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(回答先: 米CBS、慰安婦問題で日本政府を非難 （人民網） 投稿者 天空橋救国戦線 日時 2007 年 3 月 21 日 20:55:49)
Years After They Were Forced To Be Sex Slaves, These Elderly Women Keep Speaking Out
NEW YORK, March 18, 2007
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/18/sunday/main2581897.shtml?source=search_story
(CBS) As the Japanese army conquered countries like China, the Philippines and Korea they set up brothels. They justified it by saying they kept soldiers from raping local women.
Virginia Villarama was 14.
"Every day there were different Japanese men, sometimes three or four," she told CBS News correspondent Barry Peterson. "I fainted once and didn't even know if someone was still on top of me."
Simeona Neuvoramil was also 14.
"It was painful being raped every night, and in the daytime they made me cook, wash and clean," she recalled.
Some call them sex slaves; the Japanese delicately call them "comfort women." Half a century later, the issue isn't going away.
These controversies over the war usually flare up when the Japanese say or do something that offends the rest of Asia. But this time it is something the American Congress may do that has angered the Japanese.
Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) is a Japanese-American who as a child was interned in U.S. camps during World War II. He held hearings on the issue last month and wants Congress to condemn what the Japanese did to the comfort women.
"Individual politicians, political leaders in Japan have made their contrite apologies, but it's not sufficient because it's not a formal, government apology," he said.
In response, Japan's prime minister denied the women were coerced into the brothels. And then, after a firestorm of criticism, he said maybe some were coerced but not by the military, only by private agents setting up the brothels. Finally he settled on promising a government investigation.
Yet his comments were tame compared to ruling party leader Nariaki Nakayama, who said the women were hired by private contractors and were providing a basic service like anyone who supplies a product.
"I'm sure that in American universities, too, you have food distributors coming in to schools to provide the students with lunches and coffee," Nakayama said. "It's like the universities providing the place for the distributors, and it is up to them to hire the staffs and the materials and set the prices. It is all done by the distributors, right?"
"This is sexist and racist and I couldn't imagine ― I'm going to ask the same question, 'Would he be willing to send his daughter to provide same service?' said Ignatius Ding, who has spent years campaigning in the U.S. for a Japanese apology. "This is ridiculous."
Like others, he traces Japan's refusal to apologize to its samurai past when a mistake was a matter of shame that often led to a samurai's ritual suicide.
"So in today's Japan, an apology for the war time atrocities would bring shame not only on Japan's current leaders, but on ancestors who fought in the war," Ding said. "Whether it's the code of samurai or something else, I think they are absolutely crazy. They (are) rolling the clock back for a whole century. This is not a code of honor, this is a code of shame."
But Nakayama says it's important to consider the time.
"Japan caused atrocities? It was a war," Nakayama said.
He argues that the comfort women were well-compensated.
"They were making 100 times more than the soldiers," he said. "That signifies how much money could be made out of this business."
Jan O'Herne was 19 and is now living in Australia. She is hoping the truth will be told about what happened to her.
"And we want Japan to acknowledge the wartime atrocities and put their history right. The children of Japan should be taught the historical truth of World War Two history about the atrocities," she said.
But Japan's leaders are making sure the opposite is happening. They are cleansing school textbooks of references that suggest the military forced women into prostitution. And as for the infamous 1937 Japanese massacre in Nanking, China, that historians say took more than 300,000 lives, some Japanese textbooks now say maybe it didn't happen at all. Which is why when some comfort women once got an audience with very junior Japanese officials they screamed, "You must not hide this history. Don't you have a conscience?"
Every week, the comfort women who can protest in South Korea outside the Japanese embassy. Their voices are old, now, but they will not be stilled.
Yi Okeson, like others, was taken from Korea to brothels in China.
"I count the years," she sings, "of living in a foreign land, only the spring of my youth grown old."
Virginia Villarama was 14.
"They destroyed our lives," she said. "We have no bright tomorrows because of what they did to us."
Time is on Japan's side. Most estimate that there were about 200,000 comfort women. Only a few hundred are still alive. And they wonder, after they are gone, who will remember their stories.
http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/images/2007/03/18/image2582020g.jpg
Many former comfort women are protesting the Japanese government's failure to apologize to them. (CBS)
Quote
"This is not a code of honor, this is a code of shame."
Ignatius Ding
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