WASHINGTON, D.C. – It’s not just women from Asia-Pacific countries who were forced to become sex slaves, euphemistically called  “comfort women,” to the Japanese military during World War II.

            United States citizens in the U.S. protectorate territory of Guam have also been victimized, according to records that have just been disclosed from the U.S. Archives.

            “These cases include enslavement and rape of 17-year-olds by Japanese occupation officials,” according to Ok Cha Soh, president of the Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues, Inc.(WCCW), in a recent press release.

            “The U.S. military records that we are releasing once again make it clear that extreme violence, threats, and deceit were at the core of the Japanese system of military sexual slavery. The record now demonstrates that Japanese sexual slavery in conquered territories extended to Guam Island, an American territory that is today represented in the U.S. House of Representatives.”

Guam Rep. Bordallo confirms report

Reacting to this disclosure Rep. Madeleine Bordallo (D), who represents Guam in the House of Representatives, told Asian Fortune, “Yes, I admit that this is now coming out, along with many atrocities.”

Speaking in a chance interview during a reception held July 26 at the Rayburn House Office Building honoring the Philippine-U.S. Friendship Caucus, of which she is a member, Bordallo explained further, “We were occupied for three-and-a-half years, and went through a lot of hardships and atrocities. I do realize that this [issue of comfort women] has come up, that we were victims, and that comfort women went through that.”

Bordallo also co-sponsors the House Resolution 121 on comfort women introduced by Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA), Chair, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, to urge the Japanese government to formally apologize to the victimized women.

The Honda resolution was approved with an overwhelming vote 42-2 by a full Foreign Affairs Committee meeting on June 26, 2007.

 Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), the committee’s chair, said in his forceful opening remarks, “Japan is clearly our greatest friend in Asia and one of our closest partner in the world...Our alliance and friendship are based on mutual respect and admiration, and together we have helped promote our shared values of democracy, economic opportunity, and human rights in Asia and throughout the world.

“Yet, Japan’s refusal to make an official government apology to the women who suffered as so-called ‘comfort women’ is disturbing to all who value this relationship…The facts are plain: there can be no denying that the Japanese Imperial military coerced thousands upon thousands of women, primarily Chinese and Koreans, into sexual slavery during the war….It is appropriate that this House stand up for these women, who ask only that the truth be honored.”

Asked by Asian Fortune if the comfort women resolution, which at this writing has garnered 164 co-sponsors, would be voted on the House floor, and when, Honda said on July 26, “Yes, I expect sometime before August, that’s all I can say.”

Regarding the archives records on Guam-based comfort women, the WCCW release cites the following details:

 “The documents include the official record of the July 21, 1945, military tribunal created by the U.S. Navy under Military Commission Order 11 to try suspected Japanese war criminals and collaborators on Guam. The Tribunal heard testimony from young women forced to serve as sexual slaves. The U.S. tribunal concluded that Japanese agents had threatened to execute the young women and their parents if the girls refused to provide sexual services to Japanese military officers.

            “The perpetrators of the crimes are identified as a senior Japanese collaborator, S. T. Shinohara, who was acting on behalf of the Japanese governor of the island, Hayashi, and Hayashi’s military aide-de-camp, Sakai. The aide-de-camp directed that 17 year-old girls should be recruited for sex, and committed the first rape, according to trial testimony.  Shinohara was captured in 1945, tried and sentenced to 15 years in prison. The fate of Hayashi and Sakai is now under investigation.

“WCCW is withholding the identity of the victims to protect their privacy and that of their families.”

Awareness, Criticism Grow in Japan

Another significant development relating to the comfort women issue is the little known fact that in Japan, there is a growing awareness and displeasure about Japan’s role, and especially about the continued denial of military involvement by authorities led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Evidence of this is an invitation from Japanese Diet Members (who are equivalent to U.S. Congress Members) sent to Rep. Honda to speak at a lecture intended to inform the Japanese how the U.S. House resolution on comfort women was initiated and pushed in the U.S. legislative process.

The invitation was sent June 25, 2007 by e-mail from Kiyokawa, which reads, in part:

“One of the most important issues of historical recognition currently in question is the problem of ‘Comfort Women.’ The pacifists in Japan have launched a campaign for mass media by holding lecture meetings and seminars in order to call forth public opinions about the problems of comfort women and slave laborers.”

“There are basic errors in the historical recognition of the Japanese Government and ruling party, and the situation is becoming still worse as the Administration is going to order rewriting of textbook on history…”

The letter further explains that certain groups have started to voice their disagreement and opposition against the position declared by the Abe Administration, which denies official military involvement in sex slavery, arguing that there are no historical facts on it.  It cites groups such as the Liberal Democratic Party members of the Diet, former Secretary-General Koichi Kato, former Minister of Finance Sadakazu Tanigaki, present Speaker of the House of Representatives Yohei Kono, and young “liberalist Dietmen.”

            “The best method for this [to [end is to ask Congressman Michael Honda to visit Japan and address a lecture directly to us about how the resolution is made at the lower House,” the letter of invitation states.

            Dr. Soh, WCCW president, who has also been invited to go to Japan to lecture on the “volunteer corps movement” that has grown in the U.S. in support of the comfort women and for passage of the resolution, told Asian Fortune in a follow-up telephone call July 27 that both she and Honda could not go.

            “Unfortunately, the timing of the intended lectures is not convenient,” she said. The lectures were said to take place in July, a time when the U.S. Congress was still in session before the August summer recess. 

More Grassroots Events in U.S.

            But while the U.S.-based promoters of the issue could not go to Japan, a former comfort woman from Korea, Young Soo Lee, 78, went to San Francisco for a series of speaking appearances organized by the “SupportH121.org” coalition, with hosting support from actress/producer Jen Siebel, inviting S.F. Mayor Gavin Newsom and Bay Area human rights and women’s rights activists. Other than a reception for her in Chinatown, the courageous sex slave victim also spoke to college and high school students in the area who read testimonies from comfort women established in Japanese military camps during the war.

            Another significant development:

Emelina Galang, a Florida-based Filipino American university professor and author, also continues to educate and rally the Filipino American community, urging them to sign petitions to beef up congressional cosponsors.

She recently made a trip to the Philippines to interview surviving former comfort women for a book she is writing.

 “This is not just a Korean women’s issue. It is also a Filipino women’s issue of justice that the Filipino community and media have to support,” she told this writer in a telephone call from her home in Miami.

Campaigning with activist Annabel Park and Eric Byler, the documentarian who filmed the comfort women issue for YouTube, Galang personally went to Lantos’ district office in San Mateo to get his agreement to cosponsor the resolution and move up the resolution in his committee.

The non-binding resolution seeks a formal apology and acceptance of responsibility from the Japanese Government for its military’s “coercion of young women into sexual slavery, known to the world as ‘comfort women’ during colonial and wartime occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War II.”

The resolution further accuses Japan for enslaving “200,000 ‘comfort women’ to serve in Japanese army brothels in China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Philippines and Taiwan,” and condemns the sexual exploitation of these women as “one of the largest cases of human trafficking in the 20^th century.”

Reacting to the resolution, Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in a statement March 5 to the Diet parliament, denied Japan’s involvement in forcing women into sexual servitude for the Japanese military.

“There was no coercion, such as kidnappings, by the Japanese authorities…There is no reliable testimony that proves kidnapping,” Abe said, adding that he would not issue an apology.

The denial elicited protests from Asian quarters, including an official statement from Philippine Acting Foreign Secretary Franklin Ebdalin, criticizing Abe’s denial as an attempt to change Japan’s stated admission of military engagement in organized sexual slavery by citing former Japanese prime minister Koizumi’s 2002 letter of apology to Filipino comfort women victims.

In the U.S., supporters of the resolution, many of whom are from Asian Pacific American advocacy groups and other civil rights groups, formed a coalition and went on a nationwide campaign.

With a reported $100,000 fund raised largely by Korean Americans, the coalition rebutted the prime minister’s denial with a one-page ad in a Washington Post April issue titled “The Truth about Comfort Women” detailing testimonies from surviving former comfort women themselves.

This was consequently answered by Japanese politicians and academics with a one-page ad in the Post (June 14) titled “The Facts.” It maintains Japan’s denial by citing Army memoranda that denied any official policy involving Japanese military in sex slavery or any “organized or forced recruitment”, with assent from identified Diet parliament members.

The sustained denial, however, only revved up more advocacy support from organized grassroots groups.