Sex slaves, not ‘comfort women,’ Mr. Hashimoto

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Sex slaves, not ‘comfort women,’ Mr. Hashimoto

My father went to China during World War II. He told me about the atrocities of the Japanese Imperial Army.

What Toru Hashimoto said about the so-called “comfort women” is a total nonsense. He doesn’t understand the war. The Japanese Imperial Army, that was scattered all over China, was constantly moving to surround the enemy on the front lines.

Different from the German mechanized division, however, when the Japanese military was moving it was done through human labor. The Japanese Army had to walk 25 miles per day on average and all the military supplies had to be transported also. When a Japanese soldier could not keep up with their military unit, he was killed by Chinese citizens because Japanese soldiers were an aggressor.

Despite Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto’s claim that soldiers needed comfort during the war, the victims cannot be accurately described so euphemistically as “Jyugun-Ianfu” (“comfort women”) since those women were rape victims at the forefront of battlefields.

The war was tremendously disastrous. There Japanese Army invaded the village where there were many girls. After a soldier found an attractive girl in a Chinese village, they abducted the girl and brought her to their units to rape. The mother of the village girl trailed the Japanese Imperial Army with endless tears flowing from her eyes. My father told me that it was a heartwrenching sight. I’d like to apologize on behalf of Japan.

The far-right politicians in Japan, including Hashimoto, are trying to repeat the bloody Japanese imperial past at the risk of world peace. We must stop him.

*Yoshio Usui Japanese inventor in Tokyo
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