“The Revisionist Movement Will Strain the U.S.-Japan Alliance”

This week seems to be critical to the future of the U.S. House of Representatives’ sex slave bill that condemns the forced recruitment of so-called “comfort women” by the Japanese military. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who will visit the U.S. on April 26, used the word “apology” several times in the recent few days. Until last month, he had strongly argued that there is no evidence of forcing women into sex slavery. Now he seems to have ended this argument before his visit with a drastic change in his attitude. An official report written by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) was distributed to the U.S. representatives who will discuss the bill seriously after Abe’s visit. The 23-page report titled “The Comfort Women System” clearly proved that during World War II, the Japanese military and government were directly involved in recruiting sex slaves while holding an objective and neutral view. This reporter sat down with Dr. Larry Niksch of the CRS who wrote the report and listened to what the report means and what made him write it.

-Why did the U.S. Congress decide to write a report on the sex slavery situation?

“The CRS decided to write it because Congress showed great attention. Since the last congressional session, the House has shown greater interest in issues related to the Japanese historic past. In 2005, Chairman Henry Hyde of the House International Relations Committee sent a clear message to the historical revisionists in Japan who tried to undermine the ruling of the Tokyo war crimes tribunal by proposing a resolution marking the 60th anniversary of the end of the Pacific War. On January 31 this year, already 70 lawmakers – according to the Korean community, it is 83 - signed the bill proposed by Congressman Michael Honda. It is a great number.”

In the report, Dr. Niksch citied many sources of materials including the testimony of about 20 former Korean sex slaves who were found in Burma by the U.S. military and documents of the Japanese military reported to the U.S. government by Dr. Underwood. The most outstanding source was the official documents of the Dutch government.

The documents of the Dutch war tribunal written in 1947 and 1948 are stored in the Dutch National Archives and contain testimony that the Japanese military forced Dutch women into the brothels right after it was stationed in Indonesia in 1942 and also of the inquiry of Japanese officers. It was found that several Japanese officers were convicted at that time.

- Wouldn’t the Japanese government leaders probably know about the existence of the evidence?

“I didn’t find the Dutch documents but the Japanese scholars did. I am not sure whether the Abe cabinet and the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) know of their existence. I myself want to ask them. The fundamental problem is the difference between the view of the Miyazawa government that released the 1993 Kono statement and the Abe government. The former accepted the trustworthy evidence and the testimony of victims, but the latter made clear that it wouldn’t recognize it as ‘evidence.’”

-Won’t the report be enough to show the evidence of the Japanese military intervention and the forced sex slavery?

“The Abe government and the congressional leaders do not deny the intervention of the Japanese government and military. The point that they want to make is that ‘the recruitment was not carried out by the military, and it did not recruit women by force.’ However, when the testimony of many women from various countries is accepted as evidence, their argument becomes groundless. More important is that with a few exceptions, a majority of the women weren’t able to leave their brothels even though they wanted to. There is a document that shows a U.S. military official’s interview with Korean women who escaped the brothels and came over to China by going through the war front between China and Japan. If they were able to leave, they would have gone back to Korea instead of choosing a risky escape by crossing the war front.”

- Is the U.S. Congress interested in this issue because of the universal value of human rights?

“Former Chairman Hyde is a veteran who fought in the Philippines in World War II and Current Chairman Tom Lantos of the Foreign Affairs Committee is a survivor of the Holocaust. The historical revisionist movement in Japan could have a negative impact on the U.S.-Japan alliance in the long term. If their influence grows and they think that they have no responsibility for what happened in the war, who does bear the burden of the war? The U.S. becomes guilty. This is what the revisionists argue. Such an attitude could threaten the U.S.-Japan alliance.”

- Japan may have been concerned about the report while you were writing it. Wasn’t there any lobbying?

“There were a few contacts. They tried to explain this issue to their advantage by sending the full statement of Prime Minister Abe and documents containing the Japanese arguments. The same papers were given to the Foreign Affairs Committee and lawmakers. I am confident that I was pressed neither by Korea nor by Japan. Japan respected my work and might have been aware that their pressure wouldn’t work.”

- Will the bill pass?

“I believe that it will pass when it is sent to the committee and the floor and put to a vote. It was too late when Congressman Layne Evans’s resolution was submitted to the committee last year, which was the end of September, just before the mid-term elections. But this time when the bill is passed in my committee in the first half of this year, it is likely go to the floor. Whether it will be put to a vote depends on the leadership including Chairman Lantos and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.”

sechepa@donga.com