Two South Korean women who say they were forcibly drafted into Japanese military brothels during World War II have canceled a meeting with a Japanese mayor who sparked outrage by calling them a wartime necessity.
Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto and two former “comfort women” were to meet yesterday, but the elderly women reportedly changed their minds over fears of becoming political pawns in a long-running diplomatic dispute that has stoked tensions between Tokyo and Seoul.
An Osaka city spokesman said that “we don’t know the reason for the cancelation.”
However, Japan’s Jiji Press news agency quoted supporters of the women, both in their eighties, as saying that the pair did not want to be part of Hashimoto’s “performance of apology.”
“They are feeling extreme unease about Hashimoto’s comments, and are saying they don’t want to meet him,” they added.
Earlier this month, the mayor said wartime prostitutes served a “necessary” role keeping battle-stressed soldiers in line, setting off a volley of criticism from countries under Japan’s rule in the 1930s and 1940s as well as from the US.
He later pledged to apologize to the women for his comments, while insisting Japan’s soldiers were not unique in brutalizing women.
Sex slavery is a particularly sensitive issue in Korea, a former Japanese colony whose people made up many of the up to 200,000 “comfort women” forcibly drafted into brothels for the Japanese military during World War II.
In the days since his original comments, Hashimoto, the co-leader of the Japan Restoration Party, has continued to fan the flames with new pronouncements, many of which have been on Twitter where he has more than 1 million followers.
Hashimoto said in a comment reported on Tuesday that the South Korean military used women for sex during the Vietnam War, inviting a sharp response from Seoul.
“Japan was bad,” he told a party meeting on Monday, the Asahi Shimbun reported. “It is true that we used women to solve the problem of sex on the battlefield.”
“Having said that, the US, Britain, Germany and France, and even the South Korean military in Vietnam after WWII, they all used women to address the issue,” he added.
Meanwhile, Japan on Thursday accused a South Korean newspaper of “dishonorable” behavior for publishing an editorial that said the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were “divine punishment” for Tokyo’s wartime aggression.
The editorial in the Korean and English versions of the Joongang Ilbo on Monday said the 1945 nuclear bombs dropped by US planes, which together killed more than 200,000 people, were justified, saying: “God often borrows the hand of a human to punish the evil deeds of men.”
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
HOLLYWOOD IN TURMOIL: Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton and Cary Elwes lost properties to the flames, while awards events planned for this week have been delayed Fires burning in and around Los Angeles have claimed the homes of numerous celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton, and led to sweeping disruptions of entertainment events, while at least five people have died. Three awards ceremonies planned for this weekend have been postponed. Next week’s Oscar nominations have been delayed, while tens of thousands of city residents had been displaced and were awaiting word on whether their homes survived the flames — some of them the city’s most famous denizens. More than 1,900 structures had been destroyed and the number was expected to increase. More than 130,000 people
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
Some things might go without saying, but just in case... Belgium’s food agency issued a public health warning as the festive season wrapped up on Tuesday: Do not eat your Christmas tree. The unusual message came after the city of Ghent, an environmentalist stronghold in the country’s East Flanders region, raised eyebrows by posting tips for recycling the conifers on the dinner table. Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town Web site suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried — for use in making flavored butter, for instance. Asked what they thought of the idea, the reply
RSS