Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2014 April 23 - May 6 [POLITICS]

Foreign Ministry also had evidence of forcible recruitment of ‘comfort women’

Japanese Communist Party lawmaker Akamine Seiken on April 23 revealed that the Foreign Ministry had obtained judicial records of Dutch court-martials which prove that the Japanese military forcibly recruited Dutch women as sex slaves during WWII.

The documents serve as a proof refuting Prime Minster Abe’s remark in a Diet meeting (February 7, 2013) that there is no direct evidence for the military’s collecting of women and taking them to the so-called “comfort stations” by force. The Foreign Ministry had received the material before the government issued the 1993 Kono Statement which admits to the fact that the pre-war government was involved in the wartime brothel system.

Akamine at the House of Representatives Cabinet Committee meeting showed an official document of the Foreign Ministry dated July 28, 1992, which states, “(The Foreign Ministry) accepted a judicial report of the Netherland’s military tribunal at Batavia in Indonesia from the National Archives of the Netherlands.”

The court-martials of Class B and C criminals were held in 1948. In the series of the trials, Japanese military personnel were found guilty of forcibly recruiting Dutch women in order to make them work as comfort women.

The Foreign Ministry admitted to the acceptance of the report and added that the information about the documents was thought to be conveyed to the Cabinet special research team on the comfort women issue.

Past related articles
> New evidence of forcible recruiting of comfort women found [April 7, 2014]
> Evidence of ‘comfort women’ coercion exists: Gov’t admits [June 19, 2013]