A historian said yesterday that newly discovered documents from post-World War II trials of Japanese war criminals offered fresh proof that the military had directly forced Asian women into sexual slavery.
The findings will likely cause a stir after conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last month sparked controversy by saying there was no proof that the imperial army directly coerced "comfort women."
Hirofumi Hayashi, a professor of history at Kanto Gakuin University, said he found seven items while combing through the massive storehouse of documents submitted during the 1946 to 1948 Tokyo Trials of war criminals.
One document, written by Dutch prosecutors and dated March 13, 1946, quoted a Japanese civilian employee of the Japanese army, who said an officer made local women in occupied Borneo stand naked and slapped them in the face.
"We detained them under orders of the chief security officer to find excuses to put them into brothels," the Japanese employee was quoted as saying, according to Hayashi.
Another document also included testimony by a Japanese lieutenant, who said the army forced women into sexual slavery on Indonesia's Moa island, Hayashi said.
"The document shows that he testified that the army forced local girls into brothels," the historian said.
"It says that it was in retaliation for local villagers who attacked the Japanese force," he said. "The army killed 40 villagers and put six of their daughters into brothels."
"It says one of the six agreed to the demands that she work at a brothel, while five others refused" but were forced, he said.
Historians believe up to 200,000 women served in brothels for Japanese troops across Asia by the end of the war.
Abe caused a stir last month when he said that no documents showed Japan "directly" enslaved women, such as by kidnapping them.
However, Abe has repeatedly said that Japan was responsible in a broader sense and that he stood behind a landmark 1993 apology to former comfort women.
Conservatives argue that evidence of direct involvement comes from the victims' side.
But Hayashi's documents have taken added significance as they were officially submitted during the Tokyo Trials, whose validity Japan accepted in the San Francisco treaty under which it regained sovereignty from US occupation in 1952.
Hayashi, the chief researcher of the private Center for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility, is planning to present his documents to the public today. He will hold a press conference with fellow historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi, who heads the Tokyo-based institute.
Yoshimi was the one who discovered the documents that showed the Japanese military set up "comfort stations" to cut down on soldiers raping local women in occupied China.
His revelations led to Japan's 1993 statement that voiced "sincere apologies and remorse."
The National Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology yesterday showcased its locally developed variants of the Vision 60 robotic patrol dog, which it plans to deploy on the nation’s outlying territories in the South China Sea. The variants were produced under the Joint Lab project — created by the institute and domestic companies — and assembled with domestically produced motors, lenses and artificial intelligence (AI) systems alongside licensed tech from the US, Missile and Rocket Systems Research Division deputy director Jen Kuo-kang (任國光) told the media event at a military base in Taipei’s Dazhi (大直) area. Taiwan has built up its strengths
RIGHT DIRECTION: Taiwan’s efforts to prevent forced labor include a proposal to ‘fully prohibit’ employers from withholding workers’ documents, an official said Taiwan is to establish a mechanism to restrict imports of goods linked to forced labor, the Executive Yuan said yesterday, after the US proposed imposing additional tariffs on Taiwanese goods over labor concerns. “The Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Economic Affairs are to establish an interministerial review procedure,” Executive Yuan spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “The government is to use the Foreign Trade Act [貿易法] as the legal basis to restrict imports of goods produced with forced labor” and bring its supply chain governance more in line with international standards on human rights, resilience
NOT IMMEDIATE: Taiwan has a chance to appeal the proposed 10 percent tariff before it starts, while other countries face a 12.5 percent tariff from the trade office Taiwan is among 60 economies determined by the US to have failed to impose or enforce a ban on the importation of goods produced with forced labor, according to a notice released on Tuesday by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), which proposed imposing an additional 10 percent or more tariff on them. The USTR in a statement said that following an investigation, it had determined under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 that the failure of the 60 economies to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor is
TIT-FOR-TAT: The US allegedly revoked the visa of a Chinese national working at Xinhua News Agency in the US in response to Beijing’s expulsion of Vivian Wang The Presidential Office yesterday condemned China for expelling a New York Times correspondent from Beijing following the newspaper’s interview with President William Lai (賴清德), saying the move highlighted Beijing’s suppression of press freedom and its threat to international news media. Taiwan has noted a series of recent incidents in which Beijing used similar tactics to “threaten and pressure international media outlets and journalists,” Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said in a statement. “This concerns not only press freedom and freedom of expression, but also the safety of journalists, and Taiwan and relevant partners are paying close attention to the situation,” she
RSS