http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/301276111.html

Japan's revisionist WWII history on 'comfort women'

Article by: WILLIAM ANDREWS Updated: April 26, 2015 - 7:03 AM

The country must truly apologize for this and other atrocities to earn global honor.

On Wednesday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will address the U.S. Congress to promote his position that Japan should play a more prominent role in world affairs. Japan has not earned that right. It has never fully come to terms with the atrocities they committed before and during World War II — especially the forced sexual slavery of women euphemistically called “comfort women.”

The estimated number of women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese varies depending on who is doing the counting. Some Japanese say that there were fewer than 20,000 and that they were former prostitutes or willing volunteers. But the evidence supports a much higher number. Today, most historians agree there were as many as 200,000 to 300,000. They were Filipino, Chinese, even Dutch, but the majority were Korean. Some were as young as 13.

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The only “official” apology was the Kono statement issued in 1993 by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono, which quickly came under fire and is still debated to this day. In fact, last summer, the Abe administration set up a committee to look into the research that led Kono to issue his apology, ostensibly to discredit it. The outrage from Korea and China caused Abe to quickly disband the committee.

It’s clear that Abe, the first prime minister born after World War II, is a historical revisionist. On the home page of his website before he was prime minister, he questioned the extent to which the Japanese used coercion toward comfort women. In March 2007, Abe publicly stated that there was no evidence that the Japanese military had kept sex slaves. Abe also led the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform that published the New History Textbook, which whitewashes the criminal actions of Japan during World War II. Schools throughout Japan use the textbook today.

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