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2014 June 18 - 24 TOP3 [HISTORY]

Japan’s Archbishop speaks about European bishop who protected Chinese women from Japanese military sex slavery

The metropolitan archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Osaka on June 21 at a Japanese Communist Party-hosted gathering talked about a European bishop who stood up for Chinese women against the Japanese military carting them off to sex slavery stations.

The gathering was held in Osaka City by the JCP Osaka Prefectural Committee with 250 people participating.

As speakers, the gathering invited JCP Lower House member Kasai Akira, Archbishop of Osaka Leo Ikenaga Jun, and a lawyer working for Chinese victims of the so-called “comfort women” system in their lawsuit against the Japanese government.

The archbishop read out a letter referring to the historical event in which Japanese troops in China killed a Dutch bishop who struggled against the seizure of Chinese women by the Japanese military.

The letter was sent by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan to a ceremony commemorating the bishop’s death held in the Netherlands in 2012.

The letter reported that the event took place in 1937 when 5,000 Chinese women took shelter in a local convent from the Japanese Army’s brutal acts. The Japanese troops invaded the convent and ordered the priests and nuns to turn over 200 young Chinese girls to them as comfort women. As Bishop Frans Schraven, who supervised the convent, refused the order, he and his eight colleagues were burnt to death by the Japanese military.

Reverend Ikenaga said that no one has the authority to sexually abuse innocent women in an occupied nation.

JCP lawmaker Kasai in his speech said that as the ex-comfort women are getting older, it is necessary for the Japanese government to face historical facts, accept the past atrocities faithfully and sincerely, and work hard for an early settlement of the issue, including compensation to the victims.