Abe's Pearl Harbor visit masks 'hawkish' intent

Former South Korean "comfort women" Gil Won-ok (left) and Kim Bok-dong attend a protest on Wednesday calling for annulment of a settlement between Seoul and Tokyo on the issue. Jung Yeon-Je / AFP

On Tuesday, the Association for Inheriting and Propagating the Murayama Statement, a Japanese civic group, issued a statement urging Abe to visit Nanjing and other locations of Japanese atrocities before and during World War II.

"The Japanese Imperial Army killed far more civilians in the Nanjing Massacre, the germ warfare in Harbin and in some other places in Asia, and it is intolerable just to memorialize the US dead while ignoring the victims in Asian countries," said Takakage Fujita, director general of the association.

The group aims to uphold the 1995 statement issued by then Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama apologizing for damage and suffering caused by Japan.

Nell Calloway, director of the Chennault Aviation and Military Museum in Monroe, Louisiana, said, "I feel the visit by Japanese Prime Minister Abe to Pearl Harbor ... was meaningless and he was nothing more than a tourist." Calloway is the granddaughter of the famed Flying Tigers' Lieutenant General Claire Lee Chennault, who commanded US pilots who fought the Japanese in China.

Zhang Jingquan, a professor of Japanese studies at Jilin University, said that Abe's visit was a way to strengthen the Japan-US alliance and jointly curb the rise of China.

On Wednesday, more protesters than usual showed up for the weekly demonstration in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. South Korean "comfort women" meet there to denounce being forced into sexual slavery during the war, Xinhua News Agency reported.

It marked the anniversary of what protesters called a "humiliating" agreement last year between South Korea and Japan meant to be a final settlement of the issue in exchange for $8.3 million for a foundation for the victims, Xinhua reported. Protesters called for annulment of the agreement, and the group also held a remembrance for seven of the women who died this year.

The Japanese military coerced as many as 200,000 women from the Asian countries into sexual slavery during the war, historians say.

Contact the writers at anbaijie@chinadaily.com.cn