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."
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