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Japan, Comfort Women & America

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  • 18-06-2007 11:15pm
    #1
    Dont be at yourself
    Registered Users Posts: 10,581 ✭✭✭✭


    This is becoming an increasingly contentious issue with every development.

    According to Yahoo, the US are voting on a resolution to demand an official apology for the use of Asian women as prostitutes in WWII camps.

    Japanese Prime Minister Abe recently denied that women were forced into sex, and attempts were also made to revise earlier apologies. [url=http://ampontan.wordpress.com/2007/06/15/wapos-comfort-women-ad/
    ]What's more[/url], Japanese lawmakers recently took out a full page advertisement in the Washington Post refuting claims that women were forced into sex.

    In the grand scale of things, is this a big deal?

    Why are the US sticking their oar in? To me knowledge, there have been no reports of US citizens involved with these camps.

    Why are the Japanese taking such a dug-in stance?


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    #2
    Judt
    Closed Accounts Posts: 594 ✭✭✭Judt


    Of course I could say "That's rich...", but at least the American's can absolve their conscience by saying they pay for the sex industries they set up. Albeit the pimps, but you know, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth just leaves the world blind and toothless, so let's ignore that and instead look at the Japanese.

    The Japanese are intensely proud. In fact, after the war, the American occupation - led by the very man who had fought them - sought not to humiliate the Japanese, but to weed out their militarism and keep their national pride. A totally humiliated country is just one that'll want to have another go later on, ala Germany post-1919.

    So the Japanese have an odd complex about the war, and the pretty brutal reign that the Japanese propagated in Asia. We all have our national hangups that make perfect sense to you and me, but which foreigners just can't understand at all. What the big fuss was about God Save The Queen being played at a sporting event in Ireland, for example.

    I think that nowadays though most countries are playing politics with this legacy. The Chinese, for example, are angling for natural resources in the Pacific, and so magically in one of the most controlled countries in the world you find students being able to hurl petrol bombs at the Japanese embassy. A literal smokescreen, if you will...

    Frankly I think that at this point there's a certain amount of "get on with it..." that has to be used. The Japanese know what they did, the Germans know what they did, their collaborators largely got away with all the guilt (but that's another story...), but grinding these old axes doesn't particularly get anyone anywhere.


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