A Nasty Trick 'The Main Battleground of The Comfort Women Issue'

A Nasty Trick 'The Main Battleground of The Comfort Women Issue'

Tetsuhide Yamaoka


The Semarang Incident

Suddenly, the film brings in the Semarang Comfort Station incident in which 35 women including some Dutch women were forced to be comfort women. Japanese military officials in charge of the region at the time immediately investigated after learning of the incident, freed the women and ordered the comfort station closed.

Gilbert claimed the case was evidence that coercive recruitment was illegal at that time. But Yoshimi refuted, saying: "In that incident, victims were white women and Japanese military feared being blamed by the allied forces. I have heard no story about freed Asian women. White women and Asian women must have been treated differently."

Yoshimi's claim was merely an assumption. Dezaki, however, engaged in further conjecture and concluded, "The case in Indonesia is very strong evidence. There might be no evidence that Korean women were coercively recruited, but the Japanese military was reckless enough to force white women to be comfort women at the risk of being blamed internationally, so they must have done the same things to Korean women."

Throughout the film, advocates of the sex-slave theory speak in hypotheticals and reach conclusions by inference. They don't have facts.

It is a fact that the Semarang Comfort Station incident was a criminal case brought by Japanese authorities at that time, just as it would be had it occurred today. One might theorize that there were incidents like this on the Korean Peninsula or other places. But this incident provided no evidence that any Korean women were coercively recruited by the military as a matter of official practice.

Totsuka clearly knew this but engaged in the circular argument anyway that "coercive" and the sense of "being deceived" are the same. However, the bottom line is that advocates of the sex-slave theory in the film fail to prove that coercive recruitment by the military ever existed.

Sex Slaves

Those who believe the comfort women were not sex slaves appeared next in the movie. They offered evidence that the "comfort women were well paid and able to save and send money to their families. When their contract came to an end, they were free to go home. They enjoyed shopping. They went to sports events and parties with Japanese soldiers. They were far from sex slaves."

But advocates of the sex-slave theory countered the argument by claiming that, "According to international law today, they were slaves."

Sex-slave advocate Yoshiaki Yoshimi's claim was particularly interesting. He refuted the evidence that the comfort women had time for recreation by using a convoluted reference to American Negro slaves, saying: "I think their daily lives were so hopeless that they couldn't live without such recreation. For example, American Negro slaves gathered and had concerts or dance parties on Saturdays and Sundays. They also went hunting. They were so hopeless that slave owners had to allow them to do so to survive."

He and other sex-slave advocates failed to mention, however, that some Japanese soldiers fell in love with comfort women and married them, and that there were former comfort women who cherished the memory of Japanese soldiers who were their former lovers. The sex-slave advocates in the film instead appear simply to want to disgrace Japanese by all means possible.

Kohki Abe, a member of the faculty of international studies at Meiji Gakuin, then appeared in the film. He claimed that based on international law the comfort women are defined as "sex slaves".

Kohki Abe said, "Slavery is a situation in which someone is utterly under the control of another. Even if the comfort women were able to earn lots of money and go out for pleasure, they were under another's control and had to get permission to do so. Therefore, they were slaves."

If that was true, then today's ordinary salaried workers are all slaves!

If he wanted to make a claim based on international law, the claim should have been either "it is technically possible to define them as slaves according to today's international law," or "all prostitutes throughout history, not only the wartime comfort women serving the Japanese military, would be defined as sex slaves according to international law."

 In the end, The Main Battleground of The Comfort Women Issue failed to deepen the argument on the comfort women because Dezaki did not bring together experts from both sides to discuss the issue and he approached the issue with bias and very shallow knowledge in the first place,

Off the Rails in the Second Half

関連する投稿


慰安婦問題を糾弾する「日韓共同シンポジウム」の衝撃(東京開催)|松木國俊

慰安婦問題を糾弾する「日韓共同シンポジウム」の衝撃(東京開催)|松木國俊

日米韓の慰安婦問題研究者が東京に大集合。日本国の名誉と共に東アジアの安全保障にかかわる極めて重大なテーマ、慰安婦問題の完全解決に至る道筋を多角的に明らかにする!シンポジウムの模様を登壇者の一人である松木國俊氏が完全レポート、一挙大公開。これを読めば慰安婦の真実が全て分かる!


「核爆弾の奴隷たち」北朝鮮驚愕の核兵器開発現場|石井英俊

「核爆弾の奴隷たち」北朝鮮驚愕の核兵器開発現場|石井英俊

「核爆弾の奴隷たち」――アメリカに本部を置く北朝鮮人権委員会が発表した報告書に記された衝撃的な内容。アメリカや韓国では話題になっているが、日本ではなぜか全く知られていない。核開発を進める独裁国家で実施されている「現代の奴隷制度」の実態。


アメリカは強い日本を望んでいるのか? 弱い日本を望んでいるのか?|山岡鉄秀

アメリカは強い日本を望んでいるのか? 弱い日本を望んでいるのか?|山岡鉄秀

副大統領候補に正式に指名されたJ.D.ヴァンスは共和党大会でのスピーチで「同盟国のタダ乗りは許さない」と宣言した。かつてトランプが日本は日米安保条約にタダ乗りしていると声を荒げたことを彷彿とさせる。明らかにトランプもヴァンスも日米安保条約の本質を理解していない。日米安保条約の目的はジョン・フォスター・ダレスが述べたように、戦後占領下における米軍の駐留と特権を日本独立後も永続化させることにあった――。


Does The U.S. want Japan to be strong or weak? |Tetsuhide Yamaoka

Does The U.S. want Japan to be strong or weak? |Tetsuhide Yamaoka

J.D. Vance, the officially nominated vice-presidential candidate, declared in his speech at the Republican convention that he would 'not tolerate free rides from U.S. allies'. This is reminiscent of how Trump once voiced that Japan was taking a free ride on the US-Japan Security Treaty.


「もしトラ」ではなく「トランプ大統領復帰」に備えよ!|和田政宗

「もしトラ」ではなく「トランプ大統領復帰」に備えよ!|和田政宗

トランプ前大統領の〝盟友〟、安倍晋三元総理大臣はもういない。「トランプ大統領復帰」で日本は、東アジアは、ウクライナは、中東は、どうなるのか?


最新の投稿


【今週のサンモニ】口だけの核廃絶は絶望的なお花畑|藤原かずえ

【今週のサンモニ】口だけの核廃絶は絶望的なお花畑|藤原かずえ

『Hanada』プラス連載「今週もおかしな報道ばかりをしている『サンデーモーニング』を藤原かずえさんがデータとロジックで滅多斬り」、略して【今週のサンモニ】。


衆院解散、総選挙での鍵は「アベノミクス」の継承|和田政宗

衆院解散、総選挙での鍵は「アベノミクス」の継承|和田政宗

「石破首相は総裁選やこれまで言ってきたことを翻した」と批判する声もあるなか、本日9日に衆院が解散された。自民党は総選挙で何を訴えるべきなのか。「アベノミクス」の完成こそが経済発展への正しい道である――。


【今週のサンモニ】偽善と悪意に溢れたコメント連発|藤原かずえ

【今週のサンモニ】偽善と悪意に溢れたコメント連発|藤原かずえ

『Hanada』プラス連載「今週もおかしな報道ばかりをしている『サンデーモーニング』を藤原かずえさんがデータとロジックで滅多斬り」、略して【今週のサンモニ】。


なべやかん遺産|「スーパーパワー」

なべやかん遺産|「スーパーパワー」

芸人にして、日本屈指のコレクターでもある、なべやかん。 そのマニアックなコレクションを紹介する月刊『Hanada』の好評連載「なべやかん遺産」がますますパワーアップして「Hanadaプラス」にお引越し! 今回は「スーパーパワー」!


【今週のサンモニ】石破氏を美化していた『サンモニ』|藤原かずえ

【今週のサンモニ】石破氏を美化していた『サンモニ』|藤原かずえ

『Hanada』プラス連載「今週もおかしな報道ばかりをしている『サンデーモーニング』を藤原かずえさんがデータとロジックで滅多斬り」、略して【今週のサンモニ】。