South Korea's Moon Renegs on Japan's 2015 Comfort Women Settlment

South Korea's new President Moon Jae-in recently stated in an interview that he wants the reject the 2015 Settlement Agreement made by his predecessor and the government of Japan. In the Agreement, Japanese PM Shinzo Abe formally apologized for Japan's wartime mistreatment of Korean women who were forced to work in Imperial Japanese Army Brothels during WWII. As part of that agreement, Japan has paid 1 Billion Japanese Yen (Equivalent to 9 million USD) in compensation to the few aging survivors and their families. As part of that agreement, the government of South Korea had declared the matter settled and agreed to end once and for all calls for any further apologies from Japan. So what happened? Japan has met its part of the deal disbursing the agreed funds into a South Korean fund and the PM has expressed his apologies and remorse for the suffering of these women. But then South Korea impeached their former President Park Geun-hye over corruption and now the new president feels the agreement made under the former president is not enough. This of course opens a whole new can of worms and both countries have been down this road before. The past cannot be undone but Japan has taken responsibility and settled the issue with South Korea. New demands for greater compensation and more apologies may impact bilateral relations. On the course of greater instability by the DPRK, South Korea will need Japan as an ally. No dollar amount cannot erase the crimes of the past. From our perspective, the dollar amount in the 2015 settlement does not adequately compensate for the scale of the crime. But that's what South Korea Agreed to. When you consider how few elderly Comfort Women are still alive, it is not within reason. That being said, call for new apologies will serve no purpose. We hope Moon will find a way to back down from his own campaign rhetoric and either agree to the terms of the 2015 settlement or find a better solution to a problem he chose to champion.

Japan & South Korea Reach Historic Deal

Seen here in the above photo is South Korea's Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se shaking hands with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida in Seoul this week as the two countries reach an historic agreement to resolve decades of animosity and distrust over the treatment of Korean "Comfort Women" during the war who were forced to work in brothels as sex slaves. The break in the decades long impasse represents a new willingness on the part of the Abe Government to compromise in order to settle these longstanding differences. PM Abe is said to have “expressed anew his most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women.” If that's not a sincere apology, I don't know what is. What this deal entails is one billion Japanese Yen that will go to help what few surviving Korean victims who would now be in their late 80's and 90's. For Japan's part, PM Abe called South Korean President Park Geun-hye and reiterated his apology. He said Tokyo would implement the deal and called the issue settled irreversibly. Park said she hoped the two countries will build mutual trust and open a new era in ties based on the agreement. The final caveat of this deal was an agreement to stop future demands for Tokyo to apologize as they have been doing for generations. Both nations are staunch U.S. Allies. We wish both countries a new peaceful era of mutual trust and friendship as they will need it as they both live under the threats of a nuclear armed North Korea and an ever encroaching Chinese Navy who lately seems to be on everyone's grievance list.

Japan's PM No More Apoligies Stance

Over the course of our lifetime, we have seen one Japanese PM after another make countless apologies for Japan's wartime atrocities and human rights abuses. While critics from across Asia and elsewhere feel Japan has never truly owned up to it's wartime past, we are inclined to disagree and so does Japan's current PM Shinzo Abe. In a recent speech the PM addressed this issue by expressing his profound grief and remorse for the countless millions killed in WWII and deep regret for his country's actions but noted that Japan can not keep apologizing and he has a point. 

In his speech marking the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, The Japanese PM said in the following words as both reported on CNN and Japan Today: "Japan has repeatedly expressed the feelings of deep remorse and heartfelt apology for its actions during the war," Abe said, adding the country "engraved in our hearts" the suffering of Japan's Asian neighbors through its actions, including China, South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines. Mr. Abe went further to note that postwar generations now exceed 80% of Japan's population. "We must not let our children, grandchildren, and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize," Abe said at his official residence in Tokyo."Still, even so, we Japanese, across generations, must squarely face the history of the past. We have the responsibility to inherit the past, in all humbleness, and pass it on to the future."

It should be noted  that previous Japanese prime ministers have personally apologized for Japan's actions in the war, including for using Korean women as "comfort women," or sex slaves, for the Japanese military.Abe hinted at this, saying Japan needed to remember the "women behind the battlefields whose honor and dignity were severely injured." He said Japan will help make this century one in which "women's human rights are not infringed upon." While there are people will say he didn't go far enough, this issue complete with an acknowledgement of this sensitive subject has been both acknowledged and apologized for. Yet, for some people this will never be enough. People will hold onto grudges while others will have to make the choice to judge Japan for it's past or accept the reality that the Japan of today bears no resemblance to the Japan of yesterday. While many people protest Mr. Abe's slow military buildup and calls for the scraping of Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, such fears of a return to feudalistic militarist attitudes and actions of 75 years ago are over handed. Even the Heisei Emperor has chimed in with fears of Japan's current rise based on fears of another war started by Japan. While we agree that Japan should own up to it's past and should do something about it in it's history textbooks, and appreciate the recent apologies by individual companies (as they should) such as Mitsubishi for using prisoners of war for slave labor, the calls for never ending apologies should stop. People of that era are almost gone and there's no point in making their descendents feel ashamed for being Japanese. No one blames the Germany of today for the Germany of Hitler and his Nazi party and neither should people continue to demand apologies from Japan who has apologized repeatedly over our lifetime. You don't have to agree but that's just our opinion and we're sticking to it.

But he said Japan took the wrong course in going to war and that, across generations, Japanese must squarely face their country’s past.
“We have engraved in our hearts the histories of suffering of the people in Asia as our neighbors: those in Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, and Taiwan, the Republic of Korea and China, among others,” he said.
- See more at: http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/abe-japan-must-face-history-but-future-generations-should-not-have-to-keep-apologizing#sthash.MIB0wbGr.dpuf

But he said Japan took the wrong course in going to war and that, across generations, Japanese must squarely face their country’s past.
“We have engraved in our hearts the histories of suffering of the people in Asia as our neighbors: those in Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, and Taiwan, the Republic of Korea and China, among others,” he said.
- See more at: http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/abe-japan-must-face-history-but-future-generations-should-not-have-to-keep-apologizing#sthash.MIB0wbGr.dpuf

Revisionist History or Continued Controversy?

There has been a lot of talk recently about "Comfort Women" who suffered at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army during WWII. This has long been a subject of controversy and debate by those of us who were not around during the 1930's-1940's. Most recently from the right wing Mayor of Osaka who says these women were not sex slaves. He went on to further compare the US Occupation period and US Involvement in Viet Nam as a comparison. While there is little written about what Americans were doing in during the Occupation of Post War Japan, it's doubtful our country abducted women to be forced to work as sex slaves which is what Wartime Imperial Japan has long been accused of. As the son of a Viet Nam veteran I can say yes our troops visited brothels there but none of them run by our own government so to Mr. Hashimoto we say his comparison to our soldiers in Viet Nam to Korean sex slaves is crazy. Now please understand, we are not here to re-fight WWII, nor are we here to make excuses. It is generally believed here in the west that these war time human rights violations did occur. A friend of ours really got upset with us saying these old women are just lying. Anyone who has taken a course in statistics will tell you that if you find a group comprised of test subjects from different countries all collectively saying the same thing, chances are as in this case some 80,000 women are not lying. The truth is out there. Of course the counter argument is how come these so called victims did not speak out? Where's the proof? I say talk to any German who witnessed the raping of Berliners after the Soviets invaded. The shame of rape is unspeakable for those who endured it much less survived it. So much so that many women who have survived rape often commit suicide. It is possible In Asia, women are even less likely to speak publicly of this shame leaving only the loud taunts of nay-sayers in the wake of their silence. To us in the west it is as outrageous as Holocaust Denial. While we at American Mishima are very Pro-Japanese, we can not and will not give carte blanche nor parley war crimes from any country including our own. We understand that in Japan, such events be it the truth or otherwise are not part of their historical record taught to younger generations. So much of what happened during the war both good and bad are as if they never happened. It surprises us every year when NHK will send reporters to Hiroshima to interview High School Students about the atomic bomb. Most were completely unaware that where they stood people were once vaporized. The idea is so horrifying and incredible they do not believe it. So in one sense, those of us born after 1950 should expect opinions based on the information made available to them. But this is not the sole domain of Japan nor uniquely a Japanese problem. We find similar revisionist or historical omissions of what took place during those years happened here. Unless you read books written by Japanese-Americans, you won't find much about how they were stripped of everything they owned and forced to board trains to concentration camps. Oh hell no! Sounds like Nazi Germany right? But yes it happened here. Albeit, Manzanar was no Auschwitz, it was still a shameful event that should not have happened. So going back to Comfort Women, so few are still alive. Japan has made monetary amends and set up a fund of ~¥79,643,790,000 which amounts to around $1 Billion Dollars. Of course, no amount of cash can erase the shame or painful memories. And at this age there are likely fewer than 5000 of these women left alive hence their silence is easily drowned out by those who vehemently claim this never happened or they did this willingly. It is possible that "Comfort Women" from Japan may have done this as some means of survival or national duty. Statistics say we can not rule that out. Japan like every other country had it's red light districts so that's entirely possible that some Japanese women may have done this willingly. The problem is we have never seen or heard from any Japanese woman who may have volunteered and by now likely never will. Napoleon Bonaparte once said that History is a set of lies men have agreed upon. And so it may. It's not our responsibility to convince Mr. Hashimoto. He's entitled to his own opinion whether we agree with him or not. For the most part we do not and in others we feel his English has mistranslated or confused some things. We are pleased that Mr. Abe's Government does not share his views and wishes he would quietly keep them to himself. It's not in Japan's interests to debate revisionist history. Comfort Women as terrible as the accounts of Korean and Chinese survivors claim was only a facet of an ugly period run by people who do not represent Japan today. The Japanese people of today could not have done such a thing nor any of the other war time atrocities particularly those in Nanking. That generation had grown up under military dictatorship and was not ready to be the Japanese we know today. Regardless of that little known fact here in the west, there's just no excuse for war crimes and other human rights violations. As much as we like to defend Japan, such actions are indefensible. It's often said war brings out the worst in us. While they do preach in Japan that war is bad, they never really explain in depth to the younger post war generations why it is such or what their country once did during that war. And perhaps they are not ready to. It's not for us Americans to say. Time heals most wounds or so we're told. Japan has come a long way. While the path never truly ends, we hope that a future generation will get Japan there.