hankyoreh

Let's hypothesize for a moment and say that the Japanese Diet had a resolution before it condemning American bombings of civilians in Iraq. Then lets say the president of the United States apologized to Japan and that the Japanese prime minister said he accepted that apology. Would that solve the issue at hand and eased the minds of the victims? Clearly it would only make the situation worse. Still, it is exactly the kind of exchange you saw last Friday in Washington D.C., between Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and U.S. president George W. Bush.

At a press conference following his meeting with Bush, Abe said he feels "deep-hearted sympathies that the people who had to serve as comfort women were placed in extreme hardships" and that offers his "apologies for the fact that they were placed in that sort of circumstance." His comment was not an apology, because all he did was say he recognized that comfort women had suffered; he did not even admit that there had been coercion on the part of the Japanese government. It was a rare comedy for the history of diplomacy for his comments to take the form of an apology to Bush instead of to former comfort women and the countries they came from
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Abe is someone who has denied the comfort women issue is an issue at all since before his inauguration as prime minister last September. Recently he went further, saying he would see to it that there is an inquiry that questions the matter. The purpose would be to render the 1993 "Kono Statement" - which admitted the Japanese government forced girls to be comfort women - useless. His comments in Washington are part of the same attitude. For Bush to sympathize with this is like taking the hands of the criminals who perpetrated "the worst human trafficking of the 20th century, which was unprecedented for its cruelty." If this is the "alliance of values" the Bush Administration has been advocating as a 21st century alliance, then the future for the U.S.-Japan alliance and for the U.S. itself is going to be gloomy.

The solution to the comfort women issue is well outlined in the United Nations report on the matter and in the resolution currently being considered in the U.S. House of Representatives: Japan needs to issue an honest apology, seek the thorough truth, give appropriate compensation, punish those responsible, include it in history education, and engage in activities such as the building of memorials. Such are the general procedures for resolving major crimes of the state. The point of departure would be an apology, and Michael Honda, the member of the U.S. House of Representatives who authored the resolution, suggest it take the form of an "admission by the government of Japan and an official apology backed by a Diet resolution. We hope Abe sees the situation for what it is, that there is no alternative.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]