Sex slaves 'were not coerced' says Japanese Prime Minister

Japan’s prime minister caused outrage in the Far East today after suggesting women who worked in brothels for the Japanese military during World War II had not been forced to do so.

Filipino Hilaria Bustamante, 81, said she was 16 in 1942 when Japanese soldiers stopped her on a road, seized her by the arms and legs and threw her into a truck “like a pig.”

It was the beginning of more than a year of captivity in a Japanese garrison where she said she was a sex slave.

“Even as I struggled, I could not do anything. They slapped me, they punched me. I was only 16 then, what could I do?” she said. “They think we are like toilet paper that is just thrown after being used.”

Bustamante is one of an estimated 200,000 women seized by Japan’s military from Korea, China, the Philippines and other places during the war and shipped across Asia to be “comfort women” providing sex for its troops.

In the Philippines, 120 are still alive among 174 documented “comfort women,” said Rechilda Extremadura, executive director of Lila Pilipina, an organisation of activists and former sex slaves.

For many, old wounds were opened anew by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s comments yesterday denying that the women were forced into sexual slavery, and calling into doubt an apology by a top government spokesman in 1993.

“There was no evidence to prove there was coercion as initially suggested,” Abe told reporters.

"That largely changes what constitutes the definition of coercion, and we have to take it from there.”

US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, speaking in Tokyo today, said Japan’s operation of military brothels during World War II was “deplorable”.

“But … as far as some kind of resolution of this issue, this is something that must be dealt with between Japan and the countries that were affected,” Negroponte said.

In Seoul, a group of South Korean lawmakers called on the Japanese government to formally recognise and apologise for forcing women in East Asia, including Korea, to be sex slaves.

“Japanese Prime Minister Abe should retract his outrageous remarks denying the women were forced into sex slavery and immediately apologise,” some 50 lawmakers said in a statement.

“Japan should sincerely repent its past history,” Hong Jae-hyung, a lawmaker from the liberal Uri Party, said in a separate meeting with party officials.

Former Imperial Japanese Army soldier Yasuji Kaneko, 87, recalled the screams of the countless women he raped in China, some of them teenagers from Korea and others victims of pillage in eastern China.

“They cried out, but it didn’t matter to us whether the women lived or died,” Kaneko said in an interview at his Tokyo home.

“We were the emperor’s soldiers. Whether in military brothels or in the villages, we raped without reluctance.”

A recent US congressional resolution called for Japan’s leader to formally acknowledge and apologise for the wartime sexual slavery.

Philippine Rep. Liza Maza of the left-wing Gabriela women’s party said Abe’s statement was “an affront to all women victims of Japanese military sexual slavery” during the war.

“My God! There are so many living survivors of such atrocity,” she said.

Tokyo has generally refused to pay damages to individuals for the war, and says the issue was settled between governments in post-war treaties. Japanese courts have rejected a number of lawsuits brought by former sex slaves.

A private fund, set up by Japan in 1995 to compensate sex slaves, will expire this month.