Truth about "Sex Slaves": English Paper in Japan Aplogizes over Using "Sex Slave" Expressions

On 16 December, an English-language newspaper in Japan made an apology for using the term “sex slaves” to describe “comfort women.”

“[The] Daily Yomiuri (hereafter referred to as the DY, and now The Japan News) used “sex slave” and other inappropriate expressions in a total of 97 articles from February 1992 to January 2013 in its reporting…

“The expression ‘comfort women’ was difficult to understand for non-Japanese who did not have knowledge of the subject. Therefore the DY, based on an inaccurate perception and using foreign news agencies’ reports as reference, added such explanations…”

The apology does not mention what terms or expressions the paper will use in the future.

If it’s really “difficult to understand for non-Japanese,” how about “women forced into prostitution by poverty,” “women forced into prostitution by parents” or “women forced into prostitution by brokers”? Or “wartime prostitutes” or simply “prostitutes,” as some of them had been, which, I believe, is much easier for everyone in the world to understand.    

“Using foreign news agencies’ reports as reference”: almost criminal.

Truth about "Sex Slaves": Koreans Were NOT Nationals of Another State

McDougall Report of June 1998 (E/CN.4/Sub.2/1998/13): [S]ince by the late 1920s international law recognized that when a State injured the nationals of another State, it inflicted injury upon that foreign State and was therefore liable for damages to make whole the injured individuals.

It means that Korean comfort women were not injured and the State (Japan) is not liable because they were then Japanese citizens.

Truth about "Sex Slaves": Bring Charges against Korean Guys

McDougall Report (E/CN.4/1998/13):

“Japan is clearly the most appropriate location to conduct criminal prosecutions of those responsible for implementing the “comfort stations” system. Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Sexual Slavery by Japan filed a complaint in 1994 with the Chief Prosecutor in Tokyo seeming criminal prosecution of Japanese military officers and others involved in the operation of the “comfort stations”. [See “Complaint” <http://www.peacenet.or.kr/~jdh/e comfort/library/complaint/comp.htm.] The Japanese Government should act as a matter of urgency on this complaint and should seek to bring charges against any surviving individuals who operated or frequented the military’s rape centres.”

So the Government of Japan should “bring charges against any surviving individuals who operated or frequented the military’s rape centers” even if any one of those surviving individuals is a Korean citizen now (Korean-Japanese then).

Truth about "Sex Slaves": This Sorry Guy's Mother-in-Law Is Director of Anti-Japanese Organization

This New York Times article does not mention at all that the mother-in-law of this guy, Takashi Uemura, is Yang Sun Nim, director of the Association of Pacific War Victims and Families, a forefront anti-Japanese organization in Korea.

“They are using intimidation as a way to deny history,” said Mr. Uemura, who spoke with a pleading urgency and came to an interview in this northern city with stacks of papers to defend himself. “They want to bully us into silence.”

I’m very much interested to know more about his “stack of paper to defend himself.” And “they” are not denying history. They are trying finally to set things right about this comfort women issue. The article is a creation resulted from very shallow historical research. It is only yet another example to misinform the reader about the issue. So, “Recreation and Amusement Association (R.A.A.)” in post-war Japan serving US soldiers? Comfort stations in Korea, based on the Japanese model, established by the father of the current president of the country? Or kids left behind fathered by Korean soldiers in Vietnam?

Truth about "Sex Slaves": Women Who Were Deceived into Prostitution, But Who Deceived Them?

“Many [women] were deceived with offers of jobs in factories and hospitals and then forced to provide sex for imperial soldiers in the comfort stations. (Rewriting the War, Japanese Right Attacks a Newspaper, Martin Fackler, December 2, 2014, The New York Times, online edition)

If they were really deceived, who deceived them?

“[To] open up inquiry on this sexual slavery would be to find that many women were mobilized by Korean men.

(Bruce Cummings, Korea’s Place in the Sun, p. 179, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997)

And because the whole Korean peninsula was part of Japan, not colonized but annexed, then, may I say that at least some imperial soldiers, who were visiting the comfort stations, were actually Korean-Japanese? Do not forget they were all Japanese, whether from Japan or Korea.