JAPAN wants to forget a horrible crime committed by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. It wants to put an end to an uncomfortable issue about “comfort women”. That’s why it forged with South Korea on Monday a “final and irreversible” agreement over the wartime sex-slavery injustice.
For the uninitiated, comfort women is a euphemism used by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II for the young girls who provide sexual services to Japanese soldiers in comfort houses that are actually brothels set up by the Army in Japanese-occupied areas in Asia. These women were made to provide sex to Japanese soldiers—who wait in line outside the small rooms—for about 30 to 40 times on weekdays and 60 to 100 times on weekends.
The Japan-South Korea agreement comes with two conditions: The former must apologize for the war crime and compensate the latter’s comfort women; and the South Korean government, on the other hand, must promise not to criticize Japan over the issue again.
To seal the pact, no less than Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made the apology on behalf of the Japanese government. He said Japan is painfully aware of its responsibility for the suffering, and would finance a fund for the benefit of the surviving South Korean comfort women.
Getting an apology from the head of the Japanese government, which has maintained up to that point that the Japanese military was not involved in sexual slavery, was a moral victory for all former sex slaves in South Korea. At last, after 70 years, they are getting a real apology.
It was a bittersweet moment for the South Korean comfort women. The apology comes not out of a change in Japanese sentiment, but from a change in geopolitics. It comes as a convenient excuse for Japan and South Korea to forget past animosities and increase cooperation on mutual defense against the expansionist moves of China. In the end, that was what Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-hye agreed after stamping with finality the issue about comfort women: The two leaders agreed to strengthen military ties.
The Japan-South Korea pact on comfort women is a good precedent for other victims in Asia. Researchers estimate that about 100,000 to 200,000 Asian women were conscripted as comfort women by Japan from 1942 to 1945. They say these sex slaves came from South Korea, the Philippines, China, Taiwan, Borneo, Thailand and Indonesia. In the past, a couple of brave Filipino comfort women gave interviews to the media to expose the injustice committed by the Japanese Imperial Army. Now that the Japanese government is ready to take proper action regarding the comfort women issue, the Philippine government must lead a resolute effort to seek justice for our own comfort women. They also deserve a formal apology from Japan, not to say an adequate compensation for their humiliation and suffering. That’s the only way Japan can put the comfort women issue to rest with finality.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano