Who is Norimitsu Onishi?

Two pieces from the New York Times (excerpts), both of which were written by Norimitsu Onishi, a familiar name to me by now, whoever he is.

In Japan, a Historian Stands by Proof of Wartime Sex Slavery
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: March 31, 2007

TOKYO — IT was about 15 years ago, recalled Yoshiaki Yoshimi…, a [Chuo University] historian, when he grew fed up with the Japanese government’s denials that the military had set up and run brothels throughout Asia during World War II.

… Mr. Yoshimi went to the Defense Agency’s library… In just two days, he found a rare trove that uncovered the military’s direct role in managing the brothels, including documents that carried the personal seals of high-ranking Imperial Army officers.

Faced with this smoking gun, a red-faced Japanese government immediately dropped its long-standing claim that only private businessmen had operated the brothels. A year later, in 1993, it acknowledged in a statement that the Japanese state itself had been responsible…

“Back then, I was optimistic that this would effectively settle the issue,” Mr. Yoshimi said. “But there was a fierce backlash.”

The backlash came from young nationalist politicians led by Shinzo Abe…

... Until Mr. Yoshimi came along 15 years ago, the government had always maintained that there were no official documents to prove the military’s role in establishing the brothels. Mr. Abe was now saying there were no official documents to prove that the military forcibly procured the women — thereby discounting other evidence, including the testimony of former sex slaves.

The emphasis on official documents, according to Mr. Yoshimi and other historians, has long been part of the government’s strategy to control wartime history. In the two weeks between Japan’s surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, and the arrival of American occupation forces, wartime leaders fearing postwar trials incinerated so many potentially incriminating documents… Even today, Japan refuses to release documents that historians believe have survived and would shed light on Japan’s wartime history.

… [He] is not optimistic about unearthing documents about the military’s abduction of women.

“There are things that are never written in official documents,” he said. “That they were forcibly recruited — that’s the kind of thing that would have never been written in the first place.”

Mr. Yoshimi copied the document but did not publicize his finding. At the time, no former sex slave had gone public about her experiences, and awareness of wartime sex crimes against women was low.

But in late 1991, former sex slaves in South Korea became the first to break their silence. When the Japanese government responded with denials, Mr. Yoshimi went back to the Defense Agency.

Of the half-dozen documents he discovered, the most damning was a notice written on March 4, 1938, by the adjutant to the chiefs of staff of the North China Area Army and Central China Expeditionary Force. Titled “Concerning the Recruitment of Women for Military Comfort Stations,” the notice said that “armies in the field will control the recruiting of women,” and that “this task will be performed in close cooperation with the military police or local police force of the area.”

In another document from July 1938, Naosaburo Okabe, chief of staff of the North China Area Army, wrote that rapes of local women by Japanese soldiers had deepened anti-Japanese sentiments and that setting up “facilities for sexual comfort as quickly as possible is of great importance.” Yet another, an April 1939 report by the headquarters of the 21st Army in Guangzhou, China, noted that the 21st Army directly supervised 850 women.

DESPITE the government’s efforts to hide the past, Mr. Yoshimi succeeded in painting a detailed picture of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery: a system of military-run brothels that emerged in 1932 after Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, then grew with full-scale war against China in 1937 and expanded into most of Asia in the 1940s.

Between 50,000 and 200,000 women from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere were tricked or coerced into sexual slavery, Mr. Yoshimi said… Unlike other militaries that have used wartime brothels, the Japanese military was the “main actor,” Mr. Yoshimi said. “The Japanese military itself newly built this system, took the initiative to create this system, maintained it and expanded it, and violated human rights as a result,” he said. “That’s a critical difference.”

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We are still in the dark. For example, what were the relations between the army and the “agents”? It is not hard to imagine that there were Korean agents who were currying favour of Japanese officers and with this close relationship making money. Yoshimi says the number of women totalled 50,000 to 200,000. The government actually met only 16 (!) to prepare the “Kono Statement.” Only from this small number, what sort of generalization can even be surmised? It seems to me that the hastily-prepared statement restricted the scope of action the Japanese government can take and confounded the situation.

Let’s assume that the Japanese military was systematically, to whatever extent, involved in establishing brothels. Then, one important point arises. The military wanted to prevent raping of local women by soldiers and the spread of STD among them and maintain a sufficient hygiene level. Russian soldiers’ barbaric acts against German women and fellow Russian women are well-known because there was no system to control it. And it is also known how Korean soldiers’ behaved during Vietnam War.

From “コリアン世界の旅 (The Journey of the Korean World)” by Nomura Susumu (野村進);

In Lac An Village of Ninh Hoa, Khanh Hoa, southern Vietnam, a motorbike taxi driver shows to the author a scar left by a bullet that went through his body in an indiscriminate attack by Korean soldiers, in which his parents and three small sisters died. He was also hit in his right upper arm, armpit and a thigh. Another man says, “Koreans were a horrifying bunch. They sliced off ears and noses from dead bodies. Some were beheaded.”

The author met a former Korean soldier in Ho Chi Minh City. He recalls, “When hit by a bullet, Viet Con men would totter only five meters and collapse. But women were different. They would fall down after running about 30 meters to escape. We were surprised (by their strength). Women were able to endure through torture too. We caught a Viet Con nurse corps officer, a beauty, and hung her from a tree. Even when hit by an iron bar or whatever, she kept her mouth shut. She died, keeping her silence.”

The former soldier also tells a story of burning down a whole village of 16-17 houses. His unit was defending the village, not knowing that villagers were informing the movements of the Korean Army to Viet Cons. Furious, Koreans set fire to the houses and shot all, including women and children. Is the story of “ear-slicing’ true? “We did so to show how many enemies we had killed. There was no other body part to slice…” Hideyoshi, a la Korean! I’m very much interested to know how Korean text books are describing what their soldiers did in Vietnam.

The US House resolution, expected to be voted on after Abe’s visit to the US, appears influenced by a strong Chinese lobby and what is ironic is its original sponsor is Representative Honda, a Japanese-American.

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Japan’s Textbooks Reflect Revised History
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: April 1, 2007

TOKYO, March 31 — In another sign that Japan is pressing ahead in revising its history of World War II, new high school textbooks will no longer acknowledge that the Imperial Army was responsible for a major atrocity in Okinawa, the government announced late Friday.

… [The] fresh denial of the military’s responsibility in the Battle of Okinawa and in sexual slavery — long accepted as historical facts — is likely to deepen suspicions in Asia that Tokyo is trying to whitewash its militarist past...

During the 1945 battle, during which one quarter of the civilian population was killed, the Japanese Army showed indifference to Okinawa’s defense and safety. Japanese soldiers used civilians as shields against the Americans, and persuaded locals that victorious American soldiers would go on a rampage of killing and raping. With the impending victory of American troops, civilians committed mass suicide, urged on by fanatical Japanese soldiers.

“There were some people who were forced to commit suicide by the Japanese Army,” one old textbook explained. But in the revision ordered by the ministry, it now reads, “There were some people who were driven to mass suicide.”

Other changes are similar — the change to a passive verb, the disappearance of a subject — and combine to erase the responsibility of the Japanese military. In explaining its policy change, the ministry said that it “is not clear that the Japanese Army coerced or ordered the mass suicides.”

Yasuhiro Nakasone, a former prime minister…, recently denied what he wrote in 1978. In a memoir about his Imperial Navy experiences in Indonesia, titled “Commander of 3,000 Men at Age 23,” he wrote that some of his men “started attacking local women or became addicted to gambling. “For them, I went to great pains, and had a comfort station built,” Mr. Nakasone wrote, using the euphemism for a military brothel.

But in a meeting with foreign journalists a week ago, Mr. Nakasone, now 88, issued a flat denial. He said he had actually set up a “recreation center,” where his men played Japanese board games like go and shogi.

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Clearly, the phrases like, “pressing ahead in revising its history of World War II,” “long accepted as historical facts” and “trying to whitewash its militarist past” are setting a negative, even hostile, tone of the article. Controversy is still very much alive precisely because they are not “long accepted as historical facts.”

How many of the one-quarter of the population killed, including human-shield civilians, did the US forces murder? Surely, not all of them committed suicide by the order of the Imperial Army.

Why did Onishi not mention the law suit started by the younger brother of Imperial Army Captain, Akamatsu Yoshitsugu and others against a publisher (Iwanami Shoten) and author (Oe Kenzaburo) who asserted there were “orders” by the army to civilians to commit suicide? Did he not read the book by Sono Ayako? Is he not aware of a recent testimony by a former Ryukyu government official, Teruya Nobuo, on mass suicide that took place in Tokashiki island (reported by Sankei in August last year) that his government produced documents, which claimed the Army had ordered suicide, to ensure that civilians would receive postwar compensation, to which only soldiers and their families are entitled, and that there were no civilians who were ordered to take their lives? According to the Sankei report, this official asked Captain, Akamatsu, who was stationed in the island, to approve the documents and the captain agreed. Teruya says, “I have been telling this lie. But I think it is time the truth was told. Every time Captain Akamatsu was criticized, it was heart rendering.”

I searched for the 1978 book by Nakasone on the web but couldn’t find it. It must be an interesting read.

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Lebow’s “Between Peace and War” is so much easier to read than “Power and Interdependence.” He himself gives me the reason. In the preface, he wrote, trying to bridge two discipline, political science and history, “On more than one occasion… my [poli-sci] professor [suggested] that I transfer into history program where he was sure I would feel more at home.” And, “In an icy voice, my [German history] professor suggested that I return to the political science department where it was apparent I belonged.” “Between Peace and War” is a hot drama, backed by dry theories.

Writing and reading makes me forget time and all the problems I’m facing though they do not go away…