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"even if a U.S. House of Representatives resolution demanding an apology is adopted."I would find that incredibly ironic if the U.S. House of Representatives demanded the Japanese apologize, considering the U.S. rarely if ever apologizes for it's mistakes. In fact most the time, the U.S. officially refuses to do so. I'm not siding with the Japanese on this issue, I am pointing that the U.S. has no credibility on this matter.

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1. Japan already apologized in '93.2. What does the US House of Representatives have to do with a Japanese apology? Seriously guys, pass some non-binding resolutions on real ongoing problems, like Prince's phallic Super Bowl show or something.

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This report is based on the information obtained from the interrogation of twenty Korean "comfort girls" and two Japanese civilians captured around the tenth of August, 1944 in the mopping up operations after the fall of Myitkyin a in Burma.The report shows how the Japanese recruited these Korean "comfort girls", the conditions under which they lived and worked, their relations with and reaction to the Japanese soldier, and their understanding of the military situation.A "comfort girl" is nothing more than a prostitute or "professional camp follower" attached to the Japanese Army for the benefit of the soldiers. The word "comfort girl" is peculiar to the Japanese. Other reports show the "comfort girls" have been found wherever it was necessary for the Japanese Army to fight. This report however deals only with the Korean "comfort girls" recruited by the Japanese and attached to their Army in Burma. The Japanese are reported to have shipped some 703 of these girls to Burma in 1942.

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PERSONALITY;The interrogations show the average Korean "comfort girl" to be about twenty-five years old, uneducated, childish, and selfish. She is not pretty either by Japanese of Caucasian standards. She is inclined to be egotistical and likes to talk about herself. Her attitude in front of strangers is quiet and demure, but she "knows the wiles of a woman." She claims to dislike her "profession" and would rather not talk either about it or her family. Because of the kind treatment she received as a prisoner from American soldiers at Myitkyina and Ledo, she feels that they are more emotional than Japanese soldiers. She is afraid of Chinese and Indian troops.

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if you're going to site sources, use credible onesimran karim

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An excerpt: ( <a class="user" href="http://hnn.us/articles/14566.html)&quot;&gt;http://hnn.us/articles/14566.html)&lt;/a&gt;Rape of NankingThe best predictor of the future, is the past, and those who do not learn from the past, and those who deny the past, are condemned to repeat it: so concludes the recently completed 77-minute documentary film, Nightmare in Nanking, which I produced. The film documents with photographs and film taken by Japanese soldiers an 8-week orgy of nightmarish atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers against 280,000 women, children, babies, and elderly Chinese: Japanese soldiers tear out the eyes of children, gang-rape women and little girls then set them on fire, bury people alive or use them for bayonet practice, behead women, children, and old men, and torture people for fun, laughing hysterically as victims, who have been set on fire, run screaming through the night. These quotations give a sense of what went on: "We used barbed wire to bind the captured Chinese into bundles of ten and tied them onto racks. Then we poured gasoline on them and burned them alive. I felt like killing pigs." --Kozo Tadokoro, Japanese soldier. "The Japanese came to the safety zone and demanded volunteers for a labor crew, and gave "promises of protection." About 50 people were led off, taken to a vacant house, robbed of all their valuables and clothes, and when completely naked, tied up together in groups of five. Then the Japanese built a large bonfire in the courtyard, led the groups out one by one, bayoneted the men and tossed them still alive on the fire." --John Rabe, German Nazi and Chairman of the Nanking Safety Zone. Westerners and even Nazis living in the security of the Nanking Safety Zone, described their experience as an "unimaginable hell." And if it was "Hell" for the Nazis, what must it have been like for the people of Nanking? As detailed in the documentary what took place in Nanking, then the capital of China, was a nightmare collectively suffered by 300,000 helpless men, women, and children. "It was about ten in the morning when a dozen Japanese with rifles and fixed bayonets rushed into the house. They shot my father and grabbed my baby sister, being breast-fed by my mother. They bayoneted the baby and stripped my mother and raped her. Then the Japanese killed my grandparents and dragged two of my sisters out and raped them. Then they stabbed me and my 3-year old sister with bayonets. I saw both of my older sisters lying in pools of blood, dead." --Xia Shu-qin, 7-year old resident of Nanking. "No matter how young or old, they could not escape the fate of being raped. Neither old women nor young girls were spared. We sent out coal trucks to the city streets and villages to seize women, and then each was allocated to 15 or 20 soldiers for sex and abuse. Every soldier was issued a Red Ticket --a paper with the seal of his company's commander--and they lined up in their underwear to wait their turn." --Takokoro Kozo, Japanese soldier. It has been estimated that nearly 80,000 women were raped in Nanking. Many were tortured, bayoneted, beheaded, set on fire, or gang raped to death. "We took turns raping them. We always stabbed and killed them. When we were raping her, we looked at her as a woman. But when we killed her, we just thought of her as something like a pig." --Azuma Shiro, Japanese soldier. "You can't breath for the sheer revulsion when you keep finding bodies of women with bamboo poles thrust up their vaginas. Even old women over 70 are constantly being raped" --John Rabe. Thousands of Chinese men and boys were used for bayonet practice. Men and women were hung by their tongues. Pregnant women were disemboweled and their fetuses torn from the bleeding bodies. Men, women, and children were buried alive. Japanese soldiers impaled babies on bayonets, and then tossed them alive into pots of boiling water. The crimes of the Japanese were so horrific that they almost made their German allies look civilized in comparison. Shooting someone is a terrible act. However, stabbing someone is truly horrific and takes a lot of effort. The victim is screaming and bleeding on the perpetrator who must push the blade in and out, over and over again. These are called "crimes of passion" and are generally motivated by extreme hatred and rage. And yet the Japanese soldiers committing these crimes did not feel rage but pleasure. They tortured people for fun, using their swords and knives like some gleaming steal phallus. By contrast, Nazi soldiers became ill and began to break down after a few hours of shooting people. Even Heinrich Himmler, the head of the dreaded SS and the concentration (extermination) camps, became ill, turned green and almost threw up while watching his men shoot civilians. Himmler decided there must be a more "humane" way of killing. Himmler was not concerned for the victims, helpless Jews, but the mental state of the Nazi soldier. By contrast, the Japanese obtained an almost sexual pleasure from committing horrible, hellish, almost unimaginable crimes against innocent people who had never caused them any harm. And they did so not just to satisfy their sadistic sexual desires, but in order to honor their god, emperor Hirohito: "We did everything for the sake of the emperor, raping, killing, everything," --Masayo Enomoto, Japanese soldier. Unlike their Nazi counterparts, the Japanese Emperial Army ordered their men to rape, torture, maim, behead, set on fire, and to use Chinese men, women, and children for bayonet practice as Japanese officers and fellow soldiers stood and laughed. They called it: "Killing practice." Murder, rape, and torture, including the rape of children, were believed to be a good way for bolstering the morale of their soldiers, and contests were held to see who could kill the most Chinese. In fact, the Japanese were committing identical atrocities in hundreds of towns and villages. As Nightmare in Nanking documents, it was not just Asians but Americans who suffered at the hands of the Japanese. Americans and other prisoners of war, were starved, denied water for days at a time, deprived of sleep, harshly beaten, bayoneted, beheaded, buried alive, castrated, tortured, set on fire, and killed without reason. Despite overwhelming evidence of the nightmarish crimes committed by the Japanese Emperial Army, nationalistic Japanese politicians, textbooks, and newspapers, continue to deny that the Japanese committed atrocities against millions of innocent men, women and children. These lies constitute the second Rape of Nanking, and they come with a price: Those who do not learn from the past, are condemned to repeat it.

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You hint without showing any proof that ?there would be more evidence, too, if successive Japanese governments had not buried it in closed files or destroyed it.? This is a totally unfounded accusation. Show us why you think so.We are angry that Yohei Kono succumbed to pressures by Korean government to admit the involvement of Japanese military in recruiting, which was untrue, as then deputy cabinet minister, Nobuo Ishihara, is on record on that.You end your article with ?Shame on you, Mr. Abe.? We, the Japanese are saying ?Shame on you, Yohei Kono.? And I would like to add ?Shame on you, the Economist.?

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Hi, I'm new here and I'm really glad to have found this website because i have been waiting to talk about this issueOn the comfort women. The unreliable article w/ Lee's "suspicious" testimony, no one can prove it or disprove it, (Although i think it is the biased media's doing of unclear reporting) but the point is, there are comfort women still ALIVE today. They have gone through rape, torture, and have survived the atrocity. Children as young as 8 yrs old were kidnapped and taken to soldier's quarters to be raped many times during the day. The Japanese government needs to apologize with sincerity and acknowledgment of their own government's horrendous actions in the past. They have yet to apologize, otherwise, why would victims still be demanding an apology?? These poor old women are not going to be with us for long and why can Japan just say sorry before these women pass away with torn hearts? Japan has never expressed any compassion for the people they hurt in WW2. Textbooks still lie about their past. Yes, the Japanese PEOPLE understand their government's censoring but the government still holds its pride. As a Korean, I would like an apology given to my country. I was born in the US and i still want an apology. Not an apology to me but to the people of my country. Finally, Koreans are not racist towards Japanese. I have two Japanese friends. But the leaders of Japan are ridiculous. They really should feel shame instead of pride in their country because they are just a slew of corrupt, evil-hearted, insensitive people. Inhumane medical experiments, sex slavery, NOT APOLOGIZING. saying that they "recognize" or "feel remorseful for the unfortunate incident" is not saying sorry.

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Many Japanese say "there is no evidence that comfort women were forced into prostitution by the Japanese army." again and again. I'm very tired.Please download there papers about "comfort women" . This is a quick way to understand Japanese common opinion on "comfort women"(Those papers are PDF files.Please take care of it)<a class="user" href="http://hassin.sejp.net/Hata-Ianfu_text.pdf&quot;&gt;http://hassin.sejp.net/Hata-Ianfu_text.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a class="user" href="http://hassin.sejp.net/IANFU_Report_UNITED_STATES_OFFICE_OF_WAR_INFORMATION.pdf&quot;&gt;http://hassin.sejp.net/IANFU_Report_UNITED_STATES_OFFICE_OF_WAR_INFORMATION.pdf&lt;/a&gt;

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Get the facts straight, it is not just apologizing to their own people, it is also apologizing to the Chinese and Korean women and I personally feel that is necessary whether forced by the States or not.

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They actually do, believe it or not

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