On the morning of September 18, I witnessed an historic event at the National Press Club.
A press conference held to announce a class action lawsuit, in which Japan is the defendant and comfort women are the plaintiffs. Present at the conference were six South Koreans and one Chinese, but the lawsuit was for all comfort women, named and unnamed, dead or alive.
The women sat in the front, facing the press, together with lawyers and spokespersons. I had interviewed all six South Korean grandmas for my film and book. "Grandmas" is a term used in Korean custom to refer to women old enough to have grandchildren. I feel as if they are my grandmas.
My grandmas, their chests choked by pain and sorrow, but their faces full of dignity, sat in front of the American press.
In response to a reporter's question why this lawsuit was filed in the United States, Michael D. Hausfeld, a lead lawyer asked what better place than in the United States, a land where justice and freedom have been valued for centuries.
Indeed, what better place, especially considering what was not done by the U.S. at the Tokyo Tribunal more than half a century ago.
After Japan signed the Instrument of Surrender on September 2, 1945, the U.S., spearheaded the Far Eastern war crimes operation. General Douglas MacArthur was appointed Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) and the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE).
The so-called Tokyo Tribunal, was born on January 19, 1946.
At this tribunal, the predominant charges were related to waging wars of aggression. In comparison, the cases of gross human rights violations were largely neglected. If any cases were considered, they were heavily focused on western victims. Hardly any justice was meted out on the crimes committed against Asians.
The Allies knew about the comfort women; they had repatriated many and conducted studies about them. In addition to finding several such documents in U.S. archives, I personally interviewed a Japanese American, former U.S. Sgt. Grant Hirabayashi, who interrogated Korean comfort women in Burma immediately after the fall of Myitkyina on August 3, 1944.
Yet, the Tokyo Tribunal did nothing about it.
The Dutch held trials about interned Dutch women forced to become sex slaves for the Japanese soldiers. Held in Batavia, known as Jakarta now, Dutch women's cases were prosecuted and the offenders sentenced. It is an undeniable fact that the U.S. knowingly chose to neglect war crimes of the highest order comfort women, the infamous Nanjing massacre in 1937, and the gruesome biological warfare program conducted by Unit 731.
While the Allies did not punish those responsible for the crimes committed against fellow Asians by Japan under the banner of "Asia for Asians," they convicted 178 Taiwanese and 148 Koreans, most of them working as prison guards for the Allied prisoners of war.
The Peace Treaty of San Francisco in 1951, which recognized the sovereignty of Japan, showed remarkably little interest in justice for peoples of Asian origin. The U.S. government chose political expediency, because of the Cold War, over redressing the violations of fundamental human rights half a century ago. Japan was not only unpunished; it was given helpful hands to flourish economically, all for the sake of the Cold War.
The neglect of comfort women then was an expression of at least triple discrimination gender, race and class, most of those women having come from poverty stricken families.
How can the U.S. government dismiss 200,000 girls and women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese government?
It is time to express equality for all human beings, not only in recognizing human rights, but also in recognizing human suffering. It is time for these women to recover a half century of delayed dignity and rights.
One of my "Grandmas," Hwang Keum Ju says, "If Emperor Akihito, son of Hirohito, cannot kneel down with deep apologies, my demand is, give my youth back. Make me 18 again."
Source:
http://www.ricepaperonline.com/vol6no2/features/feature1.html