Too "Uncomfortable" to Say Sorry

This time the victims don't want money.  They want an apology and it is not forthcoming. 

Japan, for all its picture postcard beauty and colorful traditions, often has the most colorless, boring and sometimes corrupt politicians.  That image was burnished by Japan's recently retired prime minister, the charismatic baby boomer Junichiro Koizumi who was given to breaking into Elvis songs when he felt happy. The flamboyant and confident Koizumi's worst legacy may have been supporting George Bush's immoral Iraq war in defiance of the fervent opposition from a majority of Japanese citizens. But he was popular at home for his domestic reforms. When Koizumi handed over power to his seemingly capable successor Shinzo Abe six months ago, it appeared that Japan would remain on a forward looking path on domestic and international affairs.  Mr. Abe started promisingly enough - saying the right things at home and abroad. He asserted that he would choose policies that would make the Japanese proud of their "beautiful country." Then he stepped into the quagmire of Japanese imperial history and stubborn pride - a trap that awaits every elected leader of Japan. (Even his suave predecessor Koizumi had ruffled Chinese and Korean feathers by refusing to suspend visits to the Yasukuni shrine which honors the Japanese war dead, some of whom were war criminals in the eyes of its neighbors).

Fierce national pride, the main impetus behind Japanese imperialism, atrocities and eventual downfall is a quality that has not quite vanished even after the physical and psychological humiliation of WWII and a conscious national decision to pursue the path of peace and pacifism.  While Japan wants to move forward and be a good neighbor to other Asian countries, some of the victims of Japanese war time atrocities have not forgotten their physical and mental anguish.  Among them were hundreds of thousands of women from Korea, the Philippines, China, Taiwan, Indonesia and Burma who had been kidnapped and imprisoned during WWII by the Japanese military to provide sexual services to its soldiers.  Some of the women were as young as fourteen and fifteen at the time.  Euphemistically called the "Comfort Women," they were herded into brothels and condemned to sexual servitude, an experience that left them battered physically and emotionally. After years of living in shame, in the 1990s, some of the women at an advanced age, felt bold enough to speak out about the humiliation of the sexual slavery they had suffered at the hands of the Japanese imperial army.  The Japanese government first denied their claim, destroyed war time records and even tried to bribe them through private donors in order to shut them up.  But more and more women came forward and it is no longer a matter of dispute that the "Comfort Women" too were prisoners of war.  Most of all what they want is an acknowledgement of and an apology for their plight. 

Prime Minister Abe has been severely tarnished as a statesman by questioning the claims of the women (whether they were coerced) and quibbling over the number of enslaved women (whether there really were 200,000 "Comfort Women"). With breath taking insensitivity, Abe has suggested that the women's claims have no veracity even when first hand evidence has mounted in the last decade. Mr. Abe has begun to sound like a man who stubbornly refuses to acknowledge past mistakes to preserve national pride while adding fresh insults to the already long list of injuries to the victims. This is not a patriotic cause of sticking up for false national pride, nor a formal diplomatic apology to world leaders and other wronged nations.  These are just unwitting women, mostly poor, who were caught in the cross fires of a great war among world powers some sixty years ago. To call them liars and deny their suffering hardly befits the leader of a powerful, prosperous and "beautiful" nation. How hard is it to say sorry, Mr. Abe?  It could be as easy as taking a deep bow and saying, "Sumimasen."   

Note: Once again, Ellen Goodman and I agree.   

Comments

[Sujatha]

I think the case of 'comfort women' is even more horrific than that of the lebensborn, that you profiled earlier- they should have gone for the jugular- monetary reparations, apart from the apology.As it is, these ladies would be lucky if they even got the apology in their lifetimes.

[confused]

Good point!

[Sujatha]

BBC is reporting that Abe has apologised in the Japanese parliament. I think this comes a day late and a dime short, though some of Abe's critics might be mollified by this.