the Government had been involved in the establishment of comfort stations, the control of those who recruited comfort women, the construction and reinforcement of comfort facilities, the management and surveillance of comfort stations, the hygiene maintenance in comfort stations and among comfort women, and the issuance of identification as well as other documents to those who were related to comfort stations

www.mofa.go.jp/policy/postwar/state9207.html

A historian Hata claims that the system was very similar to the system at Vietnam
hassin.sejp.net/Hata-Ianfu_text.doc

The information in Against Our Will is important because its descriptions of the brothels in Vietnam mirror those patronized by Japanese soldiers.

megalodon.jp/?url=http://sakuratan.ddo.jp/uploader/source/date36985.txt&date=20070409152216

Sure there are differences;since the brothel was legal, Japanese police regulation and arrested illegal agents. The U.S. troop just had the local troop do the dirty jobs, unconcerned about the illegal activities.
www.wm.edu/so/monitor/spring2000/paper6.htm
article.wn.com/view/2007/07/11/Military_Prostitution_and_the_Iraq_Occupation/?template=cheetah-article%2Fdisplayarticle.txt

Hata also claims, as matt says, that there is no systematic order to set up the brothel from the top unlike German forced prostitution.(page 151 慰安婦と戦場の性　秦郁彦）

Japanese government admit the involvement of the Japanese military, and apologized several times.

I sincerely appreciate your detailed criticism. I only want to deal with one aspect of it here, the issue of proof of state involvement.

It certainly seems possible to me that the policy could have been guided by the state. I am only guessing it was piecemeal and that could easily be an error. My point was not to say we should not guess otherwise because there is no proof. My point is that if we want to talk about legally breaking a treaty, we have entered the legal arena. Here we need proof not only of state involvement, but that the state endorsed underage procurement and coercion as a procedure for recruitment.

Perhaps it will help here if I share some notes I had previously wanted to blog here, but never got around to posting. My reason for having not blogged these notes previously was because they were too rough, and I was still looking at other sources. I don’t think there is anything in the Asian Women’s Fund’s information on this issue (link to pdf) that contradicts my claim that there is no proof of state involvement.

Again, to say there is no proof is not to say decisively that there was no state involvement.

If you find anything wrong below, then corrections would be welcome. However, sources would be useful. While my notes below do not include Yuki Tanaka’s sources, I can furnish them upon request.

Notes follow …

In Yuki Tanaka’s Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the U.S. Occupation examples are given of what constitutes proof of the military’s involvement.

Again, this proof implicates second tier high ranking officers. As far as I know, it does not implicate high ranking government officials. As far as I know, it does not implicate the top military brass. This would tend to suggest to me that the comfort women system was never a systematic policy of the Japanese government. A guess would be that it was an ad hoc policy carried out by commanders in the field.

If what I have stated above is incorrect, a correction along with a reference source, would be greatly appreciated.

Let’s look at some of the examples of military involvement provided in Tanaka’s book:

In March 1932, the Shanghai Expeditionary Army under the command of General Shirakawa Yoshinori set up comfort stations in Shanghai. General Okamura Yasuji (the Deputy Chief of Staff), and Lieutenant-General Okabe Naozaburō (another senior staff officer of this Army) instructed their junior officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Nagami Toshinori, to take charge of this task. [reference omitted] It seems very unlikely that the Army commander, General Shirakawa, was unaware of the fact that such instructions were issued by top-ranking officers of his own army. Shirakawa was the Minister of War between 1927 and 1929. In 1944, Okamura became the general commander of the China Expeditionary Army, the highest position within the entire Japanese forces stationed in China. Okabe was promoted to commander of the North China Area Army in the same year. Nagami later became the commander of the 55th Division.

Let’s examine this.

There is no proof that the highest level commander of the Shanghai Expeditionary Army knew about the comfort women system. However, according to Tanaka, it would be strange to assume he didn’t know what was going on, and therefore by not stopping it, implicitly approved of it.

Now according to Tanaka there is actually proof that Okamura Yasuji and Okabe Naozaburo the two second-in-commands actually issued orders to establish the comfort women system. Part of this proof is Okamura Yasuji’s own memoirs. Tanaka tells us [page 10]:

According to his memoirs, the General decided to set up similar facilities to the navy, in order to prevent further rape of Chinese civilians by Japanese soldiers - a serious problem during the Shanghai Incident. General Okamura requested the Governor of Nagasaki prefecture (Kyushu) to send a group of comfort women to Shanghai. [reference omitted] His choice of Nagasaki as a recruiting centre for comfort women was probably based on its historical background. Many so-called karayuki-san ( Japanese prostitutes working at overseas brothels) of poor family background in Nagasaki had previously been sold by their parents to procurers and sent to various places in the Asia-Pacific region. [reference omitted] It is clear from Okamura’s private record that the army intended to use Japanese professional women, rather than Koreans, as comfort women at this stage. It is interesting to note that the army’s explicit purpose in setting up such facilities in Shanghai was not only the prevention of VD but also the prevention of rape committed by their own soldiers.

Not only do we have this, but Tanaka provides a translated section from the diary of Okabe Naozaburo which reads as follows [page 10]:

Recently I have heard a lot of scandalous stories, including that some our soldiers wander around seeking women. Such a phenomenon is hard to prevent as fighting becomes less frequent. Therefore the establishment of appropriate facilities must be accepted as a good cause and should be promoted. In consideration of our soldiers’ sexual problems, we have decided to introduce various measures. Lieutenant-Colonel Nagami Toshinori is now responsible for this task. [Reference omitted]

I should note that Tanaka discusses pretty extensively the army’s problem with VD and how it was hoped that comfort stations would prevent this, as prostitutes could be examined regularly and would be off limits to non-military personnel. There was also a clear problem with rape that the commanders regarded as serious enough to warrant a comfort women system. Tanaka even suggests that one motivation for the use of comfort women was the tragedy that took place at Nanjing (Wikipedia link).

Okay, so that is one example of the kind of evidence historians like Tanaka use to show that the comfort system was established via direct military request. Let’s look at another example [page 20-21].

In December 1937, the Central China Area Army issued an instruction to each contingent force to set up comfort stations. The commander of this Army was General Matsui Iwane, and the Chief of Staff was Major-General Tsukada Osamu.
On receiving this instruction, Iinuma Mamoru (Chief of Staff of the Shanghai forces) ordered members of the 2nd Section of the Staff Office to draw up a plan. His junior staff officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Chō Isamu, was responsible for implementing the plan. The commander of the 10th Army was Lieutenant-General Yanagawa Heisuke. This Army also set up comfort stations under the instruction of the Central China Area Army Headquarters. A staff officer of the 10th Army, Lieutenant-Colonel Terada Masao, set up a comfort station staffed with Chinese women. He used the kempeitai to procure these women. [Reference omitted] After the war, General Matui was tried at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. He was accused of responsibility for the Nanjing Massacre. It can be said that he was also responsible for the comfort women operations, as the commander of the Central China Area Army which issued an instruction to set up such facilities. Chō later became the Chief of Staff of the 32nd Army, and Terada was elevated to the position of head of the Armament Department in the Imperial Headquarters. The 10th Army commander, Yanagawa, later served as Minister of Home Affairs in Prince Konoe’s cabinet in 1941.

What we are getting here are mostly conclusions drawn from inevitably going through several different records and orders. Because of the limited scope of Tanaka’s book he does not go through this in any detail. I’m presuming because it isn’t stated otherwise that there are documents to back all of this up. Note the reference for all the above is secondary work on the subject, Ōbayashi Kiyoshi’s Tamanoi Banka.

Tanaka does provide a selection from the diary of a staff officer of the 10th Army, Major Yamazaki Masao. It reads [page 13]:

Lieutenant-Colonel Terada, who came here to Huzhou before me, has set up a recreation facility by instructing the military police. I was told that initially there were four [women], but from today there are seven [women]. As women are still afraid [of the Japanese soldiers], not many want to work here, and the service is not good enough. However, if we assure them that their lives are safe, we pay an appropriate amount of money, and we do not make them work hard, I expect women will come to work one after another. The military police are unofficially saying that they will recruit 100… Though we did not inform the soldiers [about this facility] and no signs were put up on the house, the soldiers got to know about it from hearsay, and the house is already full of the men. It is already warned that there is a tendency to driving [the women] hard. Needless to say, Lieutenant-Colonel Terada has already tested himself. When Major Ōsaka as well as Captain Sendō, who arrived here today, heard about this house, they could not wait any longer and went there together with the chief of kempeitai. About one and a half hours ago they returned…They seemed to be more or less satisfied. [Reference omitted]

Again, as I understand this, second tier officers, but no one at the highest levels. However, it’s very hard to imagine a situation whereby they wouldn’t have known about the system and therefore at a minimum tacitly approved.

Another example listed by Tanaka [page 22]:

In June 1938, Lieutenant-General Okabe Naozaburō (then Chief of Staff of the North China Area Army) issued an instruction to each unit to set up comfort stations to serve several hundred thousand soldiers in this army. [Reference omitted] The commander of these forces was General Terauchi Hisaichi. Terauchi was the Minister of War in the previous two years.

Note that the connection with Terauchi would suggest that someone in the government did know what was going on and therefore implicitly endorsed the comfort women system. That is what is intended by drawing Terauchi’s name into this. However, the orders were given by Naozaburo and so there is no proof that Terauchi was involved.

Finally the last example Tanaka gives (emphasis is mine):

The commander of the Kwantung Army was Lieutenant-General Umezu Yoshijirō, and the Chief of Staff was Lieutenant-General Yoshimoto Teiichi. It has been reported that in about July 1941, the Kwantung Army planned to mobilize 20,000 Korean women and requested assistance from the Government-General (i.e. the colonial government) of Korea. As a result, about 8,000 Korean women were reported to have been sent to northeast China (i.e. Manchuguo). Although no official documentation has been unearthed to prove such conduct, a number of testimonies refer to this operation, including one by a former staff officer of the Kwantung Army, Lieutenant-Colonel Hara Zenshirō. [Reference omitted] It implicates many bureaucrats of the Government-General of Korea in procuring a large number of Korean women, and therefore the Governor-General, General Minami Jirō, was also responsible. Minami served as the Minister of War for a short period in 1931.

Note here there is no documentary evidence, instead a number testimonies which are not given in the book. Interestingly a number of bureaucrats are implicated (by the testimony).

I’d like to point out that what I was primarily looking for were what kind of documents would implicate military or government officials were available. It seems there are clearly diaries and even some military requests that would suggest a comfort system was put into place by different military commanders.

There does not seem to be anything to suggest this was ever policy at the highest levels of government.

Three things:

1. You are NOT using the final resolution that was passed. The $200,000/month lobbyists for Japan forced a number of changes. You need to look for the resolution with the EH after it.

2. The so-called apologies that the Embassy likes to list either make no mention of Comfort Women or are not official. Without a Cabinet Decision or approval of the Diet any statement by a PM or Cabinet member is a personal expression. As noted in the Japanese Constitution, it is the Cabinet, not the PM that is the executive power in Japan. The Japanese government has played fast and loose with the legality and language of the apologies to the Comfort Women. Congress caught them.

3. The Comfort Women system was a sophisticated state-managed and coordinated supply system for the Imperial armed forces. The system involved officials of nearly all the government ministries and was managed by the War Ministry. The system included calculations of how long girls of certain ages would last at the front, gynecologists assigned to military units, travel documents, schedules as to how much time different ranks were allowed with the girls, and the list goes on. And yes, there are documents on all these practices and confirming that it was a state sponsored and state sanctioned system. Think, how would a group of illiterate, undocumented peasant girls be allowed on a troop transport from Korea to Taiwan during a time of very tight political control? To be sure, once a system is sanctioned, it is up to the field commanders to improvise.

Indeed, the Imperial government was so used to setting up comfort stations, that they “naturally” assumed that they would be needed for the incoming occupying troops. Thus, before the Occupation began, the government coordinated the establishment of Recreation and Amusement Associations (RAA) which were state-sponsored brothels for the foreigners. It took MacArthur a while to figure it out, but by March 46, he had them shut down.

BTW, talking about the constitutionality of a congressional resolution is just plain silly, no embarrassing.