doggyji
Joined: 21 Feb 2006
Location: Toronto - Hamilton - Vineland - St. Catherines
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 Posted: Sun Oct 08, 2006 10:53 am Post subject: Cold Comfort: the Japan Lobby Blocks Resolution on WWII Sex |
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| www.harpers.org wrote: |
Cold Comfort: the Japan Lobby Blocks Resolution on WWII Sex Slaves
Posted on Thursday, October 5, 2006. By Ken Silverstein.
SourcesEven as top congressional Republicans were protecting Mark Foley from exposure for soliciting teen pages, they were simultaneously helping Japan cover up its past record of institutionalized rape and sexual enslavement of Asian women. The Japanese cause was greatly aided by Bob Michel, a highly paid lobbyist and former G.O.P. congressman with close ties to the party's leadership.
For the past seven years, a coalition of Korean-American, human rights, and religious groups have been pressuring congress to urge Japan to accept responsibility for forcing women and girls into sexual slavery during the World War II era. This shouldn't be terribly controversial, since the historical facts are clear.
Beginning in the 1930s, Japan rounded up as many as 200,000 women and girls, mostly from Korea, China, and the Philippines, and forced them to serve as prostitutes for its soldiers in order to increase troop �morale.� The Japanese called these sex slaves �comfort women�; many were raped and beaten, and some were killed after they acquired sexually transmitted diseases or became �overworked.� Some of the women were so humiliated that they never returned to their homes after the war, and many of those who did kept quiet about their experiences.
Japan long insisted that the comfort women were willing prostitutes and only acknowledged the sex slavery system in 1993 after documents discovered in the Japanese Army archives proved its true nature. The Japanese government backed the establishment of the quasi-governmental Asian Comfort Woman Fund in the mid-1990s but it has refused to offer direct compensation. Many of the women and their families have refused to accept money from the fund because they say Japan has never taken responsibility for its actions.
Japan has always been able to block attempts to pass a congressional resolution on the exploitation of comfort women, partly because it runs a lavishly-funded Beltway lobbying operation. The Bush Administration has quietly assisted in attempts to block a resolution on comfort women. According to Mindy Kotler, the director of Asia Policy Point, a research center on Japan and northeast Asia, the Administration views Japan as the key regional bulwark against an emerging Chinese regime that may be hostile to the United States in the future. �The administration wants Japan to be a central part of America's Asian security architecture�above Australia, India, and the British Navy,� she said. �Any issue that the Japanese have defined as disturbing has been shunted aside to ensure that nothing upsets the alliance with Japan�and I mean nothing, whether it's a trade dispute or taking responsibility for the comfort women.�
Not long ago, though, it looked like a measure had a decent chance of getting through. The coalition pressing Congress on the issue had traditionally sought to win a concurrent resolution, which must be approved by both chambers. This year the coalition worked for a resolution in only the House, and one was finally brought forth in April by Democrat Lane Evans of Illinois and Republican Chris Smith of New Jersey. The non-binding measure called on Japan to formally �acknowledge and accept full responsibility� for the sexual enslavement of �comfort women� and to stop denying its crimes�for example, by stripping mention of the topic from school textbooks.
The resolution was referred to the International Relations Committee and quickly gained co-sponsors, which alarmed the Japanese government. Enter Bob Michel, a top Washington lobbyist with Hogan & Hartson and a thirty-eight-year House member from Illinois, who served fourteen years as the G.O.P.'s minority leader. The Japanese government pays his firm about $60,000 per month to lobby on the sole matter of historical issues related to World War II, which also include claims concerning Japan's vile abuses of American P.O.W.s, including the use of slave labor. (Michel, incidentally, is only the most prominent of a small gang of lobbyists which Japan retains to handle World War II issues.)
Michel, I'm told, met in late May with Illinois Congressman Henry Hyde, chairman of the International Relations Committee. He told Hyde that passing the resolution would be crippling blow to America's alliance with Japan and reminded the congressman that Japan's sexual enslavement of several hundred thousand women had taken place some sixty years earlier�bygones should be bygones. Japan's then�Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi had already announced that he'd be visiting the United States at the end of June (when he would visit Graceland with President Bush and sing �Love Me Tender� in the Jungle Room) and Michel argued further that it would be embarrassing to Japan if the measure was approved around that time. �The whole deal came to a stop,� says a source who was working to pass the measure. �I've never seen anything like it. We had a lot of momentum and suddenly it was just dead.�
But the groups working on the issue kept at it and got a big break in September when Hyde shifted gears and backed their cause. He was apparently moved by an emotional trip he made to Korea and two other Asian countries over the August recess. More importantly, Hyde was said to be angered by Koizumi's decision on August 15�the date of Japan's defeat in World War II�to visit the Yasukuni Shrine. More than 1,000 war criminals have their names inscribed in the shrine's Book of Souls, including Hideki Tojo, the wartime prime minister who ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor and who was hanged in 1948. Koizumi's visit provoked outrage across Asia and didn't sit well with Hyde, the last remaining combat veteran of the Pacific campaign to sit in the House.
With Hyde on board, the source says, �We went from zero to 100 immediately.� Several members of the International Relations Committee did push to soften the resolution (removing, among other things, language that explicitly defined the treatment of comfort women as a �crime against humanity�). The advocates reluctantly accepted those changes, and on September 13, the Committee passed the resolution by unanimous consent.
Supporters believed the measure was now unstoppable. They expected it would soon be put on the �suspension calendar,� which would allow the resolution to pass the full House with a simple voice vote. The only obstacle to passage at that point was potential opposition from House Speaker Dennis Hastert�also of Illinois, and a former colleague of Michel's�or House Majority Leader John Boehner, who controls the voting calendar.
On September 22, twenty-five congressional co-sponsors of the measure, including Mike Honda of California, the leading Japanese American in Congress, sent a letter to Hastert and Boehner asking them to bring the resolution to the floor before Congress adjourned for the November elections. But mysteriously, no word was heard from the G.O.P. leadership about when the resolution would be brought to a vote.
Exactly what happened next is not clear, but word on the Hill is that the Bush Administration, Michel, and other Japanese lobbyists went to work on Boehner�and on Hastert, who reportedly is hoping to be named ambassador to Japan after he retires and who made clear that he was unhappy with the resolution. By last Wednesday, Boehner's office had made clear that the comfort women resolution would not be brought to a vote before the end of the week�a key deadline since Congress would be adjourning until after the midterm elections. (Michel declined to return calls, as did the offices of Congressmen Boehner and Hastert, both of whom may be preoccupied with other pressing matters at present.)
The measure could conceivably be revived during the upcoming lame-duck session, but for now it looks like Japan has again bought itself victory on the Hill. �The reality is that there is little we can do for the comfort women,� says Kotler. �They've lived with this hell for sixty years and most of them are going to find peace soon. The real importance of the bill is that it would serve as a precedent for going after the miscreants and perpetrators running today's rape camps and help protect future generations of women from similar violence.� |
http://www.harpers.org/sb-cold-comfort-women-1160006345.html |
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