Hashimoto: no sex slaves please, we're Japanese

[Russell]

There were also women who were forced to provide sex without payment.

That's the classical definition of sex slaves.

[Russell]

Ishihara advises Hashimoto to stop tweeting

Shintaro Ishihara, a political ally and co-leader of the Japan Restoration Party with Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, has reportedly advised his younger colleague to stop tweeting.

Hashimoto has been tweeting his views on wartime comfort women daily for more than week.

Ishihara—who also is known for his nationalistic views—said the 140-character format was not long enough for a proper explanation of a position.

But Hashimoto, who has more than a million followers, rejected the criticism, saying Twitter is “an important tool to convey views,” the Sports Hochi tabloid reported.

[matsuki]

bwahahahahaha, you know you're in trouble when Ishihara is telling you to stop tweeting

[gaijinpunch]

That was like this time my friend who did speed told me cocaine was ruining my life. I told my mom to shut up.

[Samurai_Jerk]

That was like this time my friend who did speed told me cocaine was ruining my life. I told my mom to shut up.

That reminds of my friend's mom when I was growing up: Don't be cursing in my house, godammit!".

[Russell]

Japan's wartime brothels were wrong, says 91-year-old veteran

When Masayoshi Matsumoto joined the Japanese army in 1943 and was sent to occupied China as a medic, he thought he was taking part in a righteous war to free Asia from the yoke of Western imperialism.

Seven decades later, the 91-year-old retired Christian pastor says it’s his mission to speak out about the injustice of the war and the sufferings of women, mostly Asian and many Korean, forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels.

“I feel like a war criminal. It is painful to speak of such things and I would rather cover it up. It is painful, but I must speak,” the slender, white-haired Matsumoto told Reuters in an interview at his daughter’s home about 40 km from Tokyo.

“I think that to speak out is the meaning of my being alive,” added Matsumoto, who returned to Japan in 1946 and later became the pastor of a Christian church. He is one of a dwindling number of veterans with experience of the brothels.

Outspoken Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto sparked a firestorm of criticism at home and abroad when he said that the military brothel system was “necessary” at the time and that Japan has been unfairly singled out for practices common among other militaries during wartime.

The remarks outraged China, where many suffered under Japan’s military occupation, and South Koreans, where bitter memories of Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule run deep.

They also sparked a backlash in Japan. Support for Hashimoto’s right-leaning Japan Restoration Party, already sliding, has fallen further ahead of an upper house election just two months away and another small party has broken off ties with it.

As a medic stationed in Yu County in China’s Shanxi Province during the war, Matsumoto helped doctors examine a half dozen Korean women who provided sexual services for officers and non-commissioned officers, part of an effort to stem the spread of venereal disease among soldiers.

Whatever the rationale at the time, Matsumoto said, the system and the treatment of the women - known euphemistically as
“comfort women” - were inexcusable.

“It is not just Japan that did something wrong. But Japan also did something wrong ... Just because someone else is a thief, is it all right to be a thief? Because someone else kills people, is it all right to be a murderer? That is no excuse,” Matsumoto said.

“The prime minister of Japan should apologize properly as the representative of the nation and compensate those who should be compensated.”

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe caused controversy during his first 2006-2007 term by saying there was no proof that Japan’s military had kidnapped women for the brothels. Such doubts are common among Japanese ultra-conservatives.

But Abe has sought to distance himself from Hashimoto’s remarks, saying his government’s stance is different.

“The stance of the government on this issue is that, as we stated previously, we are deeply pained when thinking of the women who experienced immeasurable pain and suffering. On this point, the Abe cabinet has the same position as prior cabinets,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference last week, although he declined direct comment on Hashimoto’s remarks.

The issue has often frayed ties between Tokyo and Seoul. Japan says the matter of compensation was settled under a 1965 treaty establishing diplomatic ties. In 1995, Japan set up a fund to make payments to the women from private contributions, but South Korea says that was not official and so not enough.

Matsumoto said the women had no means of escape from the walled town where his military unit was headquartered and were in fact sex slaves. “No matter if they wanted to flee, there was no way to escape,” he said.

Recalling the conditions in which the women lived, Matsumoto said soldiers lining up for sex would unfasten their leg wrappings and lower their trousers so as to waste no time when their turns came. “It was like they were going to the toilet,” he said.

Only years later did Matsumoto come to believe his country had done something wrong. “We were taught that it was the mission of Japan, the mission of the Japanese people, to liberate Asian countries from European colonialism,” he said. “So we went to war gladly then. When I think of it now, it was monstrous, but I didn’t think so then.”

[matsuki]

Matsumoto said the women had no means of escape from the walled town where his military unit was headquartered and were in fact sex slaves. “No matter if they wanted to flee, there was no way to escape,” he said.

Recalling the conditions in which the women lived, Matsumoto said soldiers lining up for sex would unfasten their leg wrappings and lower their trousers so as to waste no time when their turns came. “It was like they were going to the toilet,” he said.

I take it he hasn't seen too much recent JAV?

Only years later did Matsumoto come to believe his country had done something wrong. “We were taught that it was the mission of Japan, the mission of the Japanese people, to liberate Asian countries from European colonialism,” he said. “So we went to war gladly then. When I think of it now, it was monstrous, but I didn’t think so then.”

Japan, the liberator.....

[Russell]

Osaka offers to host Osprey training drills

Osaka plans to invite the U.S. military to hold Osprey flight drills at Yao airport, Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto said Monday.

He and Osaka Gov Ichiro Matsui plan to meet with Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga on Thursday to discuss the plan’s feasibility, TV Asahi reported Tuesday. However, the plan may not go ahead as Yao Mayor Seita Tanaka has already said he is opposed to having Osprey aircraft use the airport which does not currently have any regular commercial services.

Matsui said that other parts of Japan have to do their bit to help alleviate Okinawa’s burden of hosting U.S. bases. Twelve of the controversial MV-22 Osprey aircraft are currently deployed at the U.S. Marine Corps’ station in Futenma. The U.S. plans to deploy another 12 sometime in the summer.

U.S. military officials say the hybrid aircraft which can take off and land like a helicopter, is critical for regional security efforts.

LOL, this guy is brilliant.

[matsuki]

Osaka offers to host Osprey training drills

Osaka plans to invite the U.S. military to hold Osprey flight drills at Yao airport, Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto said Monday.

He and Osaka Gov Ichiro Matsui plan to meet with Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga on Thursday to discuss the plan’s feasibility, TV Asahi reported Tuesday. However, the plan may not go ahead as Yao Mayor Seita Tanaka has already said he is opposed to having Osprey aircraft use the airport which does not currently have any regular commercial services.

Matsui said that other parts of Japan have to do their bit to help alleviate Okinawa’s burden of hosting U.S. bases. Twelve of the controversial MV-22 Osprey aircraft are currently deployed at the U.S. Marine Corps’ station in Futenma. The U.S. plans to deploy another 12 sometime in the summer.

U.S. military officials say the hybrid aircraft which can take off and land like a helicopter, is critical for regional security efforts.

LOL, this guy is brilliant.

other parts of Japan have to do their bit

More smokescreen for moving nuclear debris around the cuntry?

BTW, WTF is up with all these governors and mayors making all these announcements, claims, etc. ? Is it just the net generation that we's constantly hearing this year or has this been SOP for decades?

[Kanchou]

Hmm, if they could make an airport there, they can make an airbase...

[Russell]

Hmm, if they could make an airport there, they can make an airbase...

an airport?!?

Do you know how many freaking airports there are near Osaka?

[Kanchou]

Hmm, if they could make an airport there, they can make an airbase...

an airport?!?

Do you know how many freaking airports there are near Osaka?

I was referring to KIX being built in Osaka Bay. No matter where the US bases go, people are going to protest. If they built the strips on the water in order to keep the air traffic away from the residential area, at least they wouldn't have any reason to bitch.

(When you consider the bases take up 19% of the liveable land on Okinawa and only contain 1.5% of the population, the Okinawans are definitely getting shafted...)

[kagemusha]

the Okinawans are definitely getting shafted...)

They are getting shafted for the last 300 years or so and will continue do so after the amelicaaan leaves.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

No matter where the US bases go, people are going to protest.

I've seen nothing of the sort around Tokyo and surrounding areas. In fact, it seems a vast majority of the Japanese love the bases, regarding them as a taste of A Merkin in their own country, and they pack into them with glee on those days they're opened up.
The only problems I've encountered with U.S. military bases in and around Tokyo have been excessive noise, but with a population inured to this by cacophonous pachinko parlors, squealing erection campaigns every summer and rightwing propagandists at overly frequent intervals, the rumblings and shaking brought about by an F-18 flying overhead don't seem to cause much bother to the locals.
In fact, the only bad behavior I've seen around the U.S. bases has been from the giggling bevy of (Japanese) beauties lining up outside Yokota Air Base, waiting to be fucked.
I'm by no means in favor of the Merkin bases anywhere outside of the Untied States, but I don't think they're overtly unwelcome in the Tokyo area at least.

[Samurai_Jerk]

No matter where the US bases go, people are going to protest.

I've seen nothing of the sort around Tokyo and surrounding areas. In fact, it seems a vast majority of the Japanese love the bases, regarding them as a taste of A Merkin in their own country, and they pack into them with glee on those days they're opened up.
The only problems I've encountered with U.S. military bases in and around Tokyo have been excessive noise, but with a population inured to this by cacophonous pachinko parlors, squealing erection campaigns every summer and rightwing propagandists at overly frequent intervals, the rumblings and shaking brought about by an F-18 flying overhead don't seem to cause much bother to the locals.
In fact, the only bad behavior I've seen around the U.S. bases has been from the giggling bevy of (Japanese) beauties lining up outside Yokota Air Base, waiting to be fucked.
I'm by no means in favor of the Merkin bases anywhere outside of the Untied States, but I don't think they're overtly unwelcome in the Tokyo area at least.

While I agree with you about the attitude towards existing bases among people in the Tokyo area, I think that Kanchou is probably right that a new base anywhere would cause protests.

[Coligny]

How wuz things with amerikun bases in Germany ?

Did the local walkyries rape the poor G.I's ?

[matsuki]

No matter where the US bases go, people are going to protest.

I've seen nothing of the sort around Tokyo and surrounding areas. In fact, it seems a vast majority of the Japanese love the bases, regarding them as a taste of A Merkin in their own country, and they pack into them with glee on those days they're opened up.
The only problems I've encountered with U.S. military bases in and around Tokyo have been excessive noise, but with a population inured to this by cacophonous pachinko parlors, squealing erection campaigns every summer and rightwing propagandists at overly frequent intervals, the rumblings and shaking brought about by an F-18 flying overhead don't seem to cause much bother to the locals.
In fact, the only bad behavior I've seen around the U.S. bases has been from the giggling bevy of (Japanese) beauties lining up outside Yokota Air Base, waiting to be fucked.
I'm by no means in favor of the Merkin bases anywhere outside of the Untied States, but I don't think they're overtly unwelcome in the Tokyo area at least.

While I agree with you about the attitude towards existing bases among people in the Tokyo area, I think that Kanchou is probably right that a new base anywhere would cause protests.

I dunno, I think Osaka might welcome the base...the whole "Tokyo has theirs, we should have one too!" mentality and the locals would probably react much like the Tokyo locals.

[GomiGirl]

No matter where the US bases go, people are going to protest.

I've seen nothing of the sort around Tokyo and surrounding areas. In fact, it seems a vast majority of the Japanese love the bases, regarding them as a taste of A Merkin in their own country, and they pack into them with glee on those days they're opened up.
The only problems I've encountered with U.S. military bases in and around Tokyo have been excessive noise, but with a population inured to this by cacophonous pachinko parlors, squealing erection campaigns every summer and rightwing propagandists at overly frequent intervals, the rumblings and shaking brought about by an F-18 flying overhead don't seem to cause much bother to the locals.
In fact, the only bad behavior I've seen around the U.S. bases has been from the giggling bevy of (Japanese) beauties lining up outside Yokota Air Base, waiting to be fucked.
I'm by no means in favor of the Merkin bases anywhere outside of the Untied States, but I don't think they're overtly unwelcome in the Tokyo area at least.

Having the US take care of Defence in Japan saves the need for Japan to be solely responsible for self defence... could you imagine if there was a national service requirement in Japan like they have in Singapore? All those shaved eyebrows, manga haired, jeans crotches at the knees pussies kids in uniform defending Japan?

I would want the American bases to hang around too..

[IparryU]

No matter where the US bases go, people are going to protest.

I've seen nothing of the sort around Tokyo and surrounding areas. In fact, it seems a vast majority of the Japanese love the bases, regarding them as a taste of A Merkin in their own country, and they pack into them with glee on those days they're opened up.
The only problems I've encountered with U.S. military bases in and around Tokyo have been excessive noise, but with a population inured to this by cacophonous pachinko parlors, squealing erection campaigns every summer and rightwing propagandists at overly frequent intervals, the rumblings and shaking brought about by an F-18 flying overhead don't seem to cause much bother to the locals.
In fact, the only bad behavior I've seen around the U.S. bases has been from the giggling bevy of (Japanese) beauties lining up outside Yokota Air Base, waiting to be fucked.
I'm by no means in favor of the Merkin bases anywhere outside of the Untied States, but I don't think they're overtly unwelcome in the Tokyo area at least.

Having the US take care of Defence in Japan saves the need for Japan to be solely responsible for self defence... could you imagine if there was a national service requirement in Japan like they have in Singapore? All those shaved eyebrows, manga haired, jeans crotches at the knees pussies kids in uniform defending Japan?

I would want the American bases to hang around too..

my thoughts exactly... everyone will chant nippon at baseball, football, and volleyball games, but not many of them will take up arms for Japan.

I doubt many of the uyoku nuts would even put on a uniform for their cuntry.

[yanpa]

How wuz things with amerikun bases in Germany ?

I don't recall ever hearing of amok-running Merkins now you mention it.

Did the local walkyries rape the poor G.I's ?

I'll wait for SDH's informed commentary on German sexual mores.

[Screwed-down Hairdo]

I'll wait for SDH's informed commentary on German sexual mores.

Lebensborn...

[Kanchou]

I doubt many of the uyoku nuts would even put on a uniform for their cuntry.

That's 'cause JIEITAI is KKK.

[Taro Toporific]

this...probably not PC...

From Clipboard.jpg

西村幸祐 @kohyu195
Public's right to know.--- It is a counterfeit comfort woman image that has been installed in the City of Glendale, California, USA, but it seems to have received a new welcome by Americans somehow

[matsuki]

hahahahaha

[Russell]

Looking back in anger

AS A young Japanese medical orderly with the Japanese imperial army, stationed in occupied China from 1943 to 1945, Masayoshi Matsumoto was ordered to help examine Korean women for venereal diseases. The women had been transported to the front to service Japanese troops, he says. When, deeper into the countryside, no military brothels were to hand, local women were rounded up and brought to makeshift brothels. Mr Matsumoto says the women were used like public toilets, with soldiers lining up to rape them. “They didn’t resist because they knew what would happen if they did,” he says.

Mr Matsumoto’s experiences occurred seven decades ago. Yet the dispute over those whom the Japanese refer to as “comfort women”— thousands of Asian women (largely from Korea, but also from Burma, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and elsewhere) herded into Japan’s wartime military brothels during the second world war—has festered. To President Barack Obama’s dismay, South Korea and Japan—America’s closest Asian allies—are today barely on speaking terms because they cannot agree on this history.

Japanese conservatives have repeatedly inflamed Korean public opinion by claiming the women were prostitutes who voluntarily provided “comfort” to frontline troops. Mr Obama has made crystal clear that he is among those who think otherwise. While steering clear of the topic during the Tokyo leg of his Asian trip last month, Mr Obama was quick to denounce the sexual enslavement during his two-day trip to Seoul, referring to it as a “terrible, egregious violation of human rights, “shocking” even in the midst of war.

Mr Obama also called for “an accurate and clear account of what happened”. His statement reportedly surprised the Japanese government. Katsunobu Kato, its deputy chief cabinet secretary, acknowledged the women’s “immeasurable pain and suffering” but said the issue “should not be made into a political or diplomatic subject”.

Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, knows that it already is, of course. In March he appeared to take some of the sting out of the controversy when he said his government would not seek revision of an apology made by a cabinet official in 1993 that for the first time accepted the role of the Japanese army in setting up the wartime brothels. (The government had previously denied their existence.) On April 16th, and again this week, senior diplomats from Japan and South Korea met to discuss how Japan could more fully make amends. South Korea is seeking official apologies and proper compensation. But it is wary of Japan’s sincerity, says a senior South Korean government official: Mr Abe’s government has also pledged to “look into” the investigation that triggered that apology, an apparent sop to conservatives who have long cited inconsistencies in the testimony of the Korean victims.

First-hand evidence has mounted since some of the women broke their silence, in the early 1990s, after decades of shame. Now just 55 Korean former comfort women survive. One way out of the historical impasse may be to shift the probe to the perpetrators. Over the years, Japanese veterans of the second world war have repeatedly spoken out on the sex slaves issue. Mr Matsumoto, who was stationed in China’s Shanxi Province, is the latest—and perhaps last—to step forward. He calls attempts to deny the comfort women episode “outrageous”: “I saw these things with my own eyes. People who don’t look hard at what happened in the past will do the same thing again.” At 92, he says his health is fading and time is running out. Journalists from South Korea, China and Japan have made the pilgrimage to his home in west Tokyo to hear his story. His own government, though, has yet to visit.

More

Video of a revealing interview with Mr Matsumoto at the link.

[matsuki]

Where's Takepoo? I'm sure he's got his hands over his ears and is humming "traitor! traitor!" over Mr Matsumoto's words.

[legion]

They were aware of this issue during the war trials, they really dropped the ball when they didn't nail down the culprits then. China had a judge on the panel but the lead judge was an alcoholic American and flunked his role.

I find it a little opportune that this issue gets such attention now all of the victims, witnesses and perps are passing away, seems like everyone else wants to rewrite history according to their agenda but nobody is showing hard evidence. There are documents from the war, reports from foreign diplomats in Nanjing, film evidence, and there must be documentation in Japan if someone digs deep enough.

The occupying forces must have had access to Japanese military records after the way, maybe if Pres O is concerned he should instruct his own military to go through their own warehouses and see what they have.

[Russell]

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the brother of the then-emperor Hirohito wrote back from China about the war crimes being committed by Japanese troupes. Anybody got a link?

[Mike Oxlong]

Hashimoto says allied soldiers raped women after D-Day

Allied soldiers liberating France during World War II raped French women after pushing back the Germans, an outspoken Japanese politician has claimed, as Tokyo comes under pressure over its wartime system of sex slavery.

Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, who was once seen as a future prime minister, argued in a weekend speech that Japan must admit its own historical wrongdoings while also pointing out the mistakes of others, the Mainichi Shimbun said.

“After landing in Normandy, allied soldiers raped French women. ‘Comfort stations’ were built after things became too much,” he said in the speech, using a euphemism for brothels, according to the newspaper.

“It is a historical fact. It is an unfortunate past. We must never repeat it,” he said in the public address.

The comment is the latest instance of a right-wing politician jumping feet-first into the sensitive topic of the Japanese use of coerced prostitution during World War II, which saw thousands of women—mainly Koreans—forced to work in brothels.

Japan has officially apologized for the system and maintains that a treaty normalizing ties with South Korea decades ago settled the issue.

But the two Koreas continue to say Tokyo is not contrite enough—a stance that is reinforced every time a senior politician equivocates or attempts to play down the subject.

Conservatives—including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe—feel Japan is unfairly singled out for wrongs that were more widespread than their accusers admit.

However, historians agree that while there were rapes by allied soldiers in Normandy, there is no generally accepted evidence of officially-sanctioned sex attacks by any military during World War II, other than the Japanese.

“Europeans and Americans say ‘Japanese used sex slaves.’ We have to educate Japanese who would be able to argue and reply to them, ‘We were wrong, but you were wrong as well,’” Hashimoto said in the speech, according to the Mainichi.

Hashimoto, whose small opposition party has recently fractured, is well known for stirring controversy. Critics suggest he is playing to a narrow but vocal domestic gallery with little regard for international implications.

Last year he claimed the comfort women system served a “necessary” role by keeping battle-stressed soldiers in line, sparking outrage in Asia and inviting U.S. criticism.

[Russell]

Hmm, I wasn't there at the time, but I heard that many Dutch women at the time were quite interested in their allied liberators.

There is no reason to believe that French women were any different.

No need for "comfort stations"...