Congressional Briefing: Japan's emperor as pimp (#221, Topic J)

While doing research at the Library of Congress, I was invited to attend a Congressional briefing on House Resolution 759, which has passed its Committee on International Relations yesterday. The bill reads, in part, as follows: "Whereas the enslavement of comfort women was officially commissioned and orchestrated by the Government of Japan to include gang rape, forced abortion, sexual violence, human trafficking, and numerous other crimes against humanity ... Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the Government of Japan (1) should formally acknowledge and accept responsibility for its sexual enslavement of young women, known to the world as "comfort women", during its colonial occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War II ..." In effect, Japan's emperor was a pimp, but would admit it -- either he was too ashamed or, more likely, he was subhuman and had no sense of shame. The briefing, held in a House meeting room to a standing-room-only full-house of 50+ attendees, was opened with brief comments by each of the bill's three co-sponsors: Lane Evans, Chris Smith, and Mike Honda. The president of the Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues, with whom I sat at the same table in a dinner honoring the late Iris Chang (author of The Rape of Nanking) a few years back, then gave a background briefing -- among other points, the number of comfort women was 200,000+. Another speaker, an European-American woman, then urged Japan to acknowlege and accept responsibility, lest Japan be viewed as "small minded, petty, unreliable" as to be unfit to be USA's ally in Asia -- her tone was surprisingly frank, considering that her previous employment was with a pro-Japan research organization. (She actually opened her remarks by wishing Japan's prime-minister-to-be a happy birthday, which, along with the speaker herself, happened to be today.) The highlight of this briefing was the screening of a 20-minute segment of a documentary, Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women, produced by a Korean-American director (who was also present and gave an excellent introduction), with original footages taken at "rape camps" as well as those taken specifically for this documentary. I was moved by a comment by a surviving victim, now in her 70s (there are only 100 still living -- most died over the 60-year period, others committed suicide, shortly after WWII, for the dishonor), that she wanted to live so that she could tell her story to the world. Her courage commands my respect. Another scene showed that each of these women received a shot in the arm every day -- it turned out to be opium. So, in addition to being a pimp, Japan's emperor was also an opium peddler. From remarks by the three congressmen and the three speakers, I got the impression that Japan was/is unwilling to acknowledge its responsibilities. To me, a simple way to convey our disgust is to refuse buying products made in Japan -- as I have been doing for decades. As it turns out, this might come without any urging -- just today, I read a Reuters report to the effect that the public now judge the quality of Japanese products to be inferior to those made in China, citing as an example the recall of Japanese-made batteries in computers by Dell, Mac, and a Japanese brand.