Philippine 'comfort women' fear China sea dispute blocks justice from Japan

[beijingwalker]

Philippine 'comfort women' fear China sea dispute blocks justice from Japan
| Wed Jan 6, 2016 4:39am EST

Filipino 'comfort women' survivors hold placards demanding for an apology as well as compensation from Japan for their treatment of women forced to be comfort workers during the war, during a protest in front of the Japanese embassy in Manila August 14, 2015.
REUTERS/ROMEO RANOCO

A group of Philippine "comfort women", forced to work in Japanese military brothels in World War Two, accused their government on Wednesday of not doing enough to help them secure an apology and compensation from Japan.

South Korea and Japan last month reached an agreement to resolve the issue as Tokyo made an apology and promised about one billion yen ($8.43 million) for a fund to help survivors, though many South Koreans were angry a deal had been made.

In a statement, the Philippine comfort women said they feared the South China Sea dispute with China had distracted Manila from seeking justice from Japan, which occupied the Philippines from 1942-45.

"Each day that they are ignored by their own government, any hope of official acknowledgment and reparations grows dimmer as the shadows of old age and mortality cast a dark pall on them," lawyer Harry Roque said in a statement.

"The victims of horrendous human rights violations should not be used by our government as a leverage in its talk with Japan for support against China over the West Philippine Sea controversy."

About 1,000 Philippine women were forced into prostitution by Japanese troops during World War II. The protesting comfort women belonged to a group called "Malaya Lolas", or freed grandmothers.

There was no immediate comment from the foreign ministry or president's office.

The Philippines and Japan are discussing the transfer of military equipment, like surveillance planes and patrol boats, to help strengthen the Philippines' capability to guard its maritime borders as China rapidly expands in the South China Sea.

Beijing claims almost all the South China Sea, which is believed to have huge deposits of oil and gas, and through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year, and has been building up facilities on the islands it controls.

Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines also have claims. Tension rose this week when China landed a civilian plane on one of three airstrips it had built on man-made islands in the Spratlys.

Japan has also made available about $2 billion for roads and railways to upgrade the Philippines' dilapidated infrastructure and untangle traffic gridlock in the capital.

($1 = 118.6 yen)



(Reporting by Manuel Mogato: Editing by Nick Macfie)

Philippine 'comfort women' fear China sea dispute blocks justice from Japan| Reuters

 

[Zero_wing]

oh please not this again

 

[Place Of Space]

Japan had paid reparation to Filipine 50 years ago. Why the Filipino still complain,@Cossack25A1 its ally?

 

[Zero_wing]

Japan had paid reparation to Filipine 50 years ago. Why the Filipino still complain,@Cossack25A1 its ally?

Really its other stunt by your guys

 

[Keel]

Japan had paid reparation to Filipine 50 years ago. Why the Filipino still complain,@Cossack25A1 its ally?

The following is likely be the cause for the Filippinos' appeals if we can look into the similar event that happened in S Korea not too long ago:

Japan and South Korea agree WW2 'comfort women' deal - BBC News

" The dozens of surviving women have asked for a formal apology specifically addressed to themselves and direct compensation. They say past expressions of regret have been only halfway and insincere.

Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities ...

It had also resisted giving greater compensation, arguing that the dispute was settled in 1965 when diplomatic ties were normalised between the two countries and more than $800m in economic aid and loans was given to South Korea.

A private fund was also set up in 1995 for the victims and lasted for a decade, but money came from donations and not from the Japanese government.''


The government of the Philippines is not doing enough for the poor people

.

 

[Zero_wing]

The following is likely be the cause for the Filippinos' appeals if we can look into the similar event that happened in S Korea not too long ago:

Japan and South Korea agree WW2 'comfort women' deal - BBC News

" The dozens of surviving women have asked for a formal apology specifically addressed to themselves and direct compensation. They say past expressions of regret have been only halfway and insincere.

Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities ...

It had also resisted giving greater compensation, arguing that the dispute was settled in 1965 when diplomatic ties were normalised between the two countries and more than $800m in economic aid and loans was given to South Korea.

A private fund was also set up in 1995 for the victims and lasted for a decade, but money came from donations and not from the Japanese government.''


The government of the Philippines is not doing enough for the poor people

.

We are but we not base our relationship with Japan because of world war 2

 

[beijingwalker]

We are but we not base our relationship with Japan because of world war 2

Then tell those old women to go home and quietly wait for their final days

 

[Keel]

We are but we not base our relationship with Japan because of world war 2

Then do the right thing fight for the "comfort women's" protests!

 

[Zero_wing]

Then do the right thing fight for the "comfort women's" protests!

sure we are but we not going to be militant like china does it

 

[Keel]

sure we are but we not going to be militant like china does it

What does " militant " have to do here with the rightful pursuit of justice for the wartime victims?
China only uses her military with arms on 5 fronts: Defense, Rescue, Exercise, Parade/Ceremonial and Peace Corp

"sure we are" - what? what has the Filippino govt done for your "comfort women"?

.

 

[nang2]

sure we are but we not going to be militant like china does it

why don't you just say you have no intention to protect and honor your women, even with guns if you have to?

 

[Zero_wing]

What does " militant " have to do here with the rightful pursuit of justice for the wartime victims?
China only uses her military with arms on 5 fronts: Defense, Rescue, Exercise, Parade/Ceremonial and Peace Corp

"sure we are" - what? what has the Filippino govt done for your "comfort women"?

.

Well its more likely your version of hate begones hate we pursue this matter with diplomacy

why don't you just say you have no intention to protect and honor your women, even with guns if you have to?

So you want us to hate Japanese the current generation i mean like you did i stutter i said we not be militant about it we pursue justice still but we not be militant our current concern is chinese aggression not the past but i does not mean we not abandon our pursuit of justice.

 

[nang2]

Well its more likely your version of hate begones hate we pursue this matter with diplomacy



So you want us to hate Japanese the current generation i mean like you did i stutter i said we not be militant about it we pursue justice still but we not be militant our current concern is chinese aggression not the past but i does not mean we not abandon our pursuit of justice.

You don't have to hate someone while demanding apology from him. You hate the atrocity committed, not the person.

 

[Zero_wing]

You don't have to hate someone while demanding apology from him. You hate the atrocity committed, not the person.

we are but we will not follow china led of militancy we pursue these issue on diplomatic channels

why don't you just say you have no intention to protect and honor your women, even with guns if you have to?

So you want us to hate Japanese the current generation i mean like you did i stutter i said we not be militant about it we pursue justice still but we not be militant our current concern is chinese aggression not the past but i does not mean we not abandon our pursuit of justice.

 

[Keel]

Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities
By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
BBC News

• 3 August 2015
• 
  
• Lee Ok Seon: "I was forced to have sex with many men each day"

Seventy years after the end of World War Two, the voices of revisionism in Japan are growing stronger and moving into the mainstream, particularly on the issue of comfort women, who were women forced to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during the war.

One of the most eloquent voices of revisionism is Toshio Tamogami.

Mr Tamogami is well-educated, knowledgeable and, when I meet him, exquisitely polite. The former chief of staff of Japan's air force believes in a version of Japanese history that is deeply at odds with much of the rest of the world.

But it is increasingly popular among young Japanese, tired of being told they must keep apologising to China and Korea.

Last year Mr Tamogami ran for governor of Tokyo. He came fourth, with 600,000 votes. Most strikingly, among young voters aged 20 to 30 he got nearly a quarter of the votes cast.

"As a defeated nation we only teach the history forced on us by the victors," he says. "To be an independent nation again we must move away from the history imposed on us. We should take back our true history that we can be proud of."

In this "true" history of the 20th Century that Mr Tamogami talks of, Japan was not the aggressor, but the liberator. Japanese soldiers fought valiantly to expel the hated white imperialists who had subjugated Asian peoples for 200 years.

It is a proud history, where Japan, alone in Asia, was capable of taking on and defeating the European oppressors. It is also a version of history that has no room for the Japanese committing atrocities against fellow Asians.

Mr Tamogami believes that Japan did not invade the Korean Peninsula, but rather "invested in Korea and also in Taiwan and Manchuria".

I ask him about the invasion of China in 1937 and the massacre of civilians in the capital Nanjing. Surely that was naked aggression?

"I can declare that there was no Nanjing Massacre," he says, claiming there were "no eyewitnesses" of Japanese soldiers slaughtering Chinese civilians.'

Former chief of Japan's air forces, Toshio Tamogami, says that stories of atrocities such as the Nanjing massacre in the 1930s are "lies and fabrication"
You can click this BBC link to view the video



It is when I ask him about the issue of Korean comfort women that Mr Tamogami's denials are most indignant.

He declares it "another fabrication", saying: "If this is true, how many soldiers had to be mobilised to forcibly drag those women away? And those Korean men were just watching their women taken away by force? Were Korean men all cowards?"

Although they may not say it as loudly and as bluntly as Mr Tamogami, this is a version of history that is widely believed by many of Japan's nationalists.

Earlier this year at a joint session of the US Congress in Washington DC, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed deep sorrow for the suffering caused by Japan during WW2.

Mr Abe does not deny there were Korean women serving as comfort women near the frontlines in China and South East Asia.

But he has repeatedly said there is no evidence these women were coerced or that the Japanese military was involved in their recruitment and confinement. The implication is the women were prostitutes.

This is a very murky area. Girls from poor families have been sold in to prostitution in Japan, Korea and China for centuries, and the practice was certainly still going on in the 1930s and 1940s.

But that does not absolve the Japanese military from responsibility.

'We were kidnapped'

In a quiet valley an hour's drive from Seoul there is a small care home called the House of Sharing. This is where some of the last surviving comfort women are cared for in their old age. There are only ten left here now.

Lee Ok Seon is a tiny 88-year-old with thick white curly hair and badly-fitting false teeth. She chuckles as I try to cajole her to speak to me in Chinese.

Ms Lee spent 65 years in China, and only returned to South Korea 15 years ago.

She was born in the port city of Busan on the southern tip of modern day South Korea. Her family was poor and she was sent out to work at the age of 14.

"I had to start work as a housekeeper for another family at a young age. It was at that time I was out on the street one day… that's how I got kidnapped," she says.

She said two men grabbed her and put her on a train. "By the time we arrived I realised we had crossed the border into China. I was sent to a place where there were already several comfort women.

"I wonder why they called us comfort women. We didn't go by our own accord, we were kidnapped. I was forced to have sex with many men each day."

Image captionA monument to comfort women was erected outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2011


Ms Lee spent three years in the brothel close to a Japanese military camp in Manchuria. I ask her why she didn't try to escape.

"Of course I tried to escape several times!" she says. "Each time I was taken back and I was beaten over and over.

The military police would ask me 'Why are you trying to escape?' I would tell them because I am cold and have no food. They would hit me again saying I talked too much."

She says that she lost part of her hearing and some of her teeth from those assaults.

Revisionists like Mr Tamogami say women like Lee Ok Seon have been coached to embellish their stories; that they are tools of a South Korean government that is intent on humiliating Japan and squeezing it for more money

It is certainly true that the comfort women issue is used by the South Korean government for its own political ends. But there is plenty of other evidence that the Japanese military organised the comfort women system, not least from the men who served in the Japanese imperial army in China.

'Ridiculous to deny'

Masayoshi Matsumoto is now 93 and lives with his daughter on the edge of Tokyo. He has a warm open face and the piercing eyes of a much younger man.

Former Japanese soldier Masayoshi Matsumoto: "I call myself a war criminal"
You can click this BBC link to view the video

As a 20-year-old he served as a medical orderly in northwest China. "There were six comfort women for our unit," he tells me. "Once a month I would check them for sexually transmitted diseases.

"The Korean women were mainly for the officers," he says. "So the ordinary soldiers attacked local villages screaming, 'Are there any good girls here?' Those soldiers robbed, raped, or killed those who did not listen to them."

Those who were captured were taken to Mr Matsumoto's unit to serve as comfort women.

After the war Mr Matsumoto became a priest to try and atone for his sins. For decades he said nothing of what he'd seen.

But then as the voices of denial grew stronger he was filled with righteous anger, and decided to speak out.

"It's ridiculous... Mr Abe speaks as if this is something he witnessed, but he didn't. I did," says Mr Matsumoto.

"Someone told me this, 'One who fails to look back and perceive the past will repeat their wrongdoing'. But Mr Abe thinks we should erase anything bad Japan had done in the past and pretend nothing happened. That is why I cannot forgive him," he adds.

Mr Matsumoto sits back in his chair and chuckles.

"One day the right-wingers will come and get me for saying such things," he says, drawing a finger across his throat.

That seems unlikely, but Mr Matsumoto and all the other survivors are now in their late 80s or 90s.

Soon they will all be gone - while the voices of denial grow louder and stronger.



Japan revisionists deny WW2 sex slave atrocities - BBC News

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