Comfort Women Not “Sex Slaves”: Rectifying the Myriad of Perspectives

By Koichi Mera

COMFORT WOMEN NOT SEX-SLAVES
Presents an alternative view about Comfort Women to the prevailing one in the United States, but is well established among intellectuals in Japan. This is a story of misconception which took place with evil intention of a few persons, but spread widely in the world as a wild fire. One promoter was Asahi Newspaper, hither-to highly respected national newspaper of Japan, but which confessed its mistakes in the summer of 2014. This was a significant momentum in changing the view on Comfort Women of many in Japan. This book is dedicated to revising the knowledge on Comfort Women of English- speaking people in light of new developments.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503568914

Koichi Mera

Author: Koichi Mera, Ph. D. is President of the Global Alliance for Historical Truth which is based in Santa Monica, California. He has Ph. D. from Harvard, and taught economics, international business, and public administration at Harvard, Tsukuba University, Tokyo International University and the University of Southern California, and worked with the World Bank as related to urban development in developing countries. During the past decade he has organized a study group on the history of Japan during the first half of the twentieth century. He is the editor and author of a 2012 book in Japanese Wake up Japanese from the Curse of Douglas MacArthur!

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COMFORT WOMEN

NOT SEX SLAVES

Rectifying the Myriad of Perspectives

Koichi Mera

Copyright © 2015 by Koichi Mera.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015907300

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5035-6890-7

Softcover   978-1-5035-6889-1

eBook   978-1-5035-6891-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

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Rev. date: 06/27/2015

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Contents

Preface

Acknowledgement

The Start of the Korean Comfort Women Controversy

The Comfort Women Controversy

Exhibit A   Yoshida’s Book Discredited

Repeated Apologies by Former Prime Minister Miyazawa

The Kono Statement

Exhibit B   The Kono Statement

Statement by the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono

What We Know All Along

Two Advertisements in Seoul Newspapers

Exhibit C   U.S. Army Report No. 49

Spreading of Sex-Slave-Theory to United Nations and United States

Desperate Actions across the United States

Exhibit D   Comfort Women Monuments in the U.S.

2014 Events in Japan: The Review of Kono Statement, and Confession by Asahi Newspaper

Exhibit E   Background Review of the Kono Statement

The Study Team on the Drafting Process of the Kono Statement etc.

Details of Exchanges Between Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK)

Exhibit F   Asahi Newspaper’s Admission of Misreporting

Yomiuri Shimbun Asahi Article-5

Yomiuri Shimbun Asahi Article-6

Yomiuri Shimbun Asahi Article-8

Yomiuri Shimbun Asahi Article-9

Yomiuri Shimbun Asahi Articie-10

Exhibit G   IWG Report of 2007

IWG Report Excerpts

Interview with Michael Yon on IWG Report

Exhibit H   Japan’s Geneva Statement on Comfort Women

Exhibit I   Statement by Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga

Conclusions

References

PREFACE

In recent years the issue of the Comfort Women has emerged as a single most important diplomatic issue for Japan as related to the Republic of Korea. This issue crossed the Pacific Ocean to the United States, and became an issue on which the U. S. House of Representatives made a resolution in 2007. Since 2010, this issue has been picked up by many communities within the U.S., and has been used as a tool for blaming Japan for conducts which were supposedly undertaken more than 70 years ago. Many Korean organizations are claiming that the Japanese military abducted Korean women during the war period and made them sex-slaves for the military. In fact, I witnessed the City Council of Glendale, California, endorsed the proposal, without any serious impartial due diligence, to install a Comfort Women statue in its Central Park on July 9, 2013. Such an action breaks down the hitherto friendly relationship between the Korean and Japanese communities within the city, the state or the United States. The Comfort Women issue has been used as an incriminating tool of Japanese and those Americans who have lineage with Japan. If there is a solid ground, the actions could be tolerated. But, there is no evidence which supports this accusation as explained in this book.

I have studied the modern history of Japan as related to the Second World War in the past decade. This is a challenging field, because there are a number of misconceptions. The Comfort Women issue is one of them. The Glendale incident obliged me to take up this issue, and to write this book as the Comfort Women issue is not correctly understood in the United States. This is the first of a series of publications which the recently established non-profit educational organization, the Global Alliance for Historical Truth, or GAHT will be providing to the English speaking audience for improving understanding of WWII as related to Japan.

Koichi Mera, Ph.D.

President, GAHT-US Corporation

Santa Monica, California

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I owe to a number of people in writing the text and assembling the materials. They include Hideaki Kase, Nobukatsu Fujioka, Hiromichi Moteki, and Tsutomu Nishioka. I must also mention a large number of members of the Japanese Parliament who gave me strong encouragement. In addition, I would like to express special gratitude for Ikuhiko Hata, Kiyoshi Hosoya and Yumiko Yamamoto who have given me encouragement to undertake this task and have read earlier manuscripts and made specific suggestions. Also, I would like to express gratitude to Ms. Midori Akao who has contributed in editing of the text, also Ms. Kumiko Inoue, Mitsuo Takahashi and Ichiro Mizushima for constant encouragement. However, only the author is responsible for any remaining shortcomings. Also, I would like to thank the members of GAHT-US Corporation who have provided assistance and encouragement for the task of compiling the materials concerning the Comfort Women.

THE START OF THE KOREAN COMFORT WOMEN CONTROVERSY

The Comfort Women were those who provided sexual services for the Japanese military who were away from home during the Japan-China war and World War II (WWII). This was not an issue for a long time since the end of the war in 1945. The current comfort women controversy started with the reporting by Asahi Newspaper on August 11, 1991 on the emergence of a Korean ex-comfort woman, Kim Hak-sun. ¹ It was well known to older generations of the Japanese people who experienced the War that the Imperial Military of Japan allowed access to comfort women when soldiers were sent abroad. It was never an issue. Even the first president of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), Rhee Syngman, a zealous anti-Japan independence fighter who was supported by the U.S., made strong demands to Japan after the independence of South Korea in 1948. He had no issue regarding the so-called Korean comfort women.² In addition, no former comfort woman revealed she was one of them due to the occupation which was considered shameful. Therefore, none was willing to disclose their experience in the public. However, 46 years after the end of War, Asahi Newspaper decided to make a dramatic issue out of comfort women. This was initiated by Mr. Takashi Uemura of Asahi Newspaper of Japan. The newspaper asserted, without evidence, several decades after WWII, claiming a former comfort woman testifying she was removed from her home and forced to join the Women’s Volunteer Corps, a name given to groups of women who had been called to work at war-related factories.³ By contrast, it has been documented she was sold by her mother for 40 yen to a Kisaeng school in Korea; and later taken by her father-in-law to a comfort station in China. ⁴ In no way, was she coerced to join the comfort women by any Japanese military or government official. Nonetheless at the time, her testimony of experience as a comfort woman was dramatic, and reported by Asahi Newspaper, a highly trusted newspaper in Japan, many Japanese as well as Koreans did not think to question the authenticity of the story. This news shocked the Japanese people and the government, due to its alleged claim of Japanese Imperial Military abducting women from their homes, which if true, is clearly a violation of human rights even at that time.

THE COMFORT WOMEN CONTROVERSY

One important reason many people believed the abduction story of Kim Hak-sun was the popularization of the documentary story by Seiji Yoshida, published several years earlier. In 1983, Yoshida published a book titled "My War Crimes: Abduction of Korean Women" claiming he was the team leader of a Japanese military group whose task was to gather many Korean girls in Cheju Island for sending them as comfort women.⁵ According to Yoshida’s book, his team assembled 205 young women on the island in 1943. The book sold well in Japan, and its Korean version was published in Korea in 1989.⁶

Although this book was read widely in Korea, a local reporter of Cheju Island News was skeptical and questioned its credibility. The news reporter visited places where Yoshida wrote in his book he claims to have abducted young women. When inquired if any residents knew of such incidents, the reporter found no one who confirmed such facts. The reporter then wrote an article harshly criticizing the reliability of stories expressed in Yoshida’s book. The article was published on Cheju Island News on August 14, 1989. ⁷ The reporter’s article is shown below.

Exhibit A Yoshida’s Book Discredited

The book-review article written by Ms. Kyo Eizen of Cheju Island News on August 14,