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“The Comfort Women were Prostitutes”: Repercussions of remarks by the Japanese Consul General in Atlanta
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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“I want Japan to ask for forgiveness.” Ching-lin Yuen, testimony at the Women's International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan's Military Sexual Slavery, 2000
Yuen was among 64 women from 8 countries who came to Tokyo to testify about their experiences as former “comfort women.” The judges in this citizens' tribunal found Emperor Hirohito guilty of responsibility for sexually enslaving women and girls in the Asia Pacific, and recognized direct government and military responsibility for the “comfort women” system, one of the largest and cruelest cases of sex trafficking in the 20th century.
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Notes
1 Yoneyama, Lisa. 2016. Cold War Ruins: Transpacific Critique of American Justice and Japanese War Crimes. Durham: Duke University Press, p. 111.
2 The Japanese government attempted to end the “history wars” once and for all when it reached an “agreement” with the South Korean government in December 2015. With Prime Minister's “sincere apology” and one billion yen donation, the agreement states that the discussion of the comfort women issue to be “final and irreversible” without acknowledging any legal accountability or taking into considerations of what the survivors have demanded for decades. Seven demands by the surviving women to the Japanese government are: 1) Acknowledgement of Japan's military sexual slavery; 2) Comprehensive investigation into the crimes; 3) Official and legally-bound apology; 4) Government reparations to all victims; 5) Prosecution of the criminals; 6) Ongoing education in Japan's history textbooks; and 7) Construction of Memorials and Museums to remember victims and to preserve history. “Shame on Shinzo Abe, Taking the Olympics Hostage as Global Calls for Justice Pierce the 2015 ‘Comfort Women’ Agreement,” accessed on February 10, 2018.
3 “PM Abe says San Fran acceptance of ‘comfort women’ statue ‘deeply regrettable’,” The Mainichi. November 22, 2017, accessed on February 10, 2018.
4 “Open Letter to San Francisco Mayor from Osaka Mayor,” accessed on December 7, 2017.
5 Ibid.
6 “Japanese mayor says he'll end SF sister city status over comfort women statue,” The San Francisco Chronicle. November 24, 2017., accessed on February 10, 2018.
7 “Center for Civil and Human Rights controversial withdrawal from proposed ‘comfort women’ memorial,” The Georgia Asian Times. March 2, 2017., accessed on February 10, 2018.
8 “Japanese consul general: Brookhaven memorial is ‘symbol of hatred’,” The Reporter Newspapers, June 23, 2017. accessed on February 10, 2018.
9 Ibid.
10 For the discussion of “coercion,” see Yoshimi Yoshiaki, “Reexamining the ‘Comfort Women’ Issue,” The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (January 5, 2015), accessed on February 10, 2018. Yoshimi states, “Even [historian] Hata Ikuhiko and right wingers have admitted that women were taken from the Korean Peninsula through kidnapping and human trafficking.”
11 Hiroki Shigeyuki, Japan's consul general in New York met with Mayor James Rotundo of Palisades Park to request removal of the comfort women memorial. “In New Jersey, Memorial for ‘Comfort Women’ Deepens Old Animosity” The New York Times, May 18, 2012. Despite Japanese government efforts, Mayor Rotundo and the officials in Palisades Park remained committed to memorializing the victims and survivors of Japan's military sexual slavery–what the Japanese government wishes to obliterate at all cost.
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