Japanese gov’t debunks claim ‘comfort women’ were sex slaves

Shinsuke Sugiyama. AFP FILE PHOTO

The government has made its first-ever rebuttal statement at a U.N. panel Tuesday against an international misunderstanding that so-called comfort women were sex slaves forcibly taken away by Japanese military and government authorities during World War II.

The government said it will continue efforts to clear up the international misunderstanding at international conferences and other appropriate opportunities.

An official of the Japanese government said at a session of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in Geneva that the government could not find any documents confirming forcible recruitment of comfort women by military or administrative/military personnel, and that testimony on the issue by the late Seiji Yoshida was a fabrication.

READ: Japanese lawmaker says comfort women were prostitutes, then apologizes

Deputy Foreign Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama said in front of the panel that Yoshida’s testimony that he forcibly took away local women from Jeju Island in what is now South Korea to make them serve as comfort women for the Japanese military was a “fabrication” and “purely the product of his imagination.”

Sugiyama also told the panel that The Asahi Shimbun, which reported Yoshida’s testimony as fact, admitted to errors in its reporting and made an apology. He also said there is no concrete evidence for the claim that there were 200,000 comfort women.

According to the Foreign Ministry, it was the first time for the Japanese government to explain about Yoshida’s testimony and The Asahi Shimbun’s apology concerning comfort women at the United Nations.

The latest government effort aims to eliminate the international misunderstanding by stressing that Yoshida’s testimony, which was used as grounds in Radhika Coomaraswamy’s report on comfort women to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and other documents, was false.

Sugiyama also referred to the deal struck by the Japanese and South Korean governments at the end of last year to resolve the issue of comfort women finally and irreversibly. By stressing its resolution, the Japanese government also seems to be trying to prevent the issue from being highlighted any longer.

READ: South Korea, Japan strike deal on ‘comfort women’

However, members of the government share the view that it is not easy to put the international misunderstanding to rest because South Korea’s claim that comfort women were sex slaves has already become widespread to a certain extent in the international community.

“Taking an appropriate opportunity in the future, Japan will keep explaining its view and the facts carefully and sincerely,” Foreign Press Secretary Yasuhisa Kawamura said at a press conference Wednesday.