In general, it’s hard to take Japanese leaders seriously when they talk about World War II – unless they are offering abject apologies.
But their current complaints about a pending congressional resolution on “comfort women” can’t be easily dismissed.
The resolution in question – now before the U.S. House of Representatives – demands an official apology from the Japanese government for Imperial Japan’s abhorrent coercion of women into prostitution during the war. These so-called comfort women were forced to provide sexual services to Japanese troops far from their homes.
The resolution has 156 co-sponsors, was overwhelmingly approved by the House Foreign Affairs Committee and will easily be approved by the entire House if it comes to a vote.
The Japanese government and public don’t like it. Japan’s ambassador is warning that its passage “will almost certainly have lasting effects on the deep friendship, close trust and wide-ranging cooperation our two nations now enjoy.”
The Japanese see the resolution as rubbing more salt in a raw wound. They feel their government has already apologized adequately for the forced prostitution of 60-plus years ago.
That can be debated. But it’s not clear why the United States has any particular standing to be making noise about this issue so long after the fact. The prostitutes in question were not Americans; they were Koreans and other Asians. Those countries and their citizens were owed big apologies, and it’s really up to them to decide whether they got them.
There’s another problem with the House resolution: rank hypocrisy.
Japanese troops weren’t the only ones who used their nation’s coerced prostitutes; there’s evidence that Americans did, too. When U.S. troops occupied Japan after its surrender, the Japanese government operated special brothels for them.
“Sadly, we police had to set up sexual comfort stations for the occupation troops,” reported one police department. The purpose was to “create a breakwater to protect regular women and girls.”
By then, U.S. authorities were well aware of Imperial Japan’s forced prostitution. The Associated Press reported in April that some of those authorities had also learned that women were being coerced into prostituting themselves to the Americans.
That is shameful. The House would do well to stop demanding further apologies from Japan and start doing some apologizing of its own.
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