Efforts to hand down history of wartime sex slavery continue

While references to wartime sex slavery have almost disappeared from textbooks, efforts to hand down its history and to unite with former so-called "comfort women" on a grassroots level are continuing, panelists at a Tokyo symposium said Saturday.

In the symposium, teachers, college students and human rights advocates shared their activities to learn about the history of the wartime atrocities, with some 100 people attending.

"I was really shocked to know through a college seminar that women who were about the same age as I am now were forced to become sex slaves and they have been left without sufficient compensation even now," said Naoko Kotani, a senior at Kobe College.

She visited South Korea last year with classmates to meet with former sex slaves, known euphemistically as comfort women in Japan, who told the students it is necessary for people to keep amicable ties even if the relations of their countries are at odds.

"Since then, I have been requested to tell the experiences of learning about the sex slavery and seeing the victims to high school students," Kotani said. "Some of the students asked me at what college they could learn about the history of the wartime sex slavery."

The symposium was held at the start of an exhibition at the Women's Active Museum in Tokyo, at which panels are displayed explaining how women were kidnapped and forced to serve as sex slaves, and who managed the wartime brothels and for what purposes.

Also exhibited are an example of a condom that the Imperial Japanese Army distributed to its soldiers for use at the wartime brothels and a preventive ointment for sexually transmitted diseases, as well as photos of comfort women and Japanese soldiers lined up in front of a brothel.

The event, named "Exhibition of 'Comfort Women' for Junior High School Students," will continue through May 25 next year.

Another panelist, Mai Murakami, who is involved in group activities in Kyoto to invite former comfort women to Japan, said, "I was once told by one of the former comfort women that people in Japan forget what she told them shortly after listening to her story."

"So I repeatedly attend their lecture meetings and say I do not forget them," Murakami said. "I also visit them in the Philippines and Taiwan."

She also said she sees some aggressive comments posted by people on her group's website, such as, "Is there any evidence for wartime sex slavery?" or "The women are telling lies."

Tomomi Oda, a senior at Yokohama National University, said at the symposium she has also experienced facing biased counterarguments about sex slavery.

"But now I think it may be necessary to talk with those who have a difference historical perspective to find out why they have come to have such thoughts," she said.

From the floor, a social studies teacher at a junior high school in Tokyo said, "It's difficult to take up the issue of comfort women in classes now in Tokyo," suggesting a rise in nationalistic education there. "A teacher would face harsh criticism only by distributing the leaflet of this exhibition at school, but I want to let my students see it somehow."

The participants, meanwhile, showed concern over the advanced age of the former comfort women, with Murakami from Kyoto saying, "I fear many of them will pass away within several years."

"It's our responsibility to hand down what they've told us," Murakami said. Oda shared much the same view, saying, "As a citizen, I'd like to continue seeking ways we can commit to memory their stories and how we should hand them down."