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located in the US Capitol in Washington

On Apr. 21, four members of Congress one after the other stood behind the podium in the chamber of the House of Representatives, located in the US Capitol in Washington, D.C. It is here that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is scheduled to deliver his address on Apr. 29.

While the official session of Congress had ended for the day, these representatives had asked to make special topic speeches to urge Abe seize his address as an opportunity to make a sincere apology for the past actions of Japan.

“Enough is enough. Seventy years later, it’s time for Prime Minister Abe to be clear and unequivocal and issue an irrefutable apology,” said Mike Honda (D-CA). “He can make a full, unequivocal and formal apology on behalf of the Japanese government.”

The white-haired representative thundered in such an ear-splitting voice that the Speaker of the House left the room.

Noting that some people say that Japan has apologized enough and that it is time to move forward, Honda said, “To those people, I would say, given [its] continued revisionist attempts, for every step forward toward peace and reconciliation, the government of Japan takes two steps backwards.”

Honda also criticized the Japanese government for rejecting House Resolution 121, adopted in 2007, in which the US House of Representatives urged Japan to acknowledge and officially apologize for forcing young women to become sex slaves and to adequately educate future generations on the matter.

Honda’s speech on Tuesday attracted even more attention because Lee Yong-soo, 87, a former comfort woman who testified before a congressional hearing in 2007, was in the audience. Lee, who arrived in the US on Apr. 19, was listening to the speech in the public gallery with staff from the Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues and Kim Dong-suk, founder of Korean American Civic Empowerment (KACE).

Honda described the terrible things that Lee had experienced as a comfort woman in 1944. “This woman is one of less than a hundred people who survive today of more than 200,000 comfort women in the Asia-Pacific region. Not only Lee but also the tens of thousands of souls who have already left this world are still waiting for peace and justice,” he said, bringing a hush to the room. Honda’s speech lasted for 20 minutes.

The remaining three representatives briefly expressed their points using the one-minute speech system. All of the representatives urged Abe, as the first Japanese Prime minister to address a joint session of Congress, to make the most of this historic opportunity.

In his remarks, Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) said that Abe “must be honest” about Japan’s wartime history and its brutal record with sex slaves, warning that ignoring its past would “ensure a very troubling future.”

“These wounds need to be closed. They need to be healed and Prime Minister Abe can do that closure, can do that healing by exposing those wounds to the light of the truth and an apology, and I‘m hopeful that he will do this on this floor when he addresses us next week,” Israel said.

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) said he hopes that Abe will “lay the foundation for healing and humble reconciliation by addressing the historical issue of the comfort women.”

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) asked Abe to use the speech to restore the honesty that Japan had built up since the war.

By Park Hyun, Washington correspondent

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