Academics urge honesty over 'comfort women'

Japanese academics have called on the conservative government to face up to its responsibility over "comfort women", echoing an open letter from leading foreign scholars urging an honest accounting for wartime wrongdoing.

Sixteen academic societies - including the Historical Science Society of Japan - said the country must "squarely" acknowledge responsibility for the system of sex slavery, in a move that could add fuel to Chinese and Korean claims of a growing official amnesia ahead of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

"Those who were made 'comfort women' fell victim to unspeakable violence as sex slaves" during World War II, said the joint statement from the societies issued on Monday.

"As recent historical studies have shown, victims were subjected not only to forced recruitment, but also to conditions of sexual slavery, which violated their basic human rights," it said.

"By continuing to take the irresponsible stance of denying the facts of wartime sexual slavery in the Japanese military, certain politicians and sections of the media are essentially conveying to the rest of the world that Japan does not respect human rights," it said.

"We renew our demand for all concerned politicians and media outlets to squarely face up to the damage that Japan inflicted in the past, as well as to the victims," it concluded.

A separate open letter with similar warnings was issued earlier this month signed by several hundred academics, many from Europe and the US, and including Pulitzer Prize winners.

That letter noted the system's "exploitation of young, poor, and vulnerable women in areas colonized or occupied by Japan".

Mainstream historians say that about 200,000 women, mostly from the Korean Peninsula but also from other Asian nations, were systematically raped by Japan's imperial forces in military brothels.

Japanese conservatives, however, say no official documents prove government involvement in the system; they say the women were common prostitutes engaged in a commercial exchange.

(China Daily 05/27/2015 page12)