Tokyo
In a surprising denial of overwhelming historical evidence, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said last week that the Japanese military did not force women into sexual slavery during World War II. Historians agree that some 200,000 women, mostly from Korea and China, were kidnapped and forced to work in brothels servicing Japanese soldiers. Japan apologized to these “comfort women” in 1993, after a Japanese journalist uncovered official documents showing that the military was directly involved in running the brothels. But Abe now says that if abuses occurred, it wasn’t the military that committed them but the contractors who set up the brothels. He said his country would not apologize again, even if the U.S. Congress, which has held hearings on the matter, passes a resolution demanding it.
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