Chinese Comfort Women (44 page)

28
“Tokyo Court Rejects Damages Suit Filed by WWII Chinese Sex Slaves,”
China View
, 27 March 2009.

29
Permanent Mission of People’s Republic of China to the UN, available at
http://www.china-un.org
(viewed 24 October 2010).

30
Wang Chingfeng, “Tamen de shangkou shangwei yuhe—Taiwan ‘weianfu’ wenti de jinzhan” [Their wounds have not healed: The development of “comfort women” issue in Taiwan], in
Taotian zuinie: Erzhan shiqi de Rijun weianfu zhidu
[Monstrous atrocities: The Japanese military comfort women system during the Second World War], ed. Su Zhiliang, Rong Weimu, and Chen Lifei (Shanghai: Xuelin chubanshe, 2000), 383-89. See also, Mo Yan-chih, “Comfort Women Still Fighting,”
Taipei Times
online, 27 December 2010, available at
http://www.taipeitimes.com
(viewed 15 July 2012).

31
“Taiwanese Comfort Women,” filed with
Memory and Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific
, a Research and Policy Program at the George Washington University, Washington, DC, available at
http://www.gwu.edu/~memory/data/judicial/comfortwomen_japan/Taiwanese.xhtml
(viewed 15 July 2012).

32
According to Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation, Taiwanese victims numbered 2,000 or more. See “Comfort Women” at
www.twrf.org
.

33
“Comfort Women,”
www.twrf.org.tw
.

34
“Qi ming beipo zuo weianfu de Taiwan funü zhuanggao Riben zhengfu baisu” [Seven Taiwanese women who had been forced to become comfort women lost their lawsuit against Japanese Government],
Xinhuanet
, 10 February 2004, available at
http://news.xinhuanet.com/
(viewed 9 April 2009).

35
“Taiwanese Comfort Women,” filed with
Memory and Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific
.

36
See “Claim for Compensation of Pusan Comfort Women and Women’s Voluntary Labour Corps and Demand for Official Apology to the Women’s Voluntary Labour Corps and to the Comfort Women,” Decision of 27 April 1998 (following oral arguments of 29 September 1997), Shimonoseki Branch, Yamaguchi District Court. Translation is from Appendix to
Contemporary Forms of Slavery: Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery and Slavery-Like Practices during Armed Conflict
, final report submitted by Special Rapporteur Gay J. McDougall to
United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, 50th Session, UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1998/13, 22 June 1998, 51, para. 50.

37
McDougall,
Contemporary Forms of Slavery
, Appendix, 39, para. 6.

38
Special Rapporteur Theo van Boven’s statement on the right to restitution (E/CN.4/Sub. 2/1993/8. p. 56, para. 2), cited in paragraph 124 of “Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, in accordance with Commission on Human Rights resolution, 1994/45; Report on the mission to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Republic of Korea and Japan on the issue of military sexual slavery in wartime,” UN Doc., E/CN.4/1996/53/Add.1, 4 January 1996.

39
McDougall,
Contemporary Forms of Slavery
, 49, para. 44.

40
Japanese courts also rejected the Japanese government’s defences with regard to certain cases filed by Chinese forced labourers. On 12 July 2001, for example, the Tokyo District Court rejected the defence of “time limitation” put forward by the Japanese government and recognized the claim made by the Chinese forced labour victim Liu Lianren. Thereafter, Japanese courts applied the basic legal principle of equity and justice and rejected the “time limitation” defence. In another case of Chinese forced labour victims versus the Japanese government and Nippon Yakin Kogyo Corp. (decided on 15 January 2003), the Kyoto District Court rejected the defence of “state immunity,” although its decision did not support the claim by Chinese plaintiffs. Later, in cases decided by the Tokyo High Court, the Fukuoka High Court, and the Niigata District Court, the Japanese government’s claim of “state immunity” was also rejected. See William Underwood and Kang Jian, “Japan’s Top Court Poised to Kill Lawsuits by Chinese War Victims,” posted on
Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus
, 2 March 2007, available at
http://japanfocus.org
(viewed 20 March 2009).

41
John Price points out that China’s exclusion from the treaty talk might be attributable to the fact that the United States and others were fighting Chinese troops in the Korean War. The US government considered South Korean participation to be risky as Koreans who were critical of the Japanese government might have upset US plans to push through the treaty. The Japanese leader Yoshida Shigeru also wanted to exclude Koreans as signatories, otherwise Korean nationals in Japan might have been eligible for treaty benefits. See John Price, “Fifty Years Later, It’s Time to Right the Wrongs of the San Francisco Peace Treaty,” in
Japan Times
online, 6 September 2001. Available at
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
(viewed on 2 December 2012).

42
For the positions of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Republic of Korea, and Japan on the issue, see sections 5, 6, and 7 of Radhika Coomaraswamy’s report.

43
William Underwood and Kang Jiang, “Japan’s Top Court Poised to Kill Lawsuits by Chinese War Victims.”

44
McDougall,
Contemporary Forms of Slavery
, app., 53, para. 61.

45
Underwood and Kang, “Japan’s Top Court Poised to Kill Lawsuits by Chinese War Victims.”

46
McDougall,
Contemporary Forms of Slavery
, 52, para. 55.

47
Underwood and Kang, “Japan’s Top Court Poised to Kill Lawsuits by Chinese War Victims.”

48
For a discussion in English of the Japanese government’s interpretation of the waiver section of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, see Kinue Tokudome, “POW Forced Labor Lawsuits against Japanese Companies,”
JPRI Working Paper
(Japan Policy Research Institute at the University of San Francisco for the Pacific Rim), no. 82, November 2001, available at
http://www.jpri.org
.

49
John Price, “Fifty Years Later, It’s Time to Right the Wrongs of the San Francisco Peace Treaty,”
Japan Times
online, 6 September 2001.

50
Ibid.

51
Carol Gluck, “Operations of Memory: ‘Comfort Women’ and the World,” in
Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia
, ed. Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 48.

52
“Japan Rejects Lawsuit by WWII Sex Slaves,”
People’s Daily
online, 20 September 2000, available at
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn
(viewed 11 April 2009).

53
Kinue Tokudome, “POW Forced Labor Lawsuits against Japanese Companies,”
JPRI Working Paper
No. 82, November 2001.

54
They are Fritz Kalshoven (honorary professor, Leiden University), Lepa Mladjenovic (Autonomous Women’s Centre against Sexual Violence, Serbia), Yamada Akira (associate professor, Meiji University), Hayashi Hirofumi (professor, Kanto Gakuin University), Yoshimi Yoshiaki (professor, Chuo University), and Fujime Yuki (associate professor, Osaka University of Foreign Studies). Information is taken from “The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery,” Violence against Women in War Network Japan, available at
http://www1.jca.apc.org/vaww-net-japan/english/womens tribunal2000/whatstribunal.xhtml
.

55
The VAWW-NET (Violence against Women in War Network) Japan listed the following participating Chinese survivors, Yang Ming-zhen, Yuan Zhu-lin, Wan Ai-hua, Li Xiu-mei,* Guo Xi-cui, Chen Ya-bian,* Huang You-liang,* and Liu Mian-huan* (asterisks indicate video testimony). See
http://www1.jca.apc.org
.

56
Chen,
Rijun weianfu zhidu pipan
, 378.

57
Rumi Sakamoto notes that, among Japanese and Korean researchers and activists, the comfort women issue emerged in the context of postcolonial discourse. Feminists, concerned that the issue might become subsumed within the rhetoric of nationalism, tried to extend the debate by linking the comfort women issue to contemporary international human rights issues. The tribunal, in this sense, is part of their efforts to view the issue from an international perspective. See Rumi Sakamoto, “The Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual Slavery: A Legal and Feminist Approach to the ‘Comfort Women’ Issue,”
New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies
3, 1 (2001): 49-58.

58
McDougall,
Contemporary Forms of Slavery
, 23-31.

59
Sakamoto, “Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal,” 54-55.

Chapter 11: International Support

1
Hirofumi Hayashi, “Disputes in Japan over the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” System and Its Perception in History,”
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
617 (2008): 123-24.

2
Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Japan’s ‘Comfort Women:’ It’s Time for the Truth (in the Ordinary, Everyday Sense of the Word),”
Asia-Pacific e-Journal: Japan Focus
, 8 March 2007. Available at
http://www.japanfocus.org
.

3
Dongwoo Lee Hahm, “Urgent Matters: Redress for Surviving ‘Comfort Women,’” in
Legacies of the Comfort Women of World War II
, ed. Margaret Stetz and Bonnie B.C. Oh (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), 128.

4
Founded in 1992 to promote research and education pertaining to crimes against comfort women during the Second World War, it is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan educational organization.

5
It was founded in 1994 for the preservation of the historical truth of the Asia-Pacific War (1931-45). The organization is also involved in activities such as supporting comfort station survivors and organizing the Peace and Reconciliation Tour of China.

6
Commenced in Shanghai in September 2003, the International Solidarity Council Demanding Settlement of Japan’s Past has subcommittees in China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan, and the Netherlands. The coordinators
of the subcommittees meet annually to discuss the plans for activities in various countries as well as the movement of the council as a whole.

7
Resolution of the International Solidarity Council Demanding Settlement of Japan’s Past, 5th Conference, The Hague, Netherlands, in commemoration of the 101st anniversary of the 1907 Hague Convention, 4 October 2008.

8
The proposed bill can be found in the appendix to an article by Totsuka Etsurō, “Shimin ga kimeru ‘ianfu’ mondai no rippō kaiketsu: Senji seiteki kyōsei higaisha mondai kaiketsu sokushin hōan no jitsugen o motomete” [The legislative resolution of the “comfort woman” issue is in the hands of citizens: Seeking legislative resolution of the issues concerning victims of wartime sexual violence].
Kokusai jinkenhō seisaku kenkyū
, vols. 3 and 4 (2008): 59-62.

9
Ibid., 30.

10
According to a 2009 statistic, about half of the women had already died by that year. See “‘Ianfu’ mondai no rippō kaikatsu o motomeru kai” [Association for legislative resolution of the comfort women issue] and “Senji seiteki kyōsei higaisha mondai kaiketsu sokushin hōan no rippō o motomeru renraku kaigi” [Coalition for seeking legislation of the bill on issues concerning wartime sexual violence victims], “
Ianfu” mondai no sōki rippō kaiketsu no tameni
[For the timely resolution of the “comfort women” issue through legislation] (January 2009), 1.

11
Hahm, “Urgent Matters,” 128.

12
Unpublished report from Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation.

13
In December 1997 the Taiwanese government provided 2 million
yen
as temporary payment to the forty-two former comfort women who came forth to testify in support of their litigation against the Japanese government. In April 1998, the Government of South Korea paid about 3 million
yen
to the former comfort women who had refused to accept the payment from the AWA. See “
Ianfu” mondai no sōki rippō kaiketsu no tameni
, 2.

14
The findings are published on the All China Lawyers Association’s website,
http://www.acla.org.cn/
(viewed 2 January 2009).

15
Zhongguo yuan “weianfu” shouhai shishi diaocha weiyuanhui, “Zhongguo yuan ‘weianfu’ shouhai shishi diaocha weiyuanhui fabu diyi jieduan diaocha jieguo” [The results of the first phase of the investigation published by the committee for the victimization of former Chinese comfort women], post on
www.ACLA.org.cn
(viewed 2 January 2009).

16
Ibid.

17
One of the eight political parties in China. The members of the Zhi Gong Party are mainly overseas Chinese who have returned and relatives of overseas Chinese.