Comfort Women NOT Sex Slaves: Rectifying the Myriad of Perspectives Second Edition

By Koichi Mera

There is a persistent misunderstanding on Comfort Women among English speaking people. Several communities in the U.S. are building a memorial for them accusing human rights violations by the Japanese government, claiming that Comfort Women were “Sex-Slaves.” This book provides solid bases for discrediting the popular conception. Eve

• Language: English
• Publisher: TOPLINK PUBLISHING, LLC
• Release date: Jun 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781949169744

Koichi Mera

Koichi Mera, Ph.D. is President of the Global Alliance for Historical Truth (GAHT) 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 University of Southern California, and worked with the World Bank. In recent decades he has organized a study group on the history of Japan during the last century, and is concerned with political issues related to interpretations of historical records. His recent books includes Whose Back Was Stabbed? : FDR's Secret War on Japan (Hamilton Books, 2017).

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Comfort Women NOT Sex Slaves

Rectifying the Myriad of Perspectives

Second Edition

Koichi Mera

Copyright © 2018 by Koichi Mera, Ph. D.

Hardback: 978-1-949169-73-7

Paperback: 978-1-949169-72-0

eBook: 978-1-949169-74-4

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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Contents

Preface

Acknowledgement

1 The Start of the Korean Comfort Women Controversy

2 The Comfort Women Controversy

3 Recited Apologies by Former Prime Minister Miyazawa

4 The Kono Statement as a Political Compromise

5 What We Know All Along

6 The Spreading of the Sex-Slave Theory to the United Nations and the United States

7 Desperate Actions across the United States

8 2014 Events in Japan: The Review of Kono Statement, and Confession by Asahi Newspaper

9 Developments Since 2014

10 Conclusions

References

Exhibit A   Yoshida’s Book Discredited

Exhibit B   The Kono Statement

Exhibit C   U. S. Armey Report No. 49

C.1   The Original Version

C.2   Retyped Version

Exhibit D   Comfort Women Monuments in the U.S.

Exhibit E   The Background Review of the Kono Statement

E.1   The Study Team on the Drafting Process of the Kono Starement

E.2   Details of Exchanges between Japan and the Republic of Korea

Exhibit F   Asahi Newspaper’s Admission of Misreporting

F.1   Yomiuri Shimbun Asahi Article -5

F.2   Yomiuri Shimbun Asahi Article -6

F.3   Yomiuri Shimbun Asahi Article -8

F.4   Yomiuri Shimbun Asahi Artcile-9

F.5   Yomiuri Shimbun Asahi Artcile-10

Exhibit G   U.S.Interagency Working Group Report of 2007

G.1   IWG Report Excerpts

G.2   Interview with Michael Yon on IWG Report

Exhibit H   Statements by Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga

Exhibit I   2015 Japan-ROK Agreement

Exhibit J   Statement by Shinsuke Sugiyama, Vice Minister of Japan

Exhibit K   Japanese Government in Support of K. Mera & GAHT-US

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 blaming the Government of Japan. Since 2010, this issue has been picked up by Korean-Americans in many communities within the U.S., and has been used as a tool for accusing Japan and the Japanese for conducts which supposedly took place more than 70 years ago. Many Korean organizations are claiming that the Japanese military abducted Korean women and girls 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 for installing a statue for those women called comfort women without undertaking any serious impartial due diligence. The monument was installed in its Central Park on July 30, 2013. Such an action breaks down the hitherto friendly relationship between the Korean and Japanese communities within a city, a state or the United States as a whole. 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 for condemning Japan, the actions could be tolerated. But, there is no historical evidence which supports this accusation as explained in this book.

In December 2017, the City of San Francisco officially annexed a property on which statues of comfort women were installed to its St. Mary Square Park. In this case, Chinese Americans took an initiative in this action and worked with a Korean American organization. The controversy over the comfort women in the United States has been intensified recently rather than receded.

I have studied the modern history of Japan as related to the Second World War in the past decade and a half. 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

Princeton, New Jersey

March 2018

Acknowledgement

I owe a number of people in writing the text and assembling the materials. They include those who have contributed donations for supporting the activities of the Global Alliance for Historical Truth or GAHT. They provided strong encouragement for this work. I owe those who have studied the issues of comfort women before me including 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 profound 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 the earlier text. However, only the author is responsible for any remaining shortcomings. Also, I would like to thank the members of GAHT-US Corporation, especially Mitsuo Takahashi, who provided assistance to the task of compiling the materials concerning the comfort women monuments. Last, but not least, I would like to thank my wife Kumiko who has given me constant encouragement for producing this book.

Chapter 1

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). The fact that there were comfort women then 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, zealous anti-Japan independence fighter who was supported by the U.S., who made strong demands to Japan after the independence of South Korea in 1948, did not raise any issue with regard to the so-called Korean comfort women. ² In addition, until then, 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, name given to groups of women who had been called to work at war-related factories. ³ By contrast, it has been documented that 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, highly trusted newspaper in Japan, so 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.

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¹ Nishioka, In Sapio Editors (2013), p. 22.

² Nishioka, in Sapio Editors (2013), p. 21.

³ Nishioka, in Sapio Editors (2013), p.22-23. The monthly salary of soldiers ranged from 4 yen to 20 yen at that time. See Hata (1999), p. 394.

⁴ Nishioka, in Sapio Editors (2013), p.22-23.

Chapter 2

The Comfort Women Controversy

One important reason many people believed the abduction story told by 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 team whose task was to gather many Korean girls in Cheju Island of Korea 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