About 200,000 young women aged 13 years and above from China, Taiwan, Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia and other East Asian countries were systematically abused in soldiers' bordellos, said the movement for moral and material compensation to victims of Japanese militarism. Those figures have been accepted by the UN.
The Tokyo tribunal did not include forced sex among war crimes, so the issue did not come up at the trial and remained hushed up until the 1990s. That enabled the Japanese authorities to ignore compensation demands, pleading that rape did not qualify as a war crime before the 4th Geneva Convention was adopted in 1949. Moreover, the Japanese government also attempted to overturn charges against the military authorities, claiming civilians had selected women for soldiers' brothels.
But Yoshiaki Yashimi, professor of history from Chuo University, unearthed and published six official documents from the National Institute for Defense Studies, supporting the claim that Japanese military authorities were involved in the establishment and running of brothels.
It was not until 1993 that the Japanese government began acknowledging the facts of sex slavery during the war. Seeking to soften international criticism of Japan, Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama in August 1994 announced the founding of the Peace and Friendship Exchanges organization to address the issue. But victims' organizations refused to cooperate with the private foundation, saying Tokyo was trying to escape responsibility for its crimes. The slogan of protesting women was: "We want our honor back, not charity."
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights helped to draw up recommendations for the Japanese government, which listed the following measures for solving the sex slaves problem: acknowledging that the Japanese army violated international law; making a public apology to every woman; paying her cash compensation; changing school curricula to reflect the true facts of history; publishing all related documents and finding and punishing all those involved in the crime.
In April 1996, the official Chinese representative to the UN said for the first time that Japan must pay compensation to sex slaves.
As they were preparing for the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII, women's organizations in Asia, Europe and North America called for a united effort to draw attention to demands that the Japanese government apologize and pay compensation to sex victims.
The resolution on sex slavery became possible after the Democrats gained a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Japanese authorities tried to forestall the decision. The Japanese ambassador in Washington was instructed to say that the passing of such a resolution would not improve Japanese-American relations.
And although matters did not come to protests, Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki said with ill-concealed displeasure: "The Prime Minister personally informed the United States of our position during his visit to that country in April. We regret to say that the resolution was approved despite that." In diplomatic lingo "regret" is a strong word.
Japanese human rights organizations intend to launch a campaign inside the country to demand apologies and compensation for former sex slaves who suffered enormously for long years at the hands of the Japanese military.
Anatoly Koshkin (Ph.D.) is professor at University of Oriental Studies.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
