Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Comfort women: Apologies and compensation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women#Apologies_and_compensation

Apologies and compensation

Rangoon, Burma. August 8, 1945. A young ethnic Chinese woman who was in one of the Imperial Japanese Army's "comfort battalions" is interviewed by an Allied officer.
 
In 1965, the Japanese government awarded $364 million to the Korean government for all war damages, including the injury done to comfort women.[59] In 1994, the Japanese government set up the Asian Women's Fund to distribute additional compensation to South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, the Netherlands, and Indonesia.[60] Each survivor was provided with a signed apology from the then prime minister Tomiichi Murayama, stating "As Prime Minister of Japan, I thus extend anew my 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."[61] The fund was dissolved on March 31, 2007

Three Korean women filed suit in Japan in December, 1991, around the time of the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, demanding compensation for forced prostitution. They introduced documents found by history Professor Yoshiaki Yoshida that had been stored at the Japanese Defense Agency since their return to Japan by United States troops in 1958.[63] Subsequently, on January 14, 1992, Japanese Chief Government Spokesman Koichi Kato issued an official apology saying "We cannot deny that the former Japanese army played a role" in abducting and detaining the "comfort girls, " and "We would like to express our apologies and contrition".[63][64][65] Three days later on January 17, 1992 at a dinner given by South Korean President Roh Tae Woo, the Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa told his host: " We Japanese should first and foremost recall the truth of that tragic period when Japanese actions inflicted suffering and sorrow upon your people. We should never forget our feelings of remorse over this. As Prime Minister of Japan, I would like to declare anew my remorse at these deeds and tender my apology to the people of the Republic of Korea." and apologized again the following day in a speech before South Korea's National Assembly.[66][67] On April 28, 1998, the Japanese court ruled that the Government must compensate the women and awarded them US$2,300 ($3,240 in 2013) each.

In 2007 the surviving sex slaves wanted an apology from the Japanese government. Shinzō Abe, the prime minister at the time, stated on March 1, 2007, that there was no evidence that the Japanese government had kept sex slaves, even though the Japanese government had already admitted the use of brothels in 1993. On March 27 the Japanese parliament issued an official apology.[
 

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