Yes, we remember the facts. (2012)

“Yes, we remember the facts.” is a paid advertisement published in the November 6, 2012 edition of The Star-Ledger, a daily newspaper in New Jersey, by a group of Japanese comfort women deniers calling itself the Committee for Historical Facts. It is a revised version of The Facts (2007) ad, published in the June 14, 2007 issue of The Washington Post.

The ad recycles the same old comfort women denier arguments. The publication took place six months after Palisades Park, New Jersey turned down Japanese officials’ offer of one hundred cherry blossom trees in exchange for removing a small plaque memorializing comfort women.

Committee for Historical Facts is made up of:

The ad also included a long list of endorsements.

From Democratic Party of Japan (民主党)

  • Nobuyuki Fukushima (福島伸享)
  • Hiroki Hanasaki (花崎宏基)
  • Yoichi Kaneko (金子洋一)
  • Jin Matsubara (松原仁)
  • Noboru Miura (三浦昇)
  • Koichi Mukoyama (向山好一)
  • Takashi Nagao (長尾敬)
  • Masanao Shibahashi (柴崎正直)
  • Kenji Tamura (田村謙治)
  • Shu Watanabe (渡辺周)
  • Izumi Yoshida (吉田泉)

From Liberal Democratic Party (自由民主党)

  • Shinzo Abe (安倍晋三)
  • Haruko Arimura (有村有子)
  • Seiichi Eto (江藤晟一)
  • Keiji Furuya (古屋圭司)
  • Tomomi Inada (稲田朋美)
  • Yoshihiko Isozaki (磯崎仁彦)
  • Yoshitaka Ito (伊東良孝)
  • Yasushi Kaneko (金子恭之)
  • Kouichi Kishi (岸宏一)
  • Nobuo Kishi (岸信夫)
  • Seigo Kitamura (北村誠吾)
  • Yutaka Kumagai (熊谷大)
  • Hirokazu Matsuno (松野博一)
  • Shoji Nishida (西田昌司)
  • Hiroshige Seko (世耕弘成)
  • Hakubun Shimomura (下村博文)
  • Yoshitaka Shindo (進藤義孝)
  • Sanae Takaichi (高市早苗)
  • Naokazu Takemoto (竹本直一)
  • Ichiro Tsukada (塚田一郎)
  • Michiko Ueno (上野通子)
  • Junzo Yamamoto (山本順三)
  • Yuji Yamamoto (山本有二)
  • Eriko Yamatani (山谷えり子)
  • Hiroyuki Yoshiie (義家弘介)

From the Sunrise Party of Japan (たちあがれ日本)

  • Takeo Hiranuma (平沼赳夫)
  • Kyoko Nakayama (中山恭子)

Professors:

Political commentators:

Journalists:

Movie & TV Producer:

Yes, we remember the facts.

Yoko Nagato

Yoko Nagato (永門洋子) is a certified nurse-midwife practicing at Japanese Women’s Center, a general OB-GYN clinic for Japanese and other women in Teaneck, New Jersey. Since 2015, Nagato collaborated with Nadeshiko Action to use Japanese Women’s Center as a vehicle to promote comfort women denial, publishing revisionist ads in Japanese language publications in New York/New Jersey area.

In 2016, Nagato founded Himawari Japan, a nationalist group for Japanese women in the area. Members of the group met with Mio Sugita and Yoshi Taguchi in June 2016, which led to the first Himawari Japan lecture on August 23, 2016 featuring Sugita, Shiro Takahashi, Yasuhiro Takasaki, and Shinichi Tokunaga.

Nagato is a staunch supporter of Makoto Sakurai, the founder of Zaitokukai as well as Japan First Party. During the 2016 Tokyo gubernatorial election in which Sakurai ran, Nagato wrote that those who criticize Sakurai are “not real Japanese.”

Ads by Japan Women’s Resource Center:

JWC Ad 2016

JWC Ad 2015

Yoshi Taguchi

Yoshi (Yoshiaki) Taguchi (田口義明) is a former San Francisco director and current New York director of Happy Science. Taguchi has organized followers of Happy Science in California and New Jersey/New York to mobilize against comfort women memorials. His past involvement includes: securing venues for comfort women denier events such as the Nadeshiko Action/Happy Science Events in California (2014), facilitating online petitions against comfort women orthodoxy, organizing members to attend hearings about comfort women, and speaking at such hearings himself.

During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign, Taguchi brought Happy Science followers (who are also Himawari Japan members) to volunteer at the Donald Trump campaign headquarters in the Trump Tower. Happy Science openly supported Trump, calling him a reincarnation of George Washington.

Yoshiko Matsuura

Yoshiko Matsuura (松浦芳子) is a right-wing member of the Suginami Ward (Tokyo) Council and a comfort women denier. She is one of the founders of Channel Sakura, a right-wing television production company and internet station.

Matsuura founded the Association of Municipal Council Members Against Enacting Comfort Women Memorials (慰安婦像設置に抗議する全国地方議員の会) which has enlisted over 300 current and former ward, city, and prefectural legislators from across Japan. In January 2014 The group sent a delegation to Glendale, California to protest a memorial built in the city’s Central Park the previous summer. Matsuura and her colleagues held a banner stating “Children need heart-warming monuments” behind the comfort women memorial.

Website: Association of Municipal Council Members Against Enacting Comfort Women Memorials

heartwarming

Yoshiko Sakurai

Yoshiko Sakurai (櫻井よしこ) is a journalist and comfort women denier who runs Japan Institute for National Fundamentals, a conservative think tank with close ties to Japan Conference. Through Genron TV: Sakura Live, her internet broadcasting platform and in publications, Sakurai promotes conservative social and economic policies as well as nationalistic military and foreign affairs policies.

Sakurai is a member of the Committee for Historical Truth which published paid opinion advertisements in U.S. media such as The Facts (2007) and Yes, we remember the facts. (2012). She paid or offered to pay a large sum of cash to Michael Yon to give a talk at the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals and to publish comfort women denial in Western media, before her support for Yujiro Taniyama’s film, Scottsboro Girls, led Yon to publicly criticize her.

Yoshiko Sakurai has no relationship to Makoto Sakurai of Zaitokukai.

jinf-ad-2014

Yujiro Taniyama

Yujiro Taniyama (谷山雄二朗) is a video producer, perennial fringe political candidate, and comfort women denier. He has produced the first feature-length English-language denialist documentary titled “Scottsboro Girls.” The title for the film comes from the “Scottsboro Boys,” nine black teenagers falsely accused of raping white women, suggesting that Japan is also falsely accused of forcing women into sexual slavery.

Taniyama was invited by Japanese language instructor Mariko Okada-Collins to screen his film at Central Washington University in Spring 2015. The campus community put on multiple public events on the actual history of comfort women in protest, which were attended by hundreds of students and community members. See a series of articles about these events in the June 1, 2015 issue of the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Newsletter.

While Taniyama’s film was widely applauded by Japanese conservatives including Yoshiko Sakurai, American writer and comfort women denier Michael Yon dismissed the film as a “a disaster that needs to be edited with a chainsaw, or tossed out entirely” for anyone “who is serious about presenting the truth on the Comfort Woman issue to an educated western audience.”

Yumiko Yamamoto

Yumiko Yamamoto (山本優美子) is the former vice president and secretary general of far-right racist group Zaitokukai (在特会) and the founder of comfort women denier group Nadeshiko Action (なでしこアクション) which calls itself “Japanese Women for Justice and Peace.”

Yamamoto left Zaitokukai in late 2011 (according to her) or early 2012 (according to Zaitokukai press release) after members of her group have been prosecuted for violent assaults on Korean elementary school and other targets. In her book “Josei ga mamoru nihon no hokori (女性が守る日本の誇り)” published in 2014, Yamomoto explains that the reason for leaving the organization was not because of any disagreement with its activities, but because she felt confident that the organization had grown strong enough that she could focus her effort on comfort women denial.

Yamamoto is a board member of Global Alliance for Historical Truth (GAHT) and a key member of Alliance for Truth About Comfort Women.

See also: