On Thursday the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, retreated on the 1993 Kono Statement which acknowledged that during WWII the Imperial Japanese Military pressed women in occupied territories into prostitution as "Comfort Women". This abandonment of the truth under pressure from Japanese Ultra-Nationalists carries the same stench as that borne by Holocaust deniers. During WWII the forces of Japan, in their self proclaimed "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere", were vicious and brutal to the natives of their occupied lands. The Japanese soldier was raised to believe that Japanese were gods, and those outside of Japan existed only to serve or be destroyed. The Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March are just a couple of examples of the contempt that the Japanese Military had for non-Japanese. That the Prime Minister would now say that the "Comfort Women" of the Japanese Military were compensated contractors as opposed to victims of sexual torment by coercion is ludicrous and, more so, dishonorable for a man of Abe's position.
At the heart of the matter is the post WWII Japanese aristocracies view of Japan's place in the world. I hate to say it, but I believe that the ruling class of Japan has leveraged the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to their benefit for the last 60 years. The dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan was one of the greatest tragedies in human history to be sure, but the leaders of Japan have used that tragedy to exonerate Japanese royalty and leaders of industry from any culpability for the mayhem Japan wrought on the citizens of China, Korea, The Philippines and numerous other Japanese occupied lands of WWII.
I have been to the Philippines and have heard the stories of Japanese cruelty. My wife's uncle, at age 10, was pursued by a Japanese soldier with his samurai sword drawn when he attempted to gather some food for his family that was hiding in the forest. Once he found a hiding place, it was 3 hours before the Japanese soldier gave up the hunt for him. My wife's uncle made it back to the family hiding place in the forest with two pockets full of rice for eight people. My wife's aunt told me how the Filipinas, knowing of the Japanese soldiers fetish with cleanliness, would smear their bodies with carabao manure and their genitals with pig's blood to prevent the soldiers from raping them. The Japanese would kill and rape for sport during the time of occupation. It is not widely recalled, but 1 million Filipinos, who were American nationals at the time, died during the Japanese occupation.
If Prime Minister Abe has any doubts that coercion of woman by the Japanese Military into prostitution took place during WWII he merely needs to read the following words of Japanese soldier Itsuo Kaji, interviewed by Jintaro Ishida, for his book, "The Remains of War" for clarification:
"My experience in the Philippines is subjugation. We went to a village, gathered about twenty young and beautiful girls. And we brought them back and locked them up in a house. Though I didn't play with them, the rest of us abused them. Then, our officers changed their mind and decided to reduce the number of the girls. We reduced them to twelve or thirteen girls. It means that we threw seven or eight girls into a well to kill them. Later on, when a newly drafted soldier was guarding them, the remaining girls ran away when he fell asleep."
Prime Minster Abe, read Kaji-san's words, reconsider your position on this sensitive issue, and rediscover honor.