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Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
must be driven by all kinds of pressures to obscenely stand firm on
the idea that the Japanese military during World War II was not
guilty of forcibly using Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese as well as
Taiwan-Chinese, Indonesian and Filipino women to relieve Japanese
soldiers of their sexual hunger. “There was no coercion such as
kidnappings by the Japanese authorities. There is no reliable
testimony that proves kidnapping,” Abe said. It was economic
reasons and pimps who made these women allow themselves to become
whores to Japanese soldiers, he claims.
He must
acutely feel the need to protect till eternity the purity of his
beloved Japanese military caste’s image.
He must also
be worrying about the monetary consequences of an honest admission
of guilt, as demanded by a new bill filed in the US Congress
demanding an apology by Japan and the frank admission of its guilt.
Abe is saying
that they are liars—all those Filipinas who were kidnapped from
their parents and were gang-raped by Japanese soldiers, their
families and neighbors who saw the kidnappings and the coercion, the
teller of those poor women’s life stories, and Gabriela, the
women’s rights organization, that has mourned these women’s
tragedy and championed their quest for justice. Abe is saying that
all of us are deluded and unjust for demanding a proper apology from
Japan for the bestial acts of its military men on our compatriot
Filipina women, acts of inhumanity done with the approval of the
officials of the Japanese Empire.
Abe is
veritably saying that his own predecessor, former Prime Minister
Koizumi, lied in a letter in 2002 to Filipina comfort women (then
very old and mostly dying), in which Koizumi said “The issue of
comfort women, with an involvement of the Japanese military
authorities at that time, was a grave affront to the honor and
dignity of large numbers of women.” Abe is saying that Koizumi is
wrong for extending, in that letter, his “most sincere apologies
and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful
experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds
as comfort women. We must not evade the weights of the past, nor
should we evade our responsibilities for the future.”
Abe is in
effect calling the then senior spokesman of the Japanese government
in 1993, Yohei Kono—who was as contrite as Koizumi—a fool and
liar.
Abe is
spitting on the testimonies of many Japanese soldiers, who are now
sorry for what they did to Asian women. The latest of these, Yasuji
Kaneko, now 87 years old, was quoted last Sunday by a Japanese
reporter for the Associated Press as saying, while telling how he
and other soldiers raped women in China, “They cried out, but it
didn’t matter to us whether the women lived or died. We were the
Emperor’s soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the
villages, we raped without reluctance.”
Similar rapes
in Greater Manila and in the provinces happened here. But the
Japanese premier says they did not happen, we who are saying they
did are lying.
We
Filipinos—even if this country is forced to depend on Japanese aid
and loans to rescue millions of our countrymen from poverty—must
not weaken in our resolve to demand, just as those American members
of Congress are demanding, that Japan make a proper apology for the
atrocities its Japanese Imperial Armed Forces committed on the
Filipinas and other Asians they used as comfort women.
Acting Foreign
Secretary Franklin Ebdalin must be commended for taking Prime
Minister Abe to task for his obscene revisionism.
Japanese
seal on atrocities
Koreans who
want to sue the Japanese government for atrocities the WWII Imperial
military committed cannot file lawsuits to seek compensation.
That’s because in Japan the agreement between it and South Korea,
signed in 1965, to restore diplomatic relations has been placed
under a seal of confidentiality.
Korea was
Japan’s colony from 1910 to 1945. The 1965 Japan-Korea agreement
required a payment of US$800 million to the Korean government in
loans and grants. In return the Korean government agreed not to
demand further reparations.
Japan claims
that the agreement disallows private claims because the Korean
government has been paid. The Korean government denies that claim
and has declassified the agreement to prove to Koreans that the
Japanese statement is false.
As a result,
in Japan, no private WWII Korean victim is allowed to sue the
Japanese government unless Tokyo declassifies the agreement.
Yesterday, lawyers of Korean victims went to court petitioning for
the declassification of the agreement.
Meanwhile,
dozens of lawsuits by Chinese and Korean victims of atrocities have
been filed in Japan. All of these have been summarily dismissed by
Japanese courts which takes the side of the government.
We hope the
Koreans succeed in opening what is virtually a Japanese seal on
wartime atrocities.
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