Japan should officially apologize to women who were forced into prostitution during World War II

70 years after the war in East Asia, Japan’s government should unambiguously apologize for the abuse of about 200,000 women from Korea, China and other countries, and offer financial compensation to those who survived being forced into prostitution. The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) sent an according letter of appeal to Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. In the past years, conservative Japanese politicians and researchers regularly denied that forced prostitution had taken place in the Japanese-occupied areas before and during the war. “In consideration of his conservative electorate, Abe persistently refused to apologize, publicly and without limitations, for the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Japanese soldiers,” said Ulrich Delius, the STP’s Asia-consultant, Göttingen on Friday. Concerning his speech on occasion of the 70th anniversary of the end of the war this Saturday, there is some anticipation whether the Prime Minister will comment on the country’s historical responsibility.

An official apology could help to reduce the tensions in East Asia, which are about to escalate over territorial disputes. Many young people in Japan’s neighboring countries are very critical about the fact that the leading conservative politicians and researchers in Japan deny historical responsibility. “For the victims, this is probably the last chance to find justice,” said Delius. Many survivors are more than 90 years old. This year, eight former forced prostitutes died in South Korea alone, five of them in June 2015.

In recent years, Prime Minister Abe had repeatedly criticized other Japanese politicians for apologizing to the women who were forced into prostitution. In February 2014, he even appointed a commission of historians to examine whether an apology offered by former Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono in 1993 was justified.

In particular, Abe questioned the fact that the women were forced into prostitution. Since Japan’s military forces destroyed most of the documents about their reign when they left the occupied countries, it was difficult to find evidence for the war crimes. Still, researchers from China, Taiwan, Korea and many other countries, as well as Japanese and Korean NGOs, were able to document hundreds of individual cases. Thus, young women from the age of 15 onwards were kept detained in brothels as so-called “comfort women” for Japanese soldiers. Thousands of them did not survive the crimes. After the war, most of the severely traumatized victims were marginalized by the state and in society. Today, there are only a few dozen of the former forced prostitutes living in China and Korea.

Header Foto: Flickr/joonyoung kim