| SUBJECT: | Japanese Military’s “Comfort Women” System |
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| FROM: | Larry Niksch |
| Specialist in Asian Affairs Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division |
The Congressional Research Service prepared this memorandum to enable distribution to more than one congressional client.
This memorandum provides background concerning the system of “comfort women” organized by the Japanese military during the 1930s and World War II to provide sex to Japanese military personnel. For further questions about this issue, the author can be contacted at extension 77680.
Introduction
This report attempts to discuss the comfort women issue from a number of standpoints. It begins with a discussion of two measures that have triggered the debate between the Japanese government and the U.S. House of Representatives: the 2006 and 2007 resolutions before the House International Relations Committee in 2006 and the House Foreign Affairs Committee in 2007 that criticize Japan on the comfort women issue; and the initiative by a special committee of the Japanese parliament (Diet) to amend a key Japanese government pronouncement on the comfort women (the Kono Statement) issued in 1993 that acknowledged and apologized for the Japanese military’s direction of the comfort women system. The report tries to summarize in an organized way the numerous statements on the comfort women issue issued by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and his cabinet since March 1, 2007. It describes the evidence related to the involvement of the Japanese government and military in the system and how the system operated. The report then reviews the Japanese government’s past record in addressing the comfort women issue since 1990 and the reactions of former comfort women and their governments to Japan’s policies and programs. Other issues covered included the comfort women issue in Japanese history textbooks and comfort women lawsuits in Japanese and U.S. courts. A final “Conclusions” section assesses the credibility of
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