forwarded from Mine

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.cnn.com/2000/LAW/09/19/rights.japan.women.reut/

Japan stands firm on U.S. suit by 'comfort women'

September 19, 2000 Web posted at: 1:00 PM EDT (1700 GMT)

TOKYO (Reuters) -- A lawsuit filed in the United States by Second World War
sex slaves of the Japanese military drew an expression of "remorse" Tuesday
from Tokyo and a reminder that the government considered the issue closed.

Fifteen Asian women filed a class-action suit against Japan in a U.S.
federal court Monday, seeking compensation and an apology for being forced
to work as sex slaves for Japan's army in the 1930s and 1940s.

The 15 so-called comfort women -- Japan's euphemism for women from occupied
or colonized countries who were forced into sexual slavery -- are elderly
and frail now and deserve an apology for Japan's actions, their lawyers
said. The women come from Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Taiwan.

Ryuichiro Yamazaki, a spokesman for the Japanese Foreign Ministry, declined
to comment on the specific case but said that Japan's stance on such issues
remained unchanged.

"It is our position that this has been solved legally by the San Francisco
Peace Treaty (of 1951, settling claims for war compensation) and other
related treaties and documents," he said.

"FEELING OF APOLOGY AND REMORSE"

"We recognize that the honor and dignity of many women involved have been
hurt by this issue, and we have been using various occasions to express our
feeling of apology and remorse," Yamazaki added.

Until July 1992, the Japanese government denied that its military ran
brothels, and it still denies legal responsibility.

In 1995, however, then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama issued profound
apologies, saying Japan's actions were "entirely inexcusable."

That year Japan set up the Asian Women's Fund, a private group with heavy
Japanese government support, to make cash payments to all surviving wartime
sex slaves.

"The government, in cooperation with the people of Japan, has been doing
its best to cooperate with this foundation as it endeavors to do its work,"
Yamazaki said.

In the U.S. suit, the elderly Asian women say the "Japanese government
built, operated and controlled hundreds of brothels," or so-called comfort
stations, which were staffed with some 200,000 women and girls, who were
beaten, raped and made to live in under miserable conditions.

Inhabiting tiny cubicles and nearly starving, the women were held for up to
eight years and were tortured and beaten on a regular basis, the lawyers
said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

ABANDONMENT, STARVATION, DISEASE

"After the war, those who were in combat zones were abandoned, often in
dense jungles, while their Japanese captors fled; many of those died of
starvation and disease," while others were executed, the lawsuit charges.

"Survivors returned to what were often lifetimes of isolation and societal
rejection, compounded by deeply instilled feelings of guilt and shame ...
and they suffer grievously to this day," the statement said.

It is the first lawsuit filed in the United States against Japan seeking
compensation for the comfort women, and the first U.S. lawsuit against
Japan for what the lawyers described as "World War Two atrocities."

Earlier cases were filed against Japanese companies for their use of slave
labor during the war.

Named in the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of
Columbia, are six women from South Korea, four from China, four from the
Philippines and one from Taiwan. But the suit represents "all women who
were forced into sexual slavery by Japan between 1931 and 1945, as well as
their heirs," according to the statement.

Lawyers representing the women said the suit was filed under U.S. and
international law prohibiting war crimes and crimes against humanity. They
did not say how much compensation they were seeking for the plaintiffs.

Attorney Barry Fisher, who has also been involved in a series of lawsuits
filed on behalf of Holocaust survivors against Switzerland, Germany and
Austria, said it was time for Japan finally to put its past to rest.

"I'm optimistic. ... I think Japan could be encouraged to follow suit and
close the book on the war years rather than let it fester further," Fisher
told Reuters. "After all these years -- while some of these woman are still
alive -- there should be an apology and some kind of restitution."


Louis Proyect
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