This should make some of you happy:
Japan's leader says sorry to WWII 'comfort women'
I suspect that this still will not be enough, as it is not an official apology issued by the government of Japan. Nor is there any monetary gain for the victims.
You are right it isn't enough, not when followup administrations make statements to the effect that it never happened the complaints will continue on.
Look Japan paid war reparations for injustices committed during WWII to numerous countries in Asia, however this issue didn't come to light until much much later. Japan does have the resources to pay these women even a tolken amount of money, it's not like asking to squeeze blood from a stone.
But I doubt that they would settle for mere recognition without compensation. Funny how money automatically makes people feel better!
Actually you are wrong here, if you read some of the information on the web sites included through links on this thread many of the women were offered compensation through the Asian Women's Fund but refused the money because it wasn't directly from the Japanese Government.
Seems to me at least that they felt the issue was being swept under the rug and they didn't stand for it. Hooray for them, that tells me it is the principle of the matter and not the money that is motivating them.
Tell me then, since you obviously think that the apologies of the past should be enough, which I must admit I also thought so as well, I even wrote a post similar to that on a different thread here, and until I started doing more research on the subject why does the current Japanese Administration act as if it never happened? Why is it not accepted policy that the these women were wronged? Why does the government continue to muddy the waters with ambigious statements like PM Abe's?
It's similar to the people running around making claims that the holocaust never happened either. Everybody else "knows" it happened but growing numbers of people are not quite so sure. Because they never lived through it or the era, and if you hear something enough times you begin to believe it's true, and the longer time goes on, the easier it is to sweep things under the rug, as there are no longer any witnesses alive.
Japan has a rather bad habit recently of trying to rewrite how history occured, and the comfort women issue is just one part of that revisionist view of how events during WWII happened.
If the government openly admits and makes it policy for further generations as well, with or without compensation, opens any "secret" files it may or may not have, it's not like there is a freedom of information act here, tells the world openly and not just through letters, then maybe after a firestorm of complaints about why so late, maybe then the issue could hopefully be put to rest.
