In July 2014, Alliance for Truth about Comfort Women sent its first overseas delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva, Switzerland. Members (pictured below) included:
Himawari Japan, a group of nationalist Japanese women in New York/New Jersey area led by Yoko Nagato, held its first-ever public event on August 23, 2016. The event was held in Japanese.
Speakers:
Also see: Comfort Women Denier Activities in the United States
In April 2015, language lecturer Mariko Okada-Collins invited filmmaker Yujiro Taniyama to screen his lengthy comfort women denial film, “Scottsboro Girls” at Central Washington University where she teaches Japanese. However, after Michael Yon warned Okada-Collins that the film’s content could be highly offensive, she asked Taniyama to shorten the film to allow room for additional speakers. Koichi Mera was invited to give a speech along with Taniyama, and Jason Morgan Skyped in as well.
Campus community strongly protested the historical revisionist event, and multiple counter-events were organized by students and the faculty. See a series of articles about these events in the June 1, 2015 issue of the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus Newsletter.
Texas Night in NYC (2016) is a comfort women denier event held on March 23, 2016 at the St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral in New York City. This is the second consecutive year a “Texas Night” event is held in New York, after Texas Night in NYC (2015).
Speakers are:
Sponsors include:
United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) NGO Parallel Events are a series of events held around the United Nations building by non-governmental organizations from around the world working on women’s rights while the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women meets at its headquarters in New York.
In 2016, Japanese right-wing groups infiltrated the NGO Parallel Events by submitting innocuous-looking proposals to the organizers of NGO Parallel Events with the goal of promoting comfort women denial and Japanese nationalism. Two such events were held.
March 16, 2016 – “Misunderstood Comfort Women”
On March 16th, denier group Global Alliance for Historical Truth presented a panel titled “Misunderstood Comfort Women” which denied the history of comfort women. The panel was facilitated by Terumi Imamura and speakers were Koichi Mera, Kiyoshi Hosoya, and Mio Sugita.
March 24, 2016 – “Women’s Rights under Armed Conflict: Japan’s Approach to Respect Women”
Denier group Nadeshiko Action (Japanese Women for Justice and Peace) sponsored a panel titled “Women’s Rights under Armed Conflict: Japan’s Approach to Respect Women” on March 24th. The panel was facilitated by Shizuko Culpepper and speakers included Yumiko Yamamoto, Koichi Mera, Sharon Isac, Kaoli Koyasu, Mieko Green, and Charlotte Meyer.
Texas Night in NYC (2015) is a series of two Japanese-language panels held on March 9 and 12, 2015 in New York City. It was officially sponsored by New York Seiron-no Kai, Japan Mahoroba Support Agency, Society to Promote Correct Historical Views (Happy Science), and Rompa Project, but in New York the event was billed as a Happy Science event.
Speakers for March 9th:
Speakers for March 12th:
The first panel was cancelled by the original venue, Japanese American Association of New York, after the association found out Yamamoto’s history in violent racist group Zaitokukai. The event was moved to an Italian restaurant nearby, where protesters gathered outside.
Happy Science (acting as “True Japan”) hosted two Japanese-language panels in California in December 2014 featuring notorious comfort women deniers Yumiko Yamamoto, Mitsuhiko Fujii, and others.
The San Francisco event took place on December 13, 2014 in Redwood City, California (where Happy Science’s San Francisco temple is located). The event was protested by a coalition of Asian, labor, and peace activists from the Bay Area. Speakers included:
The Los Angeles event held on December 14, 2014 in Torrance, California included the following speakers:
