Tag Archives: comfort women

History

Critic of Comfort Women memorial praises Confederate memorial in Georgia

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In March 2018, far-right activist Yumiko Yamamoto of Nadeshiko Action traveled to Brookhaven, Georgia to stage a protest against the “comfort women” memorial installed in the City’s Blackburn Park, joined by another Nadeshiko Action member Shizuko Culpepper from Minnesota. They apparently took particular offense to the fact that the City celebrated annual cherry blossom festival in the same park that week, as the two felt that cherry blossoms was “the symbol of Japan” and should not be juxtaposed along the comfort women memorial.

During the same trip, Yamamoto visited the infamous Confederate memorial in Stone Mountain, Georgia and gave a speech to a conservative group after she returned to Japan, on April 19th (YouTube). The speech is in Japanese, but she repeats much of the same thing in an English advertisement published on the June 2, 2018 edition of Weekly NY Seikatsu, a mostly Japanese language publication for Japanese residents in the New York area (PDF version here).

In the opinion ad, Yamamoto praises the Stone Mountain Confederate Carving, one of the largest stone reliefs in the world depicting Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Generals Robert E. Lee, and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. Quoting Davis, Yamamoto writes: “In 1886, 21 years after the defeat of the Civil War in Mississippi [Jefferson Davis] stated, ‘the Southerners would not have to get revenge on the Yankees but would never tell their children that the South was wrong in the War Between the States: the South lost the battle, but the cause was right.'” In her Japanese speech, she adds: “likewise, Japan lost the battle, but our cause was right,” showing her adoration of the white supremacist Confederate “Lost Cause” myth.

Yamamoto further writes, “Although the Confederates lost the Civil War, they praise the courage and honor of those who fought and died for the confederacy. I thought Japanese should pass down our history just like their words to the next generation.” She contrasts the memorial praising Confederate soldiers with memorials dedicated to the victims and survivors of Japanese military comfort women system, arguing that comfort women memorials are “totally wrong and not facts.” “What a big difference from the Confederate Memorial!” exclaims Yamamoto.

Stone Mountain is the exact site of the 20th century revival of the Ku Klux Klan, who climbed up to the summit of the mountain on Thanksgiving Day, 1915 to give birth to a new generation of the Klan after the original Klan from the 19th century went dormant. The KKK held enormous annual cross burnings at the site for decades since then.

The Confederate carving was proposed by C. Helen Plane, a charter member of the United Daughters of Confederacy. The construction was delayed repeatedly until the segregationist Governor Marvin Griffin pushed the state to purchase Stone Mountain and complete the project. Even today, Stone Mountain continues to serve as a sacred spot for white supremacists, for example as the campaign launch location for former KKK leader and frequent political candidate David Duke, even as the criticisms toward memorials glorifying the Confederacy spread across the American South. It is for this symbolism Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. declared “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia” in his famous “I have a dream” speech in 1963.

Yamamoto’s adoration for Confederate leaders and memorials is perhaps not an accident: until late 2011 she was the vice president and secretary-general of Zaitokukai, an extremist anti-Korean hate group that target Korean children, families, and businesses. She has never renounced or denounced Zaitokukai even after exiting the organization, explaining in her 2014 book that she only left the organization to focus on the comfort women issue. In fact, Nadeshiko Action continues to spread anti-Korean extremist rhetoric, for example by submitting a letter to the United Nations Commission on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) titled “Hate speech masquerading as Anti-Hate speech by privileged Korean Residents in Japan,” alleging that Koreans living in Japan enjoy special privileges over Japanese nationals, which is the core (and unfounded) talking point of Zaitokukai.

The 2018 short documentary Graven Image by Sierra Pettengill uses archival footages to tell the history of the Stone Mountain and its place in the continuation of white supremacy in America. Graven Image can be viewed online thanks to PBS’ POV series.

Media

Alert: Right-wing groups use Japanese-language publications to “educate” Japanese residents in the U.S.

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As Japanese right-wing groups accelerate their efforts to mobilize Japanese communities in the U.S. against what they perceive as “anti-Japan” historical awareness campaigns (especially on the topic of Japanese military “comfort women” system), Japanese-language free newspapers became a vehicle for their “educational” outreach. We have obtained recent copies of two such publications from New York, New York Biz and Weekly NY Seikatsu, both of which publish large opinion advertisements from far-right Japanese historical revisionist organizations including Nadeshiko Action, Global Alliance for Historical Truth, Himawari Japan, and New York Historical Issues Study Group as well as news articles detailing their activities.

New York Biz, published by Weekly Business News Corp. began featuring a regular column by New York Historical Issues Study Group in September 2016. The first installment was a report about the Study Group’s most recent meeting in which Tsutomu Nishioka, Shiro Takahashi, and Tetsuhide Yamaoka gave lectures. Himawari Japan began publishing ads a year later, in September 2017.

Himawari Japan and other groups including Nadeshiko Action frequently publish ads on New York Biz. For example, the latest (September 22, 2018) issue contains a full-page ad from Himawari Japan seeking readers to submit information about anti-Japanese bullying motivated by “historical issues” as well as “anti-Japanese” education at schools and any community activities about the “comfort women” issue or other topics on Japan’s history. The same issue also publishes the number 26 of New York Historical Issues Study Group’s regular column and a midwifery ad by Yoko Nagato, the leader of Himawari Japan.

Similarly, Weekly NY Seikatsu began publishing a series of opinion ads by Japanese right-wing groups every week since January 2017, starting with a column by Koichi Mera of the Global Alliance for Historical Truth published alongside a news story about the decision by the City of Fort Lee, New Jersey to enact a comfort women memorial (which cites oppositions from comfort women deniers including Himawari Japan’s Nagato and Kent Gilbert) and an opinion piece by Masaki Shirota, a dietary supplements company president who is identified as a “music producer” (whose musical experiences appear to consist of his glee days in college), on how the “comfort women issue is a blatant lie.”

While New York Biz is an all-Japanese publication, Weekly NY Seikatsu devotes one page from each issue to English-language news and opinions, many of which are English translations of articles from Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s leading conservative daily. Global Alliance for Historical Truth, Nadeshiko Action, and other right-wing Japanese organizations publish ads on each issue of Weekly NY Seikatsu, alternating between Japanese-language ads and their English translations. Contents of these ads mostly consists of recycled right-wing talking points that have been thoroughly debunked years ago, but there are some new commentaries including Nadeshiko Action president Yumiko Yamamoto’s glorification of Confederacy leaders and monuments in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Weekly NY Seikatsu even has a section on its website dedicated to archiving these right-wing opinion ads.

These advertisements threaten to blur the line between (highly dishonest) paid advertisements and news. For example, an opinion piece by the aforementioned self-identified “musical producer” Masaki Shirota was published as a Japanese commentary on the May 12, 2018 issue of Weekly NY Seikatsu, but when it was re-published in English in the June 16, 2018 issue it was labeled as “opinion advertisement.” The paper also regularly includes comments from members of Nadeshiko Action and Himawari Japan when reporting about anything related to the comfort women issue, even though the newspaper does not appear to be politically slanted to the hard right on any other subject.

As newspapers continue to lose revenue due to the shift of advertising dollars to the internet, regular advertisements may give well-funded far-right groups disproportionate influence on the content of Japanese-language publications that many Japanese people in New York and in the rest of the U.S. rely on. Propaganda ads that falsely portray Japan as the victim of massive anti-Japanese historical campaigns by Chinese and Korean communities may even lead Japanese people living in ethnic enclaves to feel fearful of their Asian and Asian American neighbors and further isolate themselves from the American mainstream. We need to increase outreach to Japanese-speaking communities to break their isolation and share our experiences of allyship with larger Asian American communities to help them integrate more fully with the surrounding communities.

Government

Japanese government formally intervenes in the Japanese right-wing extremists’ lawsuit against a U.S. city

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In recent months, the Japanese government has made increasingly aggressive moves challenging memorials dedicated to the victims of the Japanese military “comfort women” system not just in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul or the Japanese Consulate in Busan, South Korea, which Japanese officials argue violate the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations protecting the “dignity” of diplomatic missions, but anywhere in the world.

The latest development in this trend is the amicus curie brief the Government of Japan filed in the lawsuit Gingery et al. v. City of Glendale on behalf of the Global Alliance for Historical Truth (GAHT), a Japanese far-right extremist group.

GAHT filed a lawsuit against the City of Glendale, California in 2013 after the city installed a memorial dedicated to the victims of Japanese military “comfort women” system. The suit was widely criticized by Asian American communities including local Japanese American groups, legal experts, and others, and resulted in a series of defeat by GAHT including penalties under California’s anti-SLAPP statute against frivolous lawsuits designed to stifle free speech.

On January 9, 2017, GAHT filed a request to the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider the appeal court’s decision against them. For the Supreme Court to take up a case, four out of nine (currently eight due to the passing of the late Justice Antonin Scalia) justices must agree to hear the case, and they do so only in about 1-2% of the cases each year.

In the amicus curie brief filed on February 22, 2017, the Government of Japan criticizes not just the constitutionality of Glendale’s installment of the memorial that, in their view, “disrupt[s] the United States’ foreign policy” and “presents a significant impediment to Japan’s diplomatic efforts” as “the monument is not inline with the spirit of” the Japan-ROK Agreement (2015), but also “the inscription on the Glendale monument” itself. “Japan strongly disagrees that the inscription on the Glendale monument accurately describes the historical record, which Japan has studied at length,” the amicus states.

Attorney Jessica Ellsworth, a registered foreign lobbyist at the law firm Hogan Lovells which the Japanese government uses, served as the counsel of record for the Japanese government. In October 2015, Hogan Lovells set up an apparent astroturf (i.e. a public relations campaign disguising itself as a “grass-roots” civic group) Voices of Vietnam, which appeared out of nowhere, purchased a full-page color ad on the Wall Street Journal and held a press conference at the National Press Club to coincide with the visit of the President of South Korea criticizing the Korean military sexual violence against Vietnamese women during the Vietnam War. The press conference featured the former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman, also a lobbyist working for Hogan Lovells. Voices of Vietnam has been inactive ever since.

Government

Former Japanese MP threatens to bomb Comfort Women memorials in the U.S.

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In a recently published book, former Japanese member of parliament Mio Sugita threatens to bomb “comfort women” memorials in the U.S. as they are built. The book, “Women Fight the History War” (Rekishisen ha onna no tatakai), is a dialogue between Sugita and Keiko Kawasoe, a non-fiction writer.

On p.141, Kawasoe opens the conversation by criticizing how the Japanese government has been docile in relying on the Korean government to remove the “comfort women” memorial standing in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, South Korea. Says Kawasoe: “Russian President Putin would without a flinch order the removal of the memorial. Then one day, without a warning, someone would bulldoze it away.”

To this, former MP Sugita responds: “Maybe I should do that! (laughter). In America too, once people realized that comfort women memorials would be bombed no matter how many they build, they will not think about building another one. We should bomb every single memorial as it is built.”

Sugita threatening to bomb U.S.

Sugita has very recently (June 21, 2016) visited the sites of “comfort women” memorials in Palisades Park and Hackensack, both in New Jersey, just as the book calling for the bombing of these memorials went to press (June 22, 2016).

In 2013, Sugita visited Glendale, California to meet with representatives of local Japanese American groups, which have endorsed the “comfort women” memorial in the city. After the meeting, she lambasted Japanese Americans for being “typical leftists” who made no sense.

Sugita has participated in far-right Japanese lobbying efforts at the United Nations in the last few years, giving speeches at the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) NGO Parallel Events in which she denied the Japanese military sexual slavery during the WWII.

Former MP Sugita with Happy Science's Taguchi

Media

Has the establishment of “comfort women” memorials in the U.S. led to widespread bullying against Japanese children?

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Conservative media in Japan have repeatedly claimed that the bullying and harassment against Japanese and Japanese American children have become rampant after a memorial dedicated to the victims and survivors of Japanese military “comfort women” system was enacted in Glendale, California in 2013. But there is no basis for this claim.

Since the stories about the supposed “bullying” of Japanese children began appearing in conservative publications in Japan, many local, national, and international media outlets have tried to substantiate the claim but to no avail: schools, law enforcement agencies, Japanese American community groups, and others could not identify a single report of such bullying. Even conservative Japanese politicians who visited Glendale in hope of meeting with the victim or their families could not find any.

Tokyo-based journalist Mark Schreiber wrote in “Tracking Southern California’s elusive ‘bullies’” (Number 1 Shimbun, October 2014):

My inquiries to individuals in Glendale who should have some information or insight continued to come up blank. “This is not true,” Sebastian Puccio, coordinator for the Glendale Unified School District, wrote me. “We are not aware of any incidents of students of Korean ethnicity confronting students of Japanese ancestry in this district, nor would this be tolerated.”

David Monkawa, a Glendale resident and member of the Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress organization, wrote that he had also made inquiries, but with no success. “Sgt. Thomas R. Lorenz, Public Information Officer of the Glendale Police Dept., stated these statements are ‘100 percent fabricated,'” said Monkawa, who ended up believing that Glendale “should have the Human Rights Commission issue a stern statement exposing these lies.”

A Japanese residing in Los Angeles made a number of telephone calls on my behalf. A teacher at a school for Japanese children told him that the school had heard about the bullying story and had sent out a note asking for parents to report any incidents, but no one did.

Of course, lack of reports does not necessarily indicate that there is no bullying at all, but the conservative media’s claim of rampant or pervasive bullying against many Japanese or Japanese American children is demonstrably false.

History

Was the average age of “comfort women” around 25? No, at least not according to the purported source of the claim

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Japanese “Comfort women” deniers often cite “Comfort Women of the Empire,” a book written by Yuha Park of Sejong University, South Korea, to claim that the average age of “comfort women” was “around 25,” and therefore memorials that depict teenage victims (such as the one in Glendale, California) are misleading. Definitive data is unavailable, but this reading of Park’s writing is not supported by the evidentiary source material that she invokes.

“Comfort Women of the Empire” was published in Korea in 2013 and then in Japan in 2014. Since the publication of the original version in Korea, Park has been the target of civil and criminal cases in court for allegedly libelous statements toward survivors of the Japanese military “comfort women” system, which forced her to redact portions of the book in Korea. The controversy over the state intervention on an academic publication is ongoing, distinct from the controversy over the content of the publication itself.

The English version of “Comfort Women of the Empire” is reportedly in the works. There are third party “summaries” of the book available for download at various Japanese right-wing websites, but the author has specifically stated that many of them distort her work.

On pages 64-65 of the Japanese edition of “Comfort Women of the Empire,” Park cites a 1944 U.S. military prisoner of war interrogation report (which is itself often misused by the right-wing camp) as an evidence that the typical age of “comfort women” was “around 25,” challenging the historical consensus that a large number of “comfort women” were minors at the time of their recruitment.

This is an important point for those who are concerned about the potential violation of international law by the Imperial Japan because the 1921 International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children required signatories including Japan to prohibit the transportation of women and children under age 21 across national borders for the purpose of prostitution, even with their consent.

The figure of “around 25” is supposedly calculated by averaging the ages of 20 Korean “comfort women” listed in the 1944 report, but the actual average turns out to be 23.15, not “around 25.” The median and mode of the 20 women, which is more illustrative of the cohort than a simple average, are both 21. (See below for the appendix of the 1944 report that lists 20 women interviewed.) To arrive the number closer to “around 25” that Park cites, we would need to include two Japanese “house masters” (brothel managers) who are aged 38 and 41 (then the average is 24.64).

POW Report #49

Further, because the women were recruited and forced to become “comfort women” two years before they were interviewed by the U.S. military according to the report, the real median age at which they were recruited is 19. In fact, 12 out of the 20 women listed were under 21 at the time of recruitment. Finally, if kazoedoshi age reckoning (which was used in Japan and Korea at the time) was involved, their actual age may have been 1-2 years younger. (Under kazoedoshi, a baby is considered one year old the minute he or she is born, and becomes a year older at the beginning of the next year, so a child born on December 31st would become age 2 on his or her second day on earth.)

What about other women? Again, comprehensive data is non-existent, but historian Puja Kim of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies examined six volumes of Korean “comfort women” survivor testimonies published between 1993 and 2004 by the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. Of the 78 women who shared their stories, 73 were underage at the time of recruitment; mode and median are both 16. (“Chosenjin ‘Ianfu’ wa naze shoujo ga ookatta noka?”, in Heiwa no shoujo zou wa naze suwari tsuzukeru noka, 2016.)

While these numbers cannot be generalized to all “comfort women” or perhaps even to all Korean “comfort women,” they do suggest that it was not uncommon for Korean “comfort women” to be trafficked while they were underage, in clear violation of the international law at the time.

History

Timeline of “Comfort Women” denialism during the First and Second Abe administrations (with a focus on U.S.-related incidents)

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Part 1: 2006-2007 (The first Abe administration)

2006-09-26 Shinzo Abe becomes the 90th Prime Minister of Japan
2007-01-16 U.S. declassifies documents and releases expert essays on upcoming IWG report
2007-01-31 H.Res.121 introduced with six co-sponsors, led by Rep. Mike Honda
2007-03-01 PM Abe denies forced recruitment of CW by Japanese military
2007-03-02 Deputy Sec. of State Negroponte criticizes Abe’s statement
2007-03-05 PM Abe once again denies Japanese military responsibility
2007-03-09 Opponents of H.Res.121 change their position, number of co-sponsors grows
2007-03-16 Abe administration formally state that no evidence exists that points to forced recruitment of CW by Japanese military
2007-03-24 Washington Post criticizes Abe in editorial
2007-03-25 Abe’s Deputy Cabinet Minister states on radio that CW were sold by their parents, and that Japanese military was not involved
2007-03-26 Deputy Spokesman for Department of State urges Japan to continue to address CW issue
2007-04 IWG report finalized and made available to public
2007-04-03 U.S. Congressional Research Service releases the report “Japanese Military’s ‘Comfort Women’ System” by Larry Niksch
2007-04-03 PM Abe calls Pres. Bush to ask for “understanding”
2007-04-17 PM Abe justifies his statements in interviews with Newsweek and Wall Street Journal, promise to uphold Kono Statement
2007-04-20 Former Minister of Education and Science Nariaki Nakayama criticizes H.Res.121, arguing that prostitution was legal and profitable at the time
2007-04-27 PM Abe visits Pres. Bush, issues a vague apology for CW
2007-05-17 Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara denies Japanese military’s involvement in the recruitment of CW
2007-05-25 MP Jin Matsubara denies the CW issue
2007-06-14 Dozens of conservative politicians and prominent opinion leaders in Japan place a full-page ad (“The Facts”) on Washington Post
2007-06 Many members of U.S. House of Representatives join as co-sponsors of H.Res.121 including House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chair Rep. Tom Lantos
2007-07-30 U.S. House of Representatives passes H.Res.121
2007-09-12 PM Abe abruptly resigns
2007-11-08 Dutch parliament passes resolution urging Japan to confront CW denialism and make further efforts to address the issue
2007-11-28 Canada’s House of Commons passes resolution urging Japan to confront CW denialism and make further efforts to address the issue
2007-12-13 European Parliament passes resolution urging Japan to confront CW denialism and make further efforts to address the issue

Part 2: 2012-Ongoing (The second Abe administration)

2011-12 Yumiko Yamamoto of Zaitokukai forms CW denialist group Nadeshiko Action
2012-05 Japanese diplomats offer cherry blossom trees in return for removing Palisades Park, New Jersey CW memorial; the city rejects
2012-05-24 Nikon Corp. cancels photo exhibits about CW under right-wing pressure
2012-12-26 Shinzo Abe becomes the 96th Prime Minister of Japan
2013-01-10 PM Abe appoints Shiro Takahashi to the Council for Gender Equality
2013-05-13 Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto argues that organized prostitution was necessary at the time, and suggests that the U.S. military should utilize legal sexual services to reduce sexual violence committed by the U.S. servicemen in Okinawa
2013-05-16 U.S. Department of State spokesperson Jen Psaki calls Hashimoto’s statement “outrageous and offensive”
2013-05-22 San Francisco asks Hashimoto to cancel sister city visit due to the furor caused by his remarks
2013-05-27 Hashimoto retracts his comment about the U.S. servicemen while insisting that the Japanese military was not involved in the trafficking of CW
2013-06-18 City and County of San Francisco passes resolution condemning CW system in response to Hashimoto’s statements
2013-07-09 Glendale, California approves the establishment of CW statue in its Central Park after heated discussions
2013-07-30 Glendale unveils the CW statue; Japanese American leaders from Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress and the San Fernando Valley chapter of Japanese American Citizens League attend in support
2013-09 Yumiko Yamamoto and others form Alliance for Truth about Comfort Women
2013-12-16 Koichi Mera, Tomoyuki Sumori (True Japan Network, Voluteer Group for Fight Against Comfort Women), and three Japanese MPs (Mio Sugita, Yuzuru Nishida, and Hiromu Nakamaru) meet with representatives of NCRR and JACL-SFV; Sugita dismisses Japanese American representatives as “left-wing”
2014-01-08 JACL-SFV chapter formally adopts a statement supporting CW statue in Glendale
2014-01-16 Members of (Japanese) National Association of Municipal Legislators Against Comfort Women Statue visit Glendale to protest the CW memorial; they hold a sign that reads “Children Need Heart-Warming Memorials”
2014-02-20 Koichi Mera founds Global Alliance for Historical Truth and files a lawsuit against the City of Glendale
2014-05-05 Japanese American Bar Association of California and Korean American Bar Association along with dozens of other law associations issue a statement supporting the CW memorial and opposing GAHT’s lawsuit
2014-06-06 Japan-U.S. Feminist Network for Decolonization (FeND) formed
2014-06-20 Abe administration releases a report on the “process resulting in Kono Statement,” widely seen as a first step to retracting or trivializing it
2014-07-06 Mera and Nobukatsu Fujioka of GAHT hold an event in Los Angeles; read a letter from Yamamoto
2014-07-14 Yamamoto, Mera, Mitsuhiko Fujii, Shunichi Fujiki, Tony Marano, and other members of ATCW visit Geneva to lobby the U.N. Commission on Human Rights
2014-08-04 GAHT’s federal lawsuit against the City of Glendale is dismissed
2014-08-05 Asahi Shimbun retracts decades-old articles about forcible CW recruitment by the Japanese military in Jeju Island, Korea
2014-08-13 Fullerton, California passes resolution recognizing CW
2014-09-03 GAHT files a state suit against the City of Glendale
2014-09-04 GAHT appeals the decision of the federal case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
2014-10-15 The Historical Science Society of Japan issues a statement criticizing Abe administration’s denial of historical facts of CW
2014-10-30 Japanese MPs form the Special Committee to Restore Japan’s Honor and Trust in order to refute allegations on CW
2014-12-13 Yamamoto, Mitsuhiko Fujii, and other revisionists hold an event in Redwood City, California near SFO; coalition of peace and human rights activists holds a protest
2014-12-14 Yamamoto, Mera, Fujii, and other revisionists hold a panel in Torrance, California
2015-01 Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs demands American publisher and historian to alter the description of CW in college-level world history textbook
2015-02-18 Japanese residents in Los Angeles area join in a lawsuit in Japan against Asahi Shimbun
2015-03 20 U.S. historians publish a letter in support of Japanese historians in response to MOFA’s attempt to censor textbooks
2015-03-09 Yamamoto, Fujii, Shunichi Fujiki, Shiro Takahashi, and other revisionists hold an event in New York City; original venue, Japanese American Association of New York, cancels their reservation due to a protest by peace and women’s groups
2015-03-10 GAHT and ATCW members Mera, Takahashi, and others hold a press conference in NYC to counter the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women sessions
2015-03-17 Group of conservative scholars led by Ikuhiko Hata holds press conference to demand “corrections” to an American history textbook over CW
2015-03-27 PM Abe refers to CW as victims of human trafficking in an interview with Washington Post without admitting Japanese military’s role in it
2015-04-28 Mariko Okada-Collins organizes a screening of Yujiro Taniyama’s film, “Scottsboro Girls” at Central Washington University; Mera, Jason Morgan, and others join Taniyama
2015-04-29 PM Abe delivers a speech at the joint session of U.S. Congress without mentioning CW
2015-05-04 GAHT’s state lawsuit against the City of Glendale is dismissed; City files for attorney’s fees under anti-SLAPP statute
2015-05-07 “Open Letter in Support of Historians in Japan” released with 187 signatures by historians, Japan scholars, and others (mostly in the U.S.); the number of signatories grows to 464 within a week
2015-05-25 16 associations of historians and history educators in Japan issue a joint statement criticizing CW revisionism
2015-07-21 City and County of San Francisco considers a resolution establishing CW memorial; Mera, Okada-Collins, Terumi Imamura, and others speak in opposition
2015-07-23 Osaka Mayor Hashimoto criticizes SF resolution as “unfair,” sends a letter
2015-07-27 Nadeshiko Action and ATCW members visit Geneva to lobby the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women
2015-09-22 City of San Francisco unanimously passes a resolution establishing CW memorial
2015-10-02 MP Yoshiaki Harada, chairman of LDP’s Committee on International Communications, states “our country denies the existence of Nanking Massacre and comfort women”
2015-09 MP Kuniko Inoguchi of LDP mails revisionist books to scholars in the U.S., Australia etc., and foreign correspondents based in Japan
2015-11 LDP forms new group to review history, particularly war crimes verdicts and GHQ policies
2015-12-18 California Department of Education releases a draft of the Social Sciences framework that includes the teaching of CW issues at 10th grade level; historical revisionists start multiple petitions against it
2015-12-28 Foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan reach an agreement on CW issue; CW survivors denounce the agreement, while the right-wing is split between those who oppose the agreement and those who support Abe’s decision
2016-01-18 PM Abe states that CW were “not sex slaves” in the parliament
2016-02-16 Japanese official denies “forcible recruitment of CW by the Japanese military” and sexual slavery at the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women in Geneva; about 30 right-wing activists including Yamamoto, Sugita, Fujiki, Fujii, Hosoya, and others also lobby the CEDAW
2016-03-16 Mera,Hosoya, and Sugita hold a panel titled “Misunderstood Comfort Women” at the NGO Parallel Event coinciding with the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women in New York City.
2016-03-17 Mera, Hosoya, and Sugita hold a version of the above panel in Japanese for Japanese audience in New York City.
2016-03-23 Yamamoto, Fujiki, Fujii, and Norimasa Suzuki (Seiron-no-Kai) hold an event featuring Marano at an Armenian Church.
2016-03-24 Yamamoto, Mera, andothers hold another panel at the NGO Parallel Event titled “Women’s Rights Under Armed Conflict: Japan’s Approach to Respect Women.”
Government, History

Diplomatic “resolution” does not lead to healing or dignity: Making sense of the Japan-ROK “agreement” on “comfort women”

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This week, foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea announced a bilateral “agreement” to “finally and irreversibly” settle historical disputes arising from the WWII-era Japanese imperial military enforced prostitution/sexual slavery known as the “comfort women” system. The agreement was reportedly reached under heavy pressures from the United States government, which has military pacts with both Asian nations, for its own geopolitical needs. The agreement has been widely denounced by the “comfort women” survivors and their advocates in South Korea, Japan, and elsewhere as an act of further violence to silence the survivors.

In a statement read by Japan’s Foreign Minister, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe acknowledged “the issue of comfort women” was “a grave affront to the honor and dignity of large numbers of women,” and expressed his “most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women.”

Abe’s apology is a reiteration of previous statements issued by the Japanese government, most notably the 1993 Kono Statement in that it accepted moral, but not legal, responsibilities for the suffering of women under the “comfort women” system. Japanese conservatives, including Abe himself, have long argued that Japanese military’s “involvement” in the atrocity was peripheral (e.g. performing medical checks at military brothels, etc.) and have rejected the notion that Japanese military itself was responsible for the trafficking and coercion of women and girls for sexual exploitation (see Dudden and Mizoguchi for a critique of Abe’s 2007 statement expressing this view, or our debunking of common revisionist talking points).

The new “agreement” does not go beyond Kono Statement in acknowledging Japanese military’s direct role in the coercion and trafficking of women under the “comfort women” system. Worse, the few remaining survivors of the “comfort women” system were cut off from the negotiation altogether, and their voices were systemically silenced. As a result, virtually none of the demands of the survivors are reflected in the final “agreement” that the Korean government accepted, supposedly, on their behalf.

Survivors and advocates continue to call on Japan to fully acknowledge Japanese imperial military’s direct culpability for the violence perpetrated against women from across Asia-Pacific, and to meet other demands of the survivors, which, according to Korean American Forum of California, include:

  1. Full acknowledgement of the military sexual slavery implemented by the Imperial Armed Forces of Japan between 1932 to 1945
  2. Thorough and complete investigation to fully chronicle the scope of the crime
  3. Formal apology from the National Assembly (Diet) of Japan
  4. Legal and full reparations to all victims
  5. Prosecution of the criminals responsible for the crime
  6. Full and ongoing education through proper recording and acknowledgement in textbooks and history books in Japan
  7. Building of memorials and museums to commemorate the victims and preserve the history of sexual slavery by the Japanese Military

For further information, please read the following:

Also: watch former “comfort woman” Lee Yong-Soo protest the Deputy Foreign Minister of Korea, with English translation, below:

Government

San Francisco to Vote on “Comfort Women” Memorial

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On Tuesday, July 21st, the Board of Supervisors (city council) of the City and County of San Francisco will vote on a resolution establishing a memorial for the victims and survivors of Japanese military’s WWII-era “comfort women” system. (Click for the text of the resolution.)

Japanese right-wing activists are waging a mass email campaign in opposition to the resolution. They are also seeking their supporters in the area to show up and voice their opposition at the meeting. Unfortunately for them, they forgot to include Mayor Lee’s contact information when they circulated a list of email addresses to email bomb.

Japan-U.S. Feminist Network for Decolonization (FeND) applauds and supports San Francisco’s leadership in acknowledging and remembering the victims and survivors of “comfort women” system. We sent a letter to the Supervisors and the Mayor in support of the resolution, and are working with our friends in the Bay Area to spread the word about the meeting on Tuesday.

If you are planning to attend the Board meeting, please read Debunking the Japanese “Comfort Women” Denier Talking Points so you know how the right-wing protesters are going to lie… and play the denier bingo! (Seriously, we’d like to hear what happens at the meeting, so if you attend it, do let us know!)

Statements

Open Letter in Support of Historians in Japan

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The following statement was signed by 187 scholars of Japan studies and other areas, including some of the most influential thinkers in the field (John Dower, Ezra Vogel, Carol Gluck, Andrew Gordon, Norma Field, et al.). Several members and friends of FeND were also co-signers to the statement. The full list of signatories as well as the Japanese version are available on Japan Focus. Continue reading Open Letter in Support of Historians in Japan →