當作參加5/3英文讀書會的homework吧
I must say that I haven’t studied this issue or even thought about it before. After our group discussion, I realize that this issue is not only about the existence of comfort women or they need an apology. It has very complicate aspects include politics and human rights.
It started from a piece of news. The Japan’s leader, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in his visit to the United States offered an apology but used pointedly vague language to sidestep the issues of Japan’s responsibility toward the comfort women. He said he had ”deep-hearted sympathies that the people who had to serve as comfort women were placed in extreme hardships” and expressed his “apologies for the fact that they were placed in that sort of circumstance.”
It was very weird that Mr. Bush said, “I accept the prime minister’s apology.” Is he a comfort woman?
I think no one will doubt the existence of comfort women, but one of us said some Japanese do. They have no idea what was going on during the World War II. Their government didn’t put those things into their history textbooks. However, comfort women were not ghosts lived in the pass, some of them are still alive and they open their stories to public. Therefore, I think those Japanese can say they don’t know but they can’t say they don’t believe.
Why can’t Japan just say they were wrong and give an appropriate apology? No one will blame them. However, the victims’ countries especially China may ask huge compensation and use this issue to get political benefits. That’s what Japan want to avoid. I think that’s why they choose to give apologies in the United States instead of the victims’ countries.
Another debate is Mr. Abe claimed there was no evidence that the Japanese military had coerced women into sex slavery. In my opinion, no matter those comfort women were volunteers or coerced, the fact is they became sex slaves instead of just providing sex service. There were many sex providers during the wars, but they didn’t become sex slaves. I think this proved Japan lacked human rights during that time and this comfort women issue will always be a prickle on their back when Japan talk about human rights.
