WOMEN-JAPAN: No Comfort Still for Wartime Sex Slaves

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Jun 23 1995 (IPS) - Neither indignant statements from neighbouring governments nor heartfelt talks made by the ageing victims themselves have moved Tokyo to grant compensation to the women forced to become the sex slaves of Japanese soldiers more than 50 years ago.

But an international human rights delegation will be visiting Japan next month, and activists now say this might just make the Japanese government finally change its stance.

“International pressure is very important to force the Japanese government to accept its war guilt,” says Professor Yoshiaki Yoshimi of Chuo University. “The scheduled seminar is a preliminary step to taking the comfort women case to international courts.”

It was Yoshimi who in 1992 stumbled upon secret documents in the Defence Studies Library that incriminated the highest officers of the Japanese military in the setting-up of wartime brothels in which tens of thousands of women were forced to work.

The discovery forced Tokyo, which had hitherto denied state involvement in the apparent sex slavery of the women, to accept the military’s role in the embarrassing issue.

The International Commission for Jurists (ICJ) headed by Senegalese lawyer Adama Dieng will be in Tokyo during the first week of July to conduct a seminar on ‘comfort women’, Japan’s euphemism for the women who served at least 30 men a day in the brothels organised by the now defunct Japanese Imperial Army.

The conference will re-examine the government’s refusal to pay compensation to these women.

The highlight of the seminar, to be held at the United Nations University in Tokyo, will be a report the ICJ compiled on comfort women that was completed last year and presented to the Japanese government.

After conducting several fact-finding missions that took the international team to many Asian countries including South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, the ICJ concluded that the system of military-organised brothels during the Pacific War was a gross violation of the women’s rights.

The final report called on Tokyo to pay four million dollars to each surviving victim of the brutal system, but the Japanese government has yet to make such a move.

Instead, last week, Tokyo outlined a plan to have a fund of up to one billion yen (about 11.9 million dollars) that will come partly from donations from the public, plus government subsidies amounting to 600 million yen (7.14 million dollars).

The money, it said, would be used to provide rehabilitation services such as medical services, for former comfort women.

“This is our bottom line,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Kozo Igarashie. “It’s not perfect, but the government will promote it in good faith.”

Tokyo has said it will not offer individual compensation because Japan has already signed reparations treaties with its Asian neighbours to pay for its wartime aggression.

But its proposed fund has failed to appease the ‘comfort women’, many of them now white-haired grandmothers, and the Japanese activists who have been helping them in their fight for the past few years.

“The fund is no clear indication of Japan’s guilt,” says lawyer Mizuho Fukushima. “The fund should have been completely provided by the government and accompanied by a public apology, the only means of showing the world that Japan has clearly accept its wrongdoing.”

Fukushima is handling the case of two former South Korean comfort women who are suing the Japanese government.

Groups in South Korea and China, where activists estimate close to 200,000 young women were recruited into the brothels, held demonstrations last week against Tokyo’s fund proposal. They described the plan as another attempt by Japan to cover-up its guilt.

“We are not asking for charity money but a clear apology,” said the South Korean protesters.

The fund also drew bitter criticisms from far-away Holland, where several Dutch women who were also made into sex slaves by Japanese soldiers during the Pacific War are demanding compensation and an apology from Japan.

But while some activists are optimistic that Tokyo will rethink its position once officials meet with the ICJ delegates, others are not so hopeful.

They note that the fund proposal itself came at the heels of a draft statement from the Japanese parliament that expressed only “deep remorse” for Japan’s aggression and the atrocities committed by its Army in neighbouring countries during the Pacific War.

Other Asian governments have described the statement as hardly the full and categorical apology they want — and expect –from Japan.

Meanwhile, those who have been fighting to get individual compensation for the ‘comfort women’ have now become divided on whether or not to accept whatever Tokyo is offering just to ease the economic constraints faced by many of the victims.

Some activists have pointed out that many of the women are now elderly and alone and are living on meagre pensions.

But many women’s groups equate their determination to get individual compensation from the government to winning recognition on the practise of violation and sexual exploitation of poor women in many countries even today.

Says Akie Hatazawa of the Christian Women’s Committee: “This issue before us is not only highlighting the wrongdoing of the Japanese imperial Army but also forcing the government to recognize that abuse against young women goes on and that violaters must be punished.”