumi, and Prof. Shimada Yoichi, chairman of NARKN (National Association for the
Rescue of Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea) testified.
In September 2006 the situation was very serious. But even Sankei Shimbun carried only abrief article; the other leading dailies, nothing at all.
Two resolutions relating to the comfort women were submitted (in 2001 and 2005). But forvarious reasons, including lobbying on the part of the Japanese Embassy, they were never put
to a vote. But in September 2006, The People’s Korea, the newspaper issued by Chosen
Soren, wrote about the reappearance of the resolution as follows: “Since April, the resolution
nearly died due to lobbying by Japanese government representatives, but interest in it grew
due to the activities of the elderly victims, their supporters and our compatriots in the U.S.
The media in South Korea have given this matter a great deal of coverage, and are demandingthat the Japanese government submit to the resolution.” This suggests a joint effort on thepart of the South Korean left wing and North Korea to lobby the Americans.
In September 2006, I sensed an impending crisis. I felt that if I didn’t do something, theresolution would pass. Here again, if the Japanese government did not present an official
rebuttal, it would be sending the message that the accusations in the resolution are true. Thatis certainly what members of Congress would think, even pro-Japan conservatives. Fearingthat these machinations would succeed in weakening the Japan-U.S. alliance, I wrote the75

following rebuttal, which appeared in the September 29 edition of the Sankei Shimbun, on theeditorial page, with my name on it.
I send heartfelt greetings to my friends in the U.S. Congress who believe in freedom,democracy, human rights and the rule of law — universal principles of humankind, and whoare committed to the diffusion of those principles throughout the world.
The Japanese government, and the Japanese people, who believe in those same universal
principles of humankind, and who are allies of your nation, were extremely shocked to hearthat the Committee on International Relations passed a resolution condemning the Japanese
government in connection with the comfort women controversy (H. Res. 759). The criticism
of the Japanese government in the resolution is based on anti-Japanese propaganda that has
absolutely no basis in fact.
To be specific, the resolution begins as follows:
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the Government of Japan
should formally acknowledge and accept responsibility for its sexual enslavement ofyoung women, known to the world as “comfort women,” during its colonial
occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of71
World War II, and for other purposes.
This statement has absolutely no basis in fact. Since the 1990s, the comfort women have been
the subject of a contentious debate in Japan. The debate has also become a diplomatic
controversy between Japan and South Korea. The Japanese government has conducted an
exhaustive examination of official documents and other resources from the past, and in theprivate sector, scholars have also done extensive research. Consequently, we have determinedthat there is no factual basis whatsoever for the claim that there was coercion of comfort
women by government or military authorities.
A statement issued by the Japanese government in 1993 (known as the Kono Statement)
contains the following language: “The Government study has revealed that in many cases [thecomfort women] were recruited against their own will, through coaxing, coercion, etc., andthat, at times, administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitments.” This
portion refers to war crimes committed by military personnel at an outpost in Java, Indonesia.
The perpetrators abducted a Dutch woman and forced her to work as a prostitute, against her
will and without permission from military headquarters. The Allies tried five soldiers and four
civilians as war criminals; some were executed, and others sentenced to prison.
The Kono Statement also expresses the government’s regret and acknowledgement of moral
responsibility for the suffering endured by many women who were obliged to provide sex
services to Japanese military personnel during the age of imperialism when ethnic selfdetermination and dignity were not recognized.
The Japanese government has stated its regret for having caused Koreans to suffer during its
annexation of Korea, and has vowed never to repeat its mistake. It has also apologized to the
comfort women for the suffering they endured. These sentiments have not changed.
To evade responsibility for its abduction of private citizens, Kim Jong-il’s North Korean
terrorist government has launched an energetic political propaganda campaign at the United71

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hr109-759

76

Nations and elsewhere, claiming that the Japanese government coerced 200,000 Korean
women into becoming sex slaves. We are horrified that the House Committee on International
Relations has adopted a resolution containing virtually the same charges as those made by theNorth Koreans, who must be cheering at their success in weakening the Japan-U.S. alliance.
I urge you to strengthen the bonds between Japan and the U.S., and between the nations of theworld that cherish freedom and democracy, by affording Japan an opportunity to disclose theresults of research conducted in Japan, via open hearings or similar proceedings. Until that
occurs, we urge you to postpone deliberation of said resolution in the House ofRepresentatives.

After the midterm elections were held in November, a new Congress was sworn in.
Resolution 759 had been passed by the Committee on International Relations, but neverprogressed any further. However, in January 2007, Rep. Mike Honda submitted a new
resolution.
The resolution debated in the House of Representatives is based largely on the Coomaraswamy report. Here are the four demands in the resolution submitted by Mike Honda.
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the Government ofJapan —
(1) should formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in aclear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Force=s coercion of young women into
sexual slavery, known to the world as “comfort women,” during its colonial and wartime
occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World WarII;(2) should have this official apology given as a public statement presented by thePrime Minister of Japan in his official capacity;(3) should clearly and publicly refute any claims that the sexual enslavement andtrafficking of the “comfort women” for the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces never occurred;and(4) should educate current and future generations about this horrible crime while
following the recommendations of the international community with respect to the “comfort
women.”72

The first demand borrows the term “sexual slavery” directly from Coomara-swamy, whoused it because she believes that it is “a much more accurate and appropriate terminology”
than “comfort women.”73
The “recommendations of the international community” in the fourth demand must certainly
include the Coomara-swamy report.

7273

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hr110-121
Coomara-swamy, op. cit.

77

It is also obvious that Coomara-swamy’s basic position, i.e., that comfort women were sex
slaves, has been adopted for the resolution.
The Coomara-swamy Report uses the term “sexual slavery,” and recognizes as fact Yoshida
Seiji’s testimony, the abduction of women under the pretext of serving in the female
volunteer corps, and the testimony of Chong Ok-sun. In that case, we must conclude that thefirst demand in House Resolution 121 is based on those same assumptions.
The “sex slave” argument, submitted to the United Nations by a Japanese lawyer in 1992, ison the point of becoming conventional wisdom in the U.S. House of Representatives. Rep.
Honda’s resolution acknowledges the following description of the comfort women system as
fact.
Whereas the “comfort women” system of forced military prostitution by the Government ofJapan, considered unprecedented in its cruelty and magnitude, included gang rape, forced
abortions, humiliation, and sexual violence resulting in mutilation, death, or eventual suicide74
in one of the largest cases of human trafficking in the 20th century;

The Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the Global Environment (under the Committee
on Foreign Affairs)75is deliberating H. Res. 121. On February 15, 2007, that subcommittee
invited former comfort women from South Korea and the Netherlands to testify at a hearing.
At that hearing, the submitters of the resolution made the following statement.
Some may say the past is the past and that the US is also an offender and violator of humanrights. Maybe this is so. But nowhere in recorded history has the US military as a matter ofpolicy issued a directive allowing for the coercion of young women into sexual slavery orforced prostitution.76

Rep. Honda and his colleagues really believe that all comfort women were sex slaves
conscripted directly by the Japanese military. In April 2006, the Congressional ResearchService issued a report entitled “Japanese Military’s ‘Comfort Women.’” Rep. Honda
referred to this report. At the beginning of the report, the author cites none other than Yoshida
Seiji’s book.77
But the Japanese government presented no rebuttal to the “sex slave” argument posited by the
Coomara-swamy report and crafted from Yoshida’s confession and the ridiculous testimonyof the North Korean former comfort woman. Therefore, it is entirely possible that that74
75

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hr110-121
The name of this committee was ACommittee on International Relations@ from 1995-2007.

76

Statement of the Eni F. H. Faleomavaega (Democrat), non-voting delegate to the U. S. House ofRepresentatives representing American Samoa, and chairman of the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, and the
Global Environment, http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/faleo021507.htm
77

The CRS issued a second report in April 2007, after objections to the Honda resolution from Prime
Minister Abe. That report does not include any mention of Yoshida. The Americans will investigate in
response to a rebuttal. However, the text of Honda=s resolution, written before the second CRS report wasissued, was never amended.

78

argument will be debated formally in the Congress of the U.S., Japan’s ally, and that a
resolution demanding a formal apology from the Japanese government will be adopted.

79

CHAPTER 6: ATTACKS ON JAPAN BEGIN
Rabid anti-Abe campaign
In my rebuttal to the U.S. Congress, published in September 2006, I requested an opportunity
to describe the results of research conducted in Japan, via open hearings or similar
proceedings. However, only the “official coercion” position was presented at the biased
hearing held on February 15, 2007.
Under normal circumstances, an official from the Japanese Embassy would have been there
to explain how much the truth had been distorted in the minds of Honda and his colleagues,
and in the reports on which they based their actions: the report prepared by CRS and the
Coomara-swamy report. Alternatively, someone could have asked a civilian specialist, likeme, to lobby the U.S. Congress. However, only those who espouse the sex-slave argument
were invited.
Remember that in the international community today, accusations are believed unless they
are contested.
Every army has operated facilities designed to help its soldiers to obtain sexual release.
Where there were no such facilities, there were rapes, such as those for which the Soviet
troops are so well known, committed in Manchuria and North Korea, and wherever else theywent. American soldiers committed rapes, too, immediately after they occupied Japan. The
Americans used brothels, which they ordered the Japanese government to establish.
South Korean troops (and yes, I detect the irony), operated brothels during the Vietnam War.
Why is Japan alone censured in a U.S. House of Representatives resolution? This question is
asked increasingly by the Japanese, more and more of whom now harbor anti-American
sentiments.
On March 5, 2007, Prime Minister Abe stated before Japan’s Diet that the premise on which
the resolution is based is contrary to fact, and that he would not apologize even if it werepassed, in the following exchange.
Rep. Ogawa Toshio (Democratic Party): What are your feelings about the Kono
Statement?
Prime Minister Abe: In principle, I intend to stand by it.
Ogawa: Recently, you stated that there was no official coercion in the recruiting of comfort
women.
Abe: No evidence has been found that indicates coercion in the narrow sense. There was no
coercion of the sort where officials forced their way into houses and abducted women.
Ogawa: At the U.S. Congress, former comfort women testified that they had been coerced.
Abe: There is no proof that there was coercion by government or military authorities, forinstance in so-called “slave hunts.” There was coercion in the broad sense, meaning on the80

part of procurers, who were the middlemen. The resolution submitted to the U.S. Congress
misstates the facts.
Ogawa: The blame for the misstatement of facts lies with the U.S. Congress, then? Can
Japan simply ignore this resolution, without issuing any apology whatsoever?
Abe: We will not apologize simply because the resolution was adopted. The resolution is notbased on fact, nor does it take into account the Japanese government’s past efforts.78
The media’s response to this exchange was to vilify Abe, labeling him as a revisionist andglorifier of militarism. In fact, Abe Shinzo is the secretary-general of a group of Diet
representatives concerned about history education, as described earlier. This is the samegroup that held a hearing, to which specialists on the subject were invited, to determine
whether there was indeed official coercion of comfort women. In attendance, in addition tomyself, were Yoshimi, Fujioka, Kono Yohei, and Ishihara Nobuo (former deputy chief
Cabinet secretary). After that hearing, it should have been clear to Abe that there had been no
official coercion. He even asked, at a Diet session, if the Kono Statement should be revised.
Running parallel to this was the debate about the abductions of Japanese citizens by North
Korean agents. At issue then was whether Japanese nationals had actually been abducted.
Abe Shinzo took the position that they indeed had been, and that pressure should be put on
North Korea. In fact, North Korea did admit to the abductions, and five of the abductees were
finally allowed to return to Japan. That success helped propel Abe into the prime minister’s
office. Those who attack Japan in connection with the comfort women controversy seem tobe extremely worried when forces trying to break through the darkness seize the reins ofgovernment. Asahi Shimbun seems particularly desperate, and has responded by finding fault
with Abe’s historical perspective.
When the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) presidential election was being held, Asahi
Shimbun was relentless, trotting out Kato Koichi and others wishing to criticize Abe. The
paper piled on accusation after accusation: Abe’s historical perspective being what it is,Japan-U.S. relations will deteriorate; Abe rejects the Tokyo Trials; his pilgrimages to
Yasukuni Shrine are his way of demonstrating his rejection of the IMTFE, and have caused
concern in the U.S.; and Abe’s historical perspective, which exalts prewar Japan, will
jeopardize not only Japan’s relations with China, but also with the U.S.
Soon after he was elected prime minister, Abe was barraged with questions about his opinionof the Kono Statement. He replied that he would stand by it, and that there was coercion in
the broad sense, but not in the narrow sense.

78

Sankei Shimbun, 06 March 2007.

81

American conservatives convinced that comfort women were sex slaves
Soon U.S. newspapers were reporting that unlike previous prime ministers, Abe wasattempting to overturn Japan’s apology — the Kono Statement.
Then there was an outcry about how Japan was appealing for the recognition of the humanrights of its own citizens, while closing its eyes to its own horrific infringements on thehuman rights of the people of other nations. In other words, what Prime Minister Abe wasattempting to revise history, like the Neo-Nazis, which flies in the face of universal humanrights. Abe and the U.S. do not share the same value system. This is the direction the
campaign is taking, and we would be foolish to underestimate it.
What is especially worrisome, as Prof. Shimada Yoichi of Fukui Prefectural University has
been warning us for two or three years now, is that even American conservatives areseriously misinformed about historical issues. They believe that there actually were sex
slaves. Even the conservatives who were extremely helpful to Japan in connection with theNorth Korean abductions believe that there was official coercion of comfort women.
Some conservatives have been heard to make comments like the following: “Some condemn
the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but that was the right thing to do.
Dropping those bombs put an end to the rapes of comfort women, which were beingcommitted at that very moment.”
A book published in 2004 and written by a North Korea expert whom American
conservatives respect propounds the argument that comfort women were victims of official
coercion and murder. That book is Separated at Birth: How North Korea Became the EvilTwin, and the author is Gordon Cucullu, a former Green Beret. Prof. Shimada’s review of thebook appeared in Gendai Koria.79
First, Cucullu refers to the comfort women as members of a “body donating corps” whose
customers, Japanese officers and rank-and-file soldiers, were instructed to treat them as“brutally and impersonally as possible and under no circumstances to form a friendly or
loving relationship with them.”80
What made the practice even more heinous was that the Japanese intentionally sought young
women, girls really, in the twelve-to-sixteen-year-old range to be comfort women. Theytargeted this age group because they knew in the strict, somewhat puritanical Korean society
girls this age were more than likely to be virgins and therefore not infected with venereal
disease. In the days before modern medical care and antibiotics disease was more feared inmany instances than combat injuries, and venereal disease could produce debilitating,occasionally fatal results. Consequently, the goal of the Japanese teams sent out to kidnap
women was to capture them as young and as sound as possible. Although women were sent to
the mobile prostitution units from virtually every country and land conquered by Japan, the79

Gendai Koria (Modern Korea), September 2005.

80

Gordon Cucullu, Separated at Birth: How North Korea Became the Evil Twin, (Guilford,
Connecticut: The Lyons Press, 2004, p. 89.

82

largest number by far came from Korea. An exact count is impossible to obtain but reasonable,
realistic estimates based on the number of Japanese troops deployed and on records recently
discovered in Japanese files dating from the period indicate that upwards of two hundred
thousand Korean women may have been kidnapped and sent out to be comfort women. Evenone would be too many, but this is a mind-numbing number.
Most of the comfort women did not survive the war. Far too many died of abuse and disease
contracted from the troops. Some committed suicide when the opportunity presented itself,
knowing full well that they would not be welcome back in their homes. There was no returnfor these women in their society; this was truly the end of the road. In most cases theretreating Japanese army simply executed them before abandoning a position. They rid
themselves of the evidence so to speak.
Predictably but sadly those few women survivors returned to a world that rejected them. They
were a living, visible symbol to Korean men that they were incapable of performing a man’s
most basic, essential task in his society: keeping his women safe. That they could not do thiscaused Korean men to be angry at the Japanese but also, irrationally, at the womenthemselves. As a result, the entire issue of the comfort women was tacitly ignored for themost part by Korean people who did not wish the shame to be brought up and by the Japanese
who were, and remain, in deep denial. It was not until the few surviving women passed age
sixty that they could no longer keep their torment bottled up inside and created a huge,81justifiable, and long overdue fuss.

It is difficult to believe that a conservative scholar would write in this way, but this one did.
Of course, if you probe deeply enough, you will find some conservatives who regret having
said that the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a good thing. But thesex-slave argument (a gift from Japan’s leftists) cancels out that regret. Shimada says thesituation is as bad as it seems.
As already described, the U.S. House Committee on International Relations passed a
resolution relating to comfort women in September 2006. At that time, the committee waschaired by Rep. Henry Hyde, who retired when his term expired in that same year. A
prominent conservative, Hyde was extremely critical of North Korea. He paid close attention
to human rights-related problems there, and to abductions of Japanese citizens by North
Koreans. Rep. Hyde was one of the major forces that enabled the mother of Yokota Megumi(one of the abductees) to travel to the U.S. and testify at a hearing at the House ofRepresentatives in April 2006. When delegates from the AVKN (Association of the Families
of Victims Kidnapped by North Korea) or the NARKN (National Association for the Rescueof Japanese Kidnapped by North Korea) travel to the U.S., Hyde has always been willing tomeet with them. Since the chairman of the House Committee on International Relations
addresses problems of diplomacy affecting the world’s nations, legislators from all over theworld seek audiences with him. However, the chairman does not meet with ordinary
legislators, only those of ministerial rank. But Hyde was willing to meet with delegates fromthe two aforementioned groups about twice a year. Furthermore, it was he who submitted aresolution condemning the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for the abductions andcontinued captivity of citizens of the Republic of Korea and Japan as acts of terrorism andgross violations of human rights, which was approved by the House on July 11, 2005.

81

Ibid., pp. 90-91.

83Masumoto Teruaki (secretary-general of the AVKN) and Shimada Yoichi (vice-chairman of
the NARKN) visited the U.S. in April 2005, and met with Rep. Hyde, as usual. When Hydeasked if there was anything he could do for them, Shimada replied, “Could you introduce a
resolution stating that the resolution of the abduction problem is imperative?” Hyde assured
him that he would, but advised Shimada not to say anything about the matter to the State
Department, whichmight object.
Dennis Halpin was one of Rep. Hyde’s aides. Halpin and Shimada kept in touch after theformer returned to Japan.
Yokota Megumi was abducted at the age of 13. She is not on the list of abductees officiallyrecognized by the Japanese government. Nor was a young man named Terakoshi Takeshi,
also kidnapped in the 1960s at the age of 13. Halpin suggested that the U.S. take the lead by
publicizing the kidnappings of those two teenagers, which Japan had not yet recognized. He
also stated his wish to include the abductions of South Koreans in the resolution, which wasdrafted, submitted, and approved.
We felt it was important to have the Americans on our side on this issue. We also wanted
them to be well-informed, which is why we prepared reference material about the abductions
for them in English. We began visiting the U.S. in 2001.
At first we were unable to meet with members of the House of Representatives. We began bymeeting with their aides and submitting our English-language material to the Congressional
Research Service. Ultimately, we met with the President to obtain permission to testify at ahearing.

Leftist groups also lobby U.S. Congress
Dennis Halpin is very sensitive to human rights problems, but his wife happens to be Korean.
Those who would have you believe that the comfort women were sex slaves were working
hard to further their “cause.” Halpin was approached, as was Rep. Hyde, by the proponents of
the resolution concerning comfort women. The leftists had been just as active as we had.
Additionally, left-leaning Korean-American groups had established a presence in the U.S. In
South Korea, leftists had made great headway, with two consecutive left-leaning
administrations (headed by Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun). And behind them were ethnic
Chinese-American groups that maintained close ties with the PRC government. (These are
the same groups that had been running campaigns in connection with the so-called Nanking
Massacre.)
For the past 10 years, these elements have gained momentum, and have succeeded in drawing
Americans’ attention to Japanese historical issues. For instance, they instituted suit inAmerican courts on behalf of former conscripted laborers, their objective being to extract
reparations from Japanese companies doing business in the U.S. One of the standard-bearersof this movement was Rep. Mike Honda.

84

In August 1999, Honda (then a California State assemblyman) submitted a resolution
designed to approve the payment of reparations. The State Assembly approved it, and in
March 2001, it was submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives in the form of legislation.
The Department of State and other U.S. government entities took the position that the matter
was settled via the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1952.
Even so, Honda & Co. were attempting to extract compensation from Japanese corporations
by changing the interpretation of the treaty. But the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001
called attention to the importance of the American relationship with Japan. The campaign
came to an abrupt halt.
However, more groups formed in the U.S. — groups that equated prewar Japan with Nazi
Germany, and demanded compensation (which had already been provided for in the
aforementioned treaty) and apologies from Japan’s prime ministers.
South Koreans residing in the U.S. were behind movements relating to the comfort women,
but Rep. Honda had been attempting to address that issue for quite some time. According to areport in Sankei Shimbun, Honda had received substantial financial contributions from
Chinese groups.
But an even more serious problem had arisen elsewhere. As already described, about three
years ago, Shimada Yoichi noted that an increasing number of American conservatives had
espoused the argument that comfort women were sex slaves.
The number of resolutions submitted to the U.S. Congress each year is huge. Since
resolutions are not legally binding, committee chairs have the authority to decide which todeliberate and which to ignore. In September 2006, under Henry Hyde’s leadership, aresolution concerning comfort women (H. Res. 759) was passed by unanimous consent. The
sex-slave argument proponents had gotten to Chairman Hyde.
Note that the 2006 resolution and the current resolution won the approval of Republicans aswell as Democrats, and more congresspersons vote for it each time. Even anticommunist,
conservative legislators who are concerned about human rights, and who support the Abeadministration’s policies on those points approve of the comfort women resolutions.
At the U.N. and anywhere else they can find an audience, the North Koreans say, “Japan isusing the abductions for political purposes. If the Japanese care about human rights, theyshould first resolve the problem of 200,000 sex slaves.”
This is the sort of stance North Korea always assumes, not only toward Japan, but also
toward the international community. What is worse, the U.S. Congress may soon endorsethese North Korean lies.
In October 2006, I went to New York with AVKN vice-chairman Iizuka Shigeo andsecretary-general Masumoto, and NARKN vice-chairman Shimada. We visited the United
Nations, where we met with representatives of permanent member nations and the 12 nations
whose citizens are known to have been abducted by North Koreans. We explained to them
how very serious the abduction problem was, and asked for their help in convincing the
Security Council to impose more stringent sanctions on North Korea. At that time, the85General Assembly was the scene of deliberations on a resolution condemning North Korea
for its human rights abuses, which included the abductions. Therefore, we also asked thepeople with whom we met to support that resolution. We had the opportunity to spend a day
observing deliberations over the resolution in the General Assembly.

Japan’s incompetent diplomats
Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly are first deliberated by a committee.
Committees are very large bodies in which all member nations participate. The Third
Committee handles problems relating to human rights. It was sessions of that committee,
attended by all member nations, that we observed.
Japan’s ambassador to the U.N. was the first to speak.
“The families of abductees are here with us today, but the abduction problem has still notbeen resolved. North Korea sent human remains to Japan, claiming that they belonged toJapanese abductees; they did not. Furthermore, the North Koreans refuse to enter into talks
regarding this matter.”
North Korea issued the following rebuttal:“The abduction problem has been resolved, thanks to the good offices of General Kim Jong-il.
All those still alive have been returned to Japan. This matter is closed. How dare Japan, theperpetrator of far more serious infringements of human rights, claim that this problem has notbeen resolved, when it has done nothing about those infringements? This is typical Japanesebehavior.”
This outburst was followed by the enumeration of “unsolved problems,” i.e., the abduction ofeight million persons, massacres that claimed two million victims, and the coercion of
200,000 women into sexual slavery, which unfolded in front of our very eyes. These words
were uttered in the presence of all member nations.
The Japanese ambassador took the floor a second time. The more I listened to him, the morediscouraged I became. He clearly hadn’t taken the care to craft a convincing response.
“The figure of 200,000 is exaggerated. Furthermore, Japan has already issued apologies inconnection with these problems.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if the people listening to him say “200,000 is an exaggeration” wentaway believing that perhaps there were something like 100,000 sex slaves. They would also
think that the Japanese had coerced women into sexual slavery, because the speaker said that
apologies had already been issued.
The Japanese ambassador’s rejoinder was so weak that it may even have lent credence to theNorth Korean accusations. It contained not even a hint of the outcome of the debate that we
had launched in Japan in 1992.

86

U.S. media bash Abe and Japan
Articles critical of Prime Minister Abe in connection with the House resolution beganappearing in U.S. newspapers. Some of the articles seemed to equate the abductions and the
comfort women, casting suspicion on Abe’s stance on the abductions. American newspapers
were actually parroting the accusations against Japan aired in the North Korean rebuttal at theUnited Nations. By way of example, here is an excerpt from an editorial that appeared in the
Washington Post in March 2007.
Mr. Abe has a right to complain about Pyongyang’s stonewalling. What’s odd — andoffensive — is his parallel campaign to roll back Japan’s acceptance of responsibility for theabduction, rape and sexual enslavement of tens of thousands of women during World War
82
II.

How do we explain this unhappy state of affairs? I don’t think the answer is that Americans
are anti-Japanese or ignorant of Japan. Nor do I believe they are attempting to shove theirperception of history, heavily colored by the Tokyo Trials, down our throats. No, this is our
problem. Japan’s attempts to counter the various accusations have failed miserably.
As stated earlier, I am convinced that we were victorious in the debate in Japan, though some
may argue that it was not decisive. And even those Japanese who proudly wear hair shirts canno longer claim that there was official coercion in the narrow sense.
However, North Korean claims (that there was official coercion in the narrow sense and that
the Japanese forced women to become sex slaves) are spreading throughout the world at an
alarming rate. They have even been reproduced in a U.N. report. It is the duty of Japanesediplomatic officers to contest accusations that are untrue.
Japan has never acknowledged official coercion in the narrow sense. No government
representative has ever said, “At that time, it was not uncommon for young women from poorfamilies to be sold into prostitution, and in that sense, their human rights were violated. Our
hearts go out to those victims of poverty.” Instead, we hear, “Japan has already apologized. In
addition, we have been paying compensation via the Asia Women’s Fund.” Since we havenot communicated the facts in our rebuttals, an increasing number of people have come tobelieve that there actually were sex slaves.
There are reasons for the criticism of Abe in the U.S. media. When the “comfort women”
resolution was passed by the Committee on International relations in September 2006,
Japan’s Foreign Ministry responded to the prime minister’s strong wishes by moving to blocka vote on it by the full U.S. House of Representatives. The House adjourned before theresolution came to a vote.
But in January 2007, with a new Congress after midterm elections, Rep. Honda resubmitted
the comfort women resolution. This time, the Foreign Ministry launched a more concerted
lobbying campaign, which began in February and ran through March.

82

Washington Post, 24 March 2007.

87

In February, letters signed by Ambassador Kato Ryozo were sent to each congressperson.
Ambassador Kato held a press conference at which he emphasized the factual errors in the
resolution. And what about those factual errors? The resolution includes a demand that theJapanese government apologize, but Japan’s prime ministers had already apologized any
number of times. Attached to the aforementioned letter were documents, among them theKono Statement, information about the Asia Women’s Fund, and apologies issued by Japan’s
prime ministers.
His rebuttal was, essentially: “You can see how many times we’ve apologized. Why do weneed to apologize further?” He did not say that among the factual errors were descriptions of
comfort women as sex slaves. He did not say that there was no official coercion. He did nottouch upon any of the topics that had been debated in Japan. All he said was that the Japanese
government had already apologized.
On March 5, at just about the time when attention had been drawn to the ambassador’s letter,
Prime Minister Abe delivered a speech at the Diet. In it, he said:
No government or military authorities ever broke into houses and kidnapped women. There isno evidence to the effect that there was anything resembling officially sanctioned “comfort
women hunts.” The U.S. House of Representatives’ resolution misstates the facts.
We are not going to apologize simply because the resolution was adopted. The resolution iscertainly not based on fact, and does not recognize the efforts made by the Japanese
government to date.

From the Americans’ point of view, Ambassador Kato was saying that Japan’s prime
ministers have continually issued apologies. But the new prime minister, Abe Shinzo, issaying that he won’t apologize because of misstatements of fact. In that case, isn’t theambassador contradicting the prime minister? The Americans suspect Abe of opposing
Japan’s previous stance and begin to believe that perhaps the resolution was necessary after
all. Perhaps they should vote for it.
Furthermore, criticism of Japan in the U.S. media has been mounting. Only Prime Minister
Abe based his counterargument on the facts; the Foreign Ministry never mentioned them. In
fact, the Foreign Ministry has handled this problem so poorly that Abe, having veered fromthe position of previous administrations, is now suspected of revisionist views, and ofwishing to glorify the militarism of the past.
The ministry did come up with a strategy. But it was the same old strategy, and it didn’t even
begin to address the facts. Instead of putting out the fire, it added fuel to it.

How to stop resolutions condemning Japan
Resolutions approved by the U.S. House of Representatives have no legal force. The
resolution in question is only one of many thousands submitted each year. One could argue
that the best course of action is to shrug it off and wait until it is forgotten. But the resolution
will remain in official records, and the North Koreans are sure to use it as ammunition against
Japan. I can just hear them saying, “in accordance with the resolution passed by the U.S.
Congress.”
88

Therefore, we must not underestimate the resolution’s effect. Even more worrisome, as I haveindicated again and again, is the fact that the sex-slave argument in the resolution and othermisrepresentations of fact have gained credence even among American conservatives.
We must take action, and expeditiously so, to clear up global misinterpretation of the comfort
women controversy. I have made the following proposal at every possible opportunity, eversince Honda submitted his resolution.
A Proposal for Clearing up International Misunderstandings Concerning Comfort Women
I call upon the chief cabinet secretary or the prime minister to issue a new statement, onethat outlines the Japanese government’s current perception of the comfort women issue.
Along those same lines, we must launch a massive, systematic campaign in which thegovernment, the Diet and private citizens join hands in exposing and correcting thefalsehoods that have been spread.
The new statement would define the Kono Statement as one that “fails to provide
adequate explanations, contains language that invites misinterpretation, and isinconsistent with the results of subsequent research and, therefore, outdated.”
Justifying the issuance of a new statement are sustained international attention to the issue,e.g., advancements in research relating to comfort women, a report issued by the UN
Commission on Human Rights, and resolutions submitted to the U.S. Congress.
The new statement would emphasize the fact that no evidence of official coercion in the
narrow sense has been uncovered, while affirming that the government’s compassion forand empathy toward those who were forced to serve as comfort women against their will(coercion in the broad sense) remain unchanged.
Our international public-relations campaign should stress the fact that our nation stands
on universal human values, i.e., freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.
We must reveal to the world that behind baseless anti-Japanese propaganda are leftist
totalitarian elements intent on using political maneuvering to destroy the friendshipbetween Japan and the U.S. Additionally, we must make every effort to avoid behavior
that would label us as ultra-rightists who long for a revival of militarism.
We must tell the world that both Japan’s public and private sectors are working to combat
unceasing violations of human rights, including the abduction of our citizens, by Kim
Jong-il’s government and its pillar of support, the Chinese Communist Party. The North
Koreans and Chinese attack Japan, dredging up “history,” because they are fully
cognizant that the Abe administration and Japan’s conservative politicians are thestrongest critics of their current human-rights abuses.
In our public-relations campaign, we should include the following information, whichmust be reiterated until it penetrates: (1) Japan’s government has never tolerated thecoercive recruitment of comfort women by government or military authorities, and (2)even the Kono Statement did not admit to official coercion.
The exceedingly vague Kono Statement represents a compromise, a gesture toward South
Korea, issued by the Japanese government at a time when it feared a further worsening ofJapanese-Korean relations. According to Ishihara Nobuo, former deputy chief Cabinet
secretary, Japan was faced with unreasonable demands from South Korea, such as, “We89insist that you acknowledge official coercion.” The Kono Statement was not issued tocombat South Korean accusations, but to fend them off.
Therefore, we must issue a new statement without delay. But we must also make it clearthat even the Kono Statement does not acknowledge official coercion, as I have discussed,
in great detail, earlier in this book.
Here is the portion of the Kono Statement that deals with the recruiting of comfort women.
The recruitment of the comfort women was conducted mainly by private recruiters
who acted in response to the request of the military. The Government study has
revealed that in many cases they were recruited against their own will, throughcoaxing coercion, etc., and that, at times, administrative/military personnel directly
took part in the recruitments. They lived in misery at comfort stations under acoercive atmosphere.
Here, coercion (in the broad sense) is acknowledged in connection with the behavior ofprivate recruiters and living conditions at comfort stations. Acknowledging coercion in
the narrow sense, which the Kono Statement does not do, would be tantamount toadmitting that there was systematic coercive recruiting by government or military
authorities. Prime Minister Abe’s statement before the Diet, in which he said that “there isno evidence of coercion in the narrow sense,” was correct.
However, it is possible to interpret “administrative/military personnel directly took part in
the recruitments,” however inaccurately, as an admission of official coercion (coercion in
the narrow sense). Still, there is no acknowledgement of coercion in the narrow sense in
the official explanation of the statement provided by the Cabinet Secretariat, the issuingentity.
The League of Young Legislators Concerned about Japan’s Future and History Educationcompiled a book entitled Questioning History Textbooks, which was published in 1997. It
mentions the testimony of a Cabinet Councillors’ Office on External Affairs staff member,
who explained that the phrase in question refers to a single incident — a war crimecommitted by military personnel assigned to a Java outpost. The Allies punished theperpetrators, who were either executed or imprisoned, long ago.
In the first place, the fact that a resolution that blatantly contradicts historical fact was
submitted to the Congress of the United States, Japan’s ally, is proof that public
information issued by the Foreign Ministry for foreign consumption was totallyineffective in countering propaganda emitting from leftists and Japan-haters in Japan, theChinese Communist Party, North Korea and South Korean leftists.
Conservative forces in Japan must make an effort to open substantive discussions thatdelve into historical perceptions with conservative American intellectuals and politicians.
It would also be a good idea to form a network of conservatives in the U.S. and other key
nations. Additionally, there is an urgent need for private, conservative think tanks similar
to the Heritage Foundation in the U.S., which could be used to state our case.

What did Abe’s April 2007 visit to U.S. accomplish?
Prime Minister Abe visited the U.S. on April 26 and 27 of this year, amid a barrage of attacks
launched by the American media over the comfort women controversy. He deserves a great
deal of credit for having shed light on some of the misinterpretations of that issue during his
90

visit. Abe didn’t try to avoid the comfort women issue; he said exactly what he should havesaid as prime minister. The achievement of his objective — the strengthening of the JapanU.S. alliance — is in sight.
Upon his arrival in Washington, the prime minister visited Congress, where he conferred with11 congresspersons in leadership positions from both parties. Among them were Nancy
Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives; Harry Reid, Senate majority leader; andMitch McConnell, Senate minority leader. The prime minister also met with Rep. Tom
Lantos, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and cosponsor of the Honda
resolution; Japanese-American Daniel Inouye (Democrat), and John Boehner (Republican),House minority leader. (Since the vice-president of the U.S. acts serves concurrently aspresident of the Senate, the top-ranking senators are the majority and minority leaders.)
Speaker Pelosi was moved to comment, “It is very rare that the Democratic and Republican
leadership of the House and Senate gather together to meet with a prime minister of anothercountry. This evidences the respect of these congressional leaders present for Prime Minister
Abe and our strong desire to further strengthen Japan-U.S. relations.”83 According to press
reports, Abe spoke about the comfort women problem as follows: “Neither my wishes nor mystatements have been communicated accurately. As an individual and as prime minister, I
empathize from the bottom of my heart with the comfort women who suffered so greatly. I
am saddened that they were placed in such painful circumstances. (...) There were a great
many abuses of human rights in the 20th century, and I cannot say that Japan was completely
unconnected with them. However, Japan, as a nation, is committed to investing all its energy
in making the 21st century a better era, one in which there are no more abuses of humanrights.”In his conversations with President Bush as well, the prime minister mentioned the comfort
women issue: “The comfort women endured extreme hardships under very difficult
circumstances. My heart goes out to them. It is a terrible shame that they suffered so greatly.
The 20th century was an age in which human rights were violated in every region of theworld. The entire nation of Japan is committed to eradicating human rights abuses in the 21st
century.”
These two statements were virtually identical, and were prepared in advance. I was surprisedthat a visit to Congress was the first item on the prime minister’s agenda, and that hevoluntarily broached the subject of comfort women there. It is obvious that he wasdetermined to face the issue squarely.
I looked at media reports of Abe’s statements, and combining two of them for the sake of
convenience, compiled a list of the points he made.
(1) Neither my intentions nor my statements have been communicated accurately.
(2) Comfort women endured extreme hardship under very difficult circumstances; they
suffered greatly.
(3) As a human being and as prime minister, I empathize with the comfort women from thedepths of my heart.
(4) It is a terrible shame that comfort women found themselves in such painful circumstances.
83

The Japan Times, 16 May 2007.

91

(5) There were many violations of human rights in the 20th century; Japan was not totally
unconnected with them.
(6) As a nation, Japan will do all possible to help eradicate human rights abuses in the 21st
century.
I believe that a great deal of thought went into those words. The first two points are entirely
reasonable. In (1), the prime minister articulates his objection to criticism emanating from the
U.S. media. In (2), he acknowledges coercion in the broad sense (which the Japanese
government acknowledged in the Kono Statement), meaning that he recognizes that the
comfort women suffered hardships and privation. In (3), Abe expresses empathy toward
former comfort women.
I am not so happy with (4). The prime minister has already stated that he would not apologize
even if the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Honda resolution. What he says in (4)could be construed as an apology, and therefore inconsistent with his previous statement.
This is a borderline case, because he is expressing sadness at the unfortunate circumstancesof comfort women, and only that. In those days, some women had no choice but to serve as
comfort women due to poverty. Even then, Japan’s policymakers couldn’t have thought that
was a good thing. Therefore, it was empathy, not guilt, that prompted the prime minister’s
expression of sorrow. This was a subjective human emotion. It is entirely possible to interpret
his words in this way, rather than as an admission of guilt over an evil deed or crime.
The sentiments expressed in (5) and (6) are also well thought out, and can be construed asassertiveness on the part of Japan. In (5), the prime minister states that there were a great
many abuses of human rights in the 20th century. The subtext is that these abuses occurred in
the U.S., as well as in many other of the world’s nations, and that Japan was not without guiltin this area, which could include the comfort women issue as one of many abuses. Abe wasvoluntarily acknowledging some complicity on the part of 20th-century Japan — complicity
shared by virtually every other nation.
In the latter half of the 20th century, Japan succeeded in banishing the poverty that hadengendered violations of the rights of comfort women, among others. In (6), the prime
minister is expressing the hope that human rights abuses that continue even today intotalitarian North Korea and China will be eradicated, and declaring Japan’s firm
commitment to the achievement of that objective.
Did Abe’s words convey the same concepts to President Bush that they did to me? Howmuch factual information about comfort women did the prime minister communicate at thesummit? Only those present can answer these questions.
At a press conference, Bush said the following about comfort women:
The comfort women issue is a regrettable chapter in the history of the world, and I accept thePrime Minister’s apology. I thought it was very — I thought his statements — Kono’s
statement, as well as statements here in the United States were very straightforward and fromhis heart. And I’m looking forward to working with this man to lead our nations forward. And
that’s what we spent time discussing today.
We had a personal visit on the issue. He gave his — he told me what was on his heart about
the issue, and I appreciated his candor. And our jobs are to, obviously, learn lessons from the92

past. All of us need to learn lessons from the past and lead our nations forward. That’s what84
the Prime Minister is doing in a very capable way.

“The comfort women issue is a regrettable chapter in the history of the world” is anexpression of recognition identical to (2) and (3) of the points made by Prime Minister Abe in
his statements. “I accept the prime minister’s apology” is Bush’s response to (4). However,since (4) is not an apology to Bush or to the U.S., it is difficult to understand why the U.S.
President used the word “accept.”
But since the word “appreciate” was spoken, I believe I understand the intent behind what follows. By
accepting Abe’s apology, Bush meant that he now understood Abe’s feelings about the matter and had
decided that American criticism of the prime minister should cease. Bush was grateful for Abe’s candid
statements about the comfort women issue.
When Bush talks about learning lessons from the past, he is referring to Abe’s remark about
the 20th century. His mention of leading nations forward is a response to Abe’s hopes for the
21st century.
Thus, Bush’s comments can be interpreted as a show of support for Prime Minister Abe, once
he had heard the latter’s explanation of the comfort women issue.
At Abe’s meeting with key congresspersons, Sen. Daniel Inouye (Democrat) said that he wasdisheartened by movements in the U.S. relating to the comfort women controversy, despite
the fact that seven Japanese prime ministers had already issued apologies. He voiced his fearthat such movements would continue. There were no comments about the comfort womenissue from the other legislators.
Also noteworthy are remarks made by Rep. Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Committee
on International Relations, which was then deliberating the comfort women resolution.
Lantos said he would strongly support Abe in his effort to amend Japan’s Constitution, anecessary step toward Japan’s shouldering security responsibilities befitting its superpower
status.
Journalist Komori Yoshihisa of Sankei Shimbun has been following trends in Japan-U.S.
relations for more than 20 years. About the new American attitude toward the JapaneseConstitution, he wrote, “History certainly does change, doesn’t it!” But the fact that Rep.
Lantos, a liberal Democrat, declared that he would not oppose the revision of ourConstitution is proof that Americans trust the Japanese more than ever, because the twonations share the same values.
Judging from the gist of the comfort women resolution, and the volleys of criticism fired at
Prime Minister Abe, one would think the Americans would object to Abe’s overseeing a
constitutional revision, since they view him as a revisionist who glorifies Japan’s past acts ofaggression. That Rep. Lantos said what he did implies that Abe succeeded in conveying histrue intentions to the American legislators. I believe that he deserves praise for his statements
about the comfort women issue in Washington.
84

Press conference at Camp David on 27 April 2007.

93

Also noteworthy is the visit of Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Shimomura Hakubun (whoaccompanied the prime minister to the U.S.) to the North Korea Genocide Exhibit in
Washington, D.C. on the afternoon of April 26. The exhibit is an annual event sponsored by
the North Korea Freedom Coalition (chaired by Suzanne Scholte), an organization that
attempts to combat human rights abuses in North Korea. Representatives of AVKN andNARKN attend each year.
The exhibit included photographs of Japanese abductees and related reference material, as
well as photographs taken at the border separating China and North Korea. Other
photographs, taken inside North Korea, show the tragic fate of women and children who
attempted to escape from North Korea. Also on exhibit were personal possessions of North
Koreans, which testify to the low standard of living in that nation; letters from North Koreansexpressing their longing for freedom, and films. Prof. Shimada Yoichi, who was present on
April 26, provided the following report.
When Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary arrived at the venue in the heart of Washington, D.C.,
he received a warm welcome. On hand to greet him were Saito Fumiyo (sister of abducteeMatsuki Kaoru), Shimada Yoichi (vice-chairman of the NARKN), Korean-American activist
Sin U Nam (vice president of the North Korea Freedom Coalition), defectors from North
Korea, and volunteers from the staffs of congresspersons.
Sin U Nam served as Shimomura’s guide, carefully describing the items on exhibit. The alleyes were focused on a 10-minute film of a public execution in North Korea. In front of an
exhibit featuring Japanese abductees, Asano Izumi, president of the Washington Abduction
Network and Mrs. Asano described their activities in the U.S.
Sin U Nam and Suzanne Scholte were both impressed by the Deputy Chief Cabinet
Secretary’s visit. Nam found it meaningful that a high-ranking Japanese government official
showed a genuine interest in human rights, over which nothing should take precedence. In
contrast, the Bush administration vacillates, held prisoner by a vague nuclear agreement.
Here are some of their comments: “No matter how many times we appeal to South Korean
government officials for help, they don’t even bother to respond. I sense a new anger wellingup in me toward the South Korean government. Japan shouldn’t bother with the likes of Roh
Moo-hyun.”“How dare these people who close their eyes to women who are forced to become sex slavesnear the border between China and North Korea, and then self-righteously bring up past
problems like the comfort women!”

If you succeed in convincing Americans, they will take your side. But since the Japanese
government hasn’t attempted to do that to date, proponents of the sex slave argument have
had a field day spreading lies. Consequently, those whom we would expect to be on our side
are turning against us. But nothing has been written in stone. We can salvage the situation.
But only by forging partnerships between the public and private sectors will we succeed indispelling the misunderstandings about comfort women, which have spread throughout theworld.
Earlier, I wrote that Prime Minister Abe’s visit to the U.S. was fruitful, but his success was
only as permanent as lobbying can be. The next assignment for the Abe administration is to
issue a government opinion stating clearly that there was no coercion in the narrow sense.
94Such an opinion should be translated into the languages of the world and posted on
government websites, where it can communicate its message silently but steadily.

Truth must prevail
When I was collecting reference material to use for this book, I came across the transcript ofa fascinating lecture. It was delivered in Fukuoka in July 2002 by the aforementioned
Yoshimi Yoshiaki under the title “Results of Research on the Military ‘Comfort Women’Issue: An Attempt to Shatter the Argument that the Comfort Women System Was Lawful.”85
In it, Yoshimi compares the comfort women system with lawful, licensed prostitution, andarrives at the following four possible positions that can be taken on this issue.
A. The two systems are identical: “Both involved commercial transactions; both were lawful
and permissible.” →Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform
B. The two systems are completely different: “The comfort women system is unacceptable.”→ Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (one of the firstactivist groups established in South Korea)
C. Neither system is permissible, but the comfort women system was more insidious thanlicensed prostitution. →Yoshimi Yoshiaki
D. The two systems are similar; neither is permissible. → women specialists in feminist
history
When Yoshimi criticized A, specialists in feminist history castigated him when he criticizedA, saying that the comfort women system was different from licensed prostitution, on the
grounds that he was glorifying the latter. According to them, “the woman who becomes a
prostitute may do so of her own free will, but there is always an element of coercion in
prostitution. Both comfort women and prostitutes are sex slaves.”
At this point, it would seem that Yoshimi is definitely close to embracing A. All those taking
this position are saying that both systems were permissible at the time, but they empathizewith the women involved for the suffering they endured. No one is saying that either system
would be permissible today. I believe I have demonstrated that Prime Minister Abe wassaying the same thing in Washington.
Then, if neither the comfort women system nor licensed prostitution is permissible, why did
those systems exist in Japan’s past and in the past of most of the world’s nations? Why didn’t
Yoshimi ask this question?
As described in detail in the first part of this book, in 1992, when the comfort women issue
surfaced due to the activities of Asahi Shimbun, Yoshimi and others, Prime Minister
Miyazawa apologized to President Roh Tae-woo on eight occasions.

85

Taniguchi Kazunori, ed., “Tokushu: ianfu mondai no genzai” (Special: current status of the comfort
women controversy” in Senso to sei: Dai 25 go (War and sex: No. 25), 30 March 2006.

95

At that time, I asked a bureaucrat at the Foreign Ministry what the prime minister was
apologizing for. Did he apologize for the official coercion of comfort women? Did he
apologize to the victims because they were so poor they were sold into prostitution? If so,then why doesn’t he apologize to the licensed Japanese prostitutes who worked in
Yoshiwara?
The bureaucrat replied that he would conduct an investigation. Fifteen years have passed
since then, and no one makes accusations of official coercion anymore. Yoshimi andcompany have begun to view the comfort women system and licensed prostitution in thesame way. We knew that 15 years ago. I wonder if he’s even aware how much damage heand his ilk have done to Japan’s honor.
Who else do we have to blame? The professional liar who insisted he had taken part in theabduction of women (slave hunts), which never took place, and went to South Korea toapologize. Then there was the newspaper reporter who found it just as easy to lie as to tell thetruth, and who described an old woman who told him she had been sold into prostitution as
someone tricked into becoming a comfort woman on the pretext that she would be joining awomen’s volunteer corps, and the irresponsible newspaper that employed him, which did not
retract his story even after the lies were exposed. The arrogant, shameless lawyer who sued
Japan for the recovery of ¥26,000 (a huge amount in those days) in savings on behalf of aformer prostitute. A masochistic NGO activist whose visits to the UN, where he lodged thefanciful (and fraudulent) claim that comfort women were sex slaves, culminated in a UNHCR
report. Every single one of these people is Japanese.
The controversy began with lies. The lies ballooned into fallacies, and ended with aresolution condemning Japan on the point of being passed by the U.S. House ofRepresentatives. All along, the propelling force was Japan-hating Japanese.
They formed a mammoth global network, steadily accumulated documentary material, andlaunched a perverted interpretation of international law. These misguided souls continue toattack our beautiful fatherland, their fatherland! Their obsessive anti-Japanese emotions arecontrary to everything we stand for.
We must expose the lies they have been spreading during the past 15 years. That is the only
way we can defeat them. And we shall prevail, because truth is on our side.

96

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Statement by the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono on the result of the study on the issue of
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AUTHOR PROFILENISHIOKA TSUTOMU
Nishioka Tsutomu was born in 1956 in Tokyo. He earned his undergraduate degree at ICU(International Christian University), and a master’s degree in international studies at Tsukuba
University’s Department of Regional Studies. Mr. Nishioka continued his studies at Yonsei
University in Seoul, South Korea. Between 1982 and 1984, he served the Foreign Ministry as
research specialist at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. He was editor-in-chief of the monthly
Gendai Koria (Modern Korea) from 1990 to 2002. Mr. Nishioka is currently a professor atTokyo Christian University. He is deputy chairman of the National Council for the Rescue ofJapanese Abducted by North Korea. Among his many publications are The Mountain of
Misconceptions Separating Japan and Korea (issued by Aki Shobo), Penetrating theDarkness: Understanding North Korean Abductions, Starvation, Comfort Women and AntiJapanese Movements (Tokuma Bunko), Starvation and Missiles: North Korea’s Future(Soshisha), The Truth about History-related Disputes between Japan and South Korea: Who
Manufactured Abductions of Koreans and the Comfort Women Issue? (PHP Institute), The
South Korean Schism: North Korea Sympathizers vs. Supporters of the South Korea-U.S.Japan Alliance (Fusosha) and North Korean Problems (Nuclear Weapons, Abductions) Can
Be Resolved (PHP Institute).

102