＜特別対談＞慰安婦問題はフィクションだ

The Comfort Women Issue is a fiction.

YK(Yoshihisa Komori):Today, I’d like to talk to Mr.Michael Yon, an American journalist who is well-known for his war coverages.  Okay. So, I have been dealing with this so-called comfort women issue mostly in Washington,  D.C. and paying attention to the activities in that regard in the United States.  This goes back to the mid 1990s, but as you and I know very well, this movement, so to speak, regarding the comfort women reached the one which peaks in year 2006, 2007 with the resolution introduced to the House of Representatives mainly initiated by Mike Honda, a California representative. I understand someone of your stature coming into this issue is something that lots of Japanese are excited about and welcome, but I think you have spent a lot of time, energy and probably risking your life in Afghanistan, but earlier in Iraq, so probably you know a lot about the military in general, a military and sex so that’s exactly the issue that you and I are faced with. So, not preambled, do you like to tell me how yocame to be interested in this issue and how you have progressed so far?

MY (Michael Yon ): I watched it loosely over the years.  I’ve always been interested in geopolitics.  And of course, after spend time in several wars or conflicts, you become even more interested in geopolitics.  It is clear that the PRC uses various issues to split apart Japan, R.O.K., the U.S.A., Australia, and others.  China’s goals are to expand, and China already is expanding.  Insofar as the Comfort Women Issue (CWI), various parties have vested interests.  Some people who want this CWI, more specifically sex-slaves, to be true, so to speak, and one of those is China. China is the biggest. There are other local interests such as specific women who want to get paid, who wish to get money from Japan.  Communist groups in various countries use it for political purposes.  When an article about comfort women starts with words about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, that’s when you know it’s about him and or larger politics. It’s not about comfort women.  It is not about human rights.  It is about politics.  Some parties use this issue to undermine Mr. Abe or US bases in Okinawa and elsewhere.  These people do not care about human rights.  A fictional sex-slave story from more than 70 years ago is the last issue that anyone who cares about human rights would go to.  In February 2015, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, there are 3.7 million registered refugees from the Syria war alone.  This number climbs by the minute, and there are other large human rights disasters around the world that are happening this moment.  Those who drag the comfort women issue out as if this is some noble human rights issue, bring shame upon themselves and dishonor upon their positions.

YK: That’s right. The most American critics seem to manipulate the comfort women issue to target Mr. Abe’s behavior, although the Obama Administration, as well as the previous Bush Administration welcome Abe’s Pro-American policy. On the other hand, some in the Obama Administration are skeptical of Abe’s pursuit of uniqueness and independence and those liberals criticize Abe by calling him “nationalist”, “Right-winger”, and “reactionary”.  It’s illogical and irrational. That’s the group in the United States which criticize Prime Minister Abe through the comfort women issue. 

MY: Right, and you can tell, usually within the first few sentences they’ll start off with right-wingers in Japan and then go on to a preamble and then finally they talk about comfort women. There are endless human rights issues right now across the globe.  Here in Thailand there are huge issues. In the United States you have Mindy Kotler, who as you know has worked for Congressman Mike Honda. Kotler’s big pedestal is women’s rights, feminism, that sort of thing. So in the United States you get that one angle that’s about, say, women’s rights and human’s rights. And then over in Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia it was about lawsuits before.  Some people merely were gold digging.

President Park over in Korea can hardly mention the name of Japan without throwing in a comfort women reference. Those are all the smaller players and then the big player is clearly China who is using this as a geopolitical tool, and they are playing Korea like a fool. China is the hand inside the Korean puppet. 

You see these comfort women statues going up in places like Glendale, which I visited twice and there was a bunch of Japanese visitors who were there on the second day, fifteen of them, and they were getting a tour from the Korean group called KAFC, Korean-American Forum of California. But the 15 Japanese communist that were there, they actually said there were communist, had responded to an advertisement in the Akahata about visiting Glendale. This is very interesting.  If you look back at Glendale statue, by the way, of the list of countries on the plaque, there is Thailand. The plaque makes it out to look like all these countries are against Japan when Thailand is not against Japan at all. Thailand has zero issues about comfort women. I’ve met with the right people here in Thailand, done my homework, there’s zero issue from Thailand, but the accusation is on the plaque in Glendale.  That accusation is that Thais have a grievance with Japanese.  Our team found very strong evidence that Thais helped run a comfort station along with Japanese.  We are still investigating the Thai side, but of course the Thai-Japan relationship was good then, and great now.  Thailand has no grievance with Japan, and to my knowledge never had any grievance with Japan.  Yet the anti-Japan forces try to make it appear that all of Asia hates Japan.

Only four countries cause major problems for Japan.  Those countries are China. The Koreas.  And Japan. 

Japan causes more problems for Japan than the Koreas or China cause. No other Asian country or any country on earth, to my knowledge, has any problem with Japan.  I have been to about 70 countries, about 20 in Asia, and I know that Japan is respected outside of those four countries.

The Chinese hand is everywhere in this information war. For instance, the lawsuits in Glendale filed by Dr. Koichi Mera and his group. I’ve got a copy of the lawsuits.  

Inside the packet is a Chinese amicus from Global Alliance. I mean, Global Alliance China. Global Alliance is a core of this movement. (Not to be confused with the Japanese organization with a similar name but with the goal of exposing source documents to set the record straight that the sex-slavery narrative is false.)

In the IWG report of 2007, the researchers specifically stated that they were looking for comfort women evidence and that’s 30-million-dollar study that took about six years. And then in the final report to Congress, the American researchers apologized to Global Alliance and others because they couldn’t find anything about the comfort women.  This is a smoking gun of Global Alliance’s global reach and influence.

YK: The most critical point is whether or not Japanese army or the government as a matter of policy forcefully and coercively recruited young innocent women in the Korean peninsula or in the mainland China or in other parts of Asia during the war time. And my position, as well as probably position taken by the Japanese government, is that there was no such thing. There was no systematic coercive recruitment by the Japanese military for Japanese women.　I think there’s a prevailing impression in Japan that it’s Korean-Americans rather than Chinese who have been pushing this issue of comfort women harassing and making Japan looking like some morally, ethically inferior nation. So that fits into that geopolitical picture that you just mentioned.

MY: Some Koreans are deeply involved in this, for instance the KAFC organization, that sort of thing, but behind it, there’s a Chinese hand.　Chinese are masters of manipulation.  They know how to create that comfort women statue in Japan. That’s genius! They put that out there on a remote island, which nobody even knows the statue is there practically, but then they go to places like Glendale and Union City in New Jersey and say, “Look, the Japanese put up a statue in Okinawa!” Then you find that the former mayor if Glendale, Mayor Weaver, feels now, he realizes that Glendale was used as a pawn because once Glendale allowed KAFC to install the propaganda statue, many problems began. Weaver said he was getting many emails from Koreans and Japanese and then as he mentioned that now Glendale can expect the Armenians will ask them to put up a statue and create problems with Turkey and it’s just a very clever ploy by China, which blows up into headaches for everyone, while China builds warships.

YK: Right, but, Michael, now that we’re on this geopolitical aspect dimension of the issue, some are related to that. Next year we’ll mark the 70th anniversary since the end of World War II and all the indications are that the Chinese government will launch a full-scale negative campaign against Japan. It’s emphasizing the fact that China, the U.S., Soviet Union, European countries are all one side against Nazi Germany and Japan. Have you paid attention to their attempt for the next year? I think there’s a serious concern in Japan. Some people feel that we really need to be prepared for that and probably trying to launch a counter campaign against the Chinese attempt and comfort women issue clearly would be the one that would be used by the Chinese side.

MY: You can see China doing it now. China is building museums. There is a museum in Nanking and they just opened up another comfort women display in Taiwan. It has been in the news this week. China pumping big money into this. They’re already executing the plan, so yes, I would expect something substantial. China is not just rewriting history.  China makes up history from scratch.

YK: Right. But just going back to the point closer to the point of departure, how did you become interested in this issue? I mean, because you are well-known in the United States and other parts of the world as a military reporter. Your reports, longstanding reports from Iraq as well as from Afghanistan got a worldwide attention, but probably you didn’t deal with Japan or any the issues related to Japan until now recently, so can you just concisely tell some evolutionary process on your part to come where you are?

MY: I spent most of the last 10 years overseas in Asia, I’m most well-known for my war work in Afghanistan and Iraq and also conflict in Thailand. But I’ve only been to the United States one time in the last three years and that was to investigate comfort women issues, so I spent about 20 years overseas.  

There’s also the Yasukuni Shrine and Nanking and other things that Chinese and Koreans are using as one package to try to cause frictions between various countries especially United States, Japan, Australia, and Korea.  It’s working!

YK: Yeah.  But I understand the motivation about some Chinese or South Koreans. The one that intrigues me that I cannot understand is the fact some Americans, American journalists, American scholars, American politicians seem to go with the line that is promoted and pushed by China and they seemed to genuinely believe that the Japanese Army did such horrible things systematically and pushing it against what we consider facts, though.

MY: So it’s causing, obviously, Japanese to become angry with Americans when they see President Obama make a statement or Hillary Clinton.  Or Resolution 121 in 2007. All these things are starting to make Japanese say, “Hey, what’s wrong? Why are our American friends abandoning us?” Americans don’t believe anything that comes from China unless Chinese are talking bad about Japan, and then suddenly we take Chinese as a credible source, which is quite strange because I think by far―― Well, you’ve lived in America. I think you can tell me if this is true or not. I believe most Americans have a very positive view of Japan.  Of all the countries and cultures I have experienced or worked in or with, Japanese easily are the most honest. The PRC government is easily one of the most dishonest.  Why so many people believe China about anything is a mystery.  A mystery often based on money. China invests in writing history the way it wants it.  China invests in books, movies, art – anything that pushes its agenda.

YK: Yeah, it’s true. But how come this type of misunderstanding regarding the behavior of the Japanese Imperial Force exit among leaders and intellectuals in the United States?

MY: The power of the book. The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang ―― who was mentally ill and unfortunately shot herself ――there were problems with that book and as you know, a powerful book can make a big difference in perceptions. For instance, Yoshida Seiji. Look what happened with his 1977 and 1982 re-release. That was obviously huge. Or here’s another one that I’m going to mention in an upcoming article: Greg Mortenson. You may have never heard of Mortenson, but he published the popular book Three Cups of Tea.

This is fascinating story and it relates to this. He told a big fiction about a climbing trip to K2, which he did, and he said that he had an accident and a bunch of Pakistani villagers took him in. So to pay them back, over the years he started building schools in Pakistan. He wrote the book that sold about three million copies and he started doing fund raisers. Like in 2010 he raised 23 million dollars. He would fly around and do speeches and make about 30,000 or so dollars per speech. President Obama donated $100,000 from his own Nobel Prize. Ex-President Clinton endorsed him. Greg Mortenson ended up becoming an advisor to General McChrystal who was running the war in Afghanistan. Mortenson was an advisor to General McChrystal and that book, which I read, was mandatory reading for all soldiers going to Afghanistan. Turns out the book was a big lie.  So Mortenson ended up advising on the Afghanistan war based on a lie, and no relevant experience, the same way some people become President of the USA.

YK: Unbelievable!

MY: There were parts of Mortenson’s story that were true, but the larger picture, it was a fiction and the same happened, I believe, with Iris Chang and the “The Rape of Nanking.”  Maybe we should call it “Three Cups of Nanking.”

Global Alliance helped push that book, so the next thing you know, Nanking, which you studied in detail Mr. Komori, at one point the U.S. estimated that there had been 20,000 killed and then at another point maybe 40,000, for your articles correctly, but it’s pretty hard to kill 300,000 people when there weren’t 300,000 people there.

YK: Right. Michael, getting back to the heart of the issue, the nature of the so-called comfort women, your position is that they’re now more than just prostitutes for the military. They are paid based on commercial activities in the commercial nature even though just current Japanese military involvement in terms of managing or supervising sometimes of the co-called comfort stations.

MY: You know, all the years I’ve spent in a war, which would be four solid years in war and a lot more time in low-level fighting, one thing that the generals always want is more troops and more supplies. 

Even with the best logistics in the world, we still always want more. So think about this from World War II perspective with highly competent Japanese admirals and generals who had been very busy. They’ve got a war on their hands and it’s not going well. They’re not going to dedicate troops to kidnap women when that is going to do is tie up their troops. They’re going to have to guard the women, transport the women, feed the women, and not only that, kidnapping 200,000 women would create a lot enemies so they would start attacking in the rear.  Their families would, and when you think about witnesses, 200,000 women should leave a lot of witnesses, right? But not just the women. Think about that. If it happened on Jeju island, the whole island would know about it. You can’t do something like that, kidnap 200 women there without everybody on the island knowing about it. Their entire families, every village. I mean, if you came to a village with 200 people and kidnap 3 women, you would have 200 witnesses, plus te kidnappers as witnesses.  The whole village and those three women.　Kidnapping 200,000 women would leave millions of witnesses. Where are all these witnesses?  Nowhere to be found.

YK: So you have witnessed some American military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan and you probably saw the sex aspect of their troops and maybe not just Afghan or Iraq, but some other countries to go, wherever and whenever the military appears, there’s some hoard of women trading after them offering sex service. 

MY: Among young US troops, Korea is famous for prostitution, cold weather and kimchi.  I have been to Korea, but I was not stationed there. I mean, when you talk to young soldiers about Korea, the first thing they’ll say is, “Yes, very cold and there’s a lot of prostitutes.”  And as you know wars are fought almost exclusively by young men. The vast majority of soldiers are young men and they’ve got extra money in their pockets. They got the money, the girls want the money and they show up. When a Navy ship comes to Thailand it’s famous that the women go to the ships to greet the sailors basically as they get off. It is common, it’s quite normal as you know in Honolulu in World War II. Hotel Street was famous for US military-run brothels. It sounds similar to the comfort women system.

YK: True.

MY: Almost like exactly the same, really. Contractors were involved that were doing it, they were getting the women and set everything up, but the military was involved in price fixing and that kind of thing. It was also right there on the Korean bases in the 1980s, or at least that is what US troops say.  In the Iraq war, in the Afghanistan war, it was well known that quite a lot of women came over, especially from the Philippines and they would get jobs as a, they would work in the laundries or they would do the hair salons or any of that stuff, but their real job, that was their cover job, the real job was they were prostitutes.  This was not officially permitted and if they were caught they would be sent home, but this was also a reality.

YK: So Japanese Imperial Army didn’t have monopoly on the sex services and the use of it on a commercial basis.

MY: No way! Even now we’ve got something called Cobra Gold here in Thailand. Cobra Gold is an annual exercise between Thailand, United States, Malaysia, Singapore, and a few other countries. Japan comes, too. Anyway, Cobra Gold is famous among American soldiers who come over here and the first thing they do is, when they’re off duty, is they go out to the brothels.  Not all of them.  It is not like all troops go to brothels.  Many actually do not, but many do.  These are not revelations, just acknowledgements.

YK: Right. So in your view, Japanese comfort women were far from being sex slaves as such.

MY: They were making a lot of money. I mean, if you look at POW report 49 from 1944 ――the OWI report ―― according to that, they were making about ¥9,000 per year. I don’t know how that really translates on conversions and that kind of thing, but I did look up――I believe Dr. Hata also researched the same, but the Japanese full general was making like ¥6,600 per year. These girls are making 9,000, but that’s 9,000 after they’ve paid their bills, so they’re really making more like 18,000 or so. They pay half to the house then they have 9,000 left over. Pretty amazing.

YK: Right, okay. Speaking of printed media or any mainstream media, the Asahi Shimbun for one, as you know, published a retraction or correction of their previous reporting, longstanding reporting on the issue of comfort women, but unfortunately that correction retraction didn’t really register themselves to the non-Japanese critics of this issue. And some American critics of the comfort women issue are not willing to accept that. They portrayed the developments in Japan as some rightwing forces headed by Prime Minister Abe ganging up on pro-liberal Asahi Shimbun, you know?

MY: I think it came from Yoshida Seiji and then he was like, when it comes to Adam and Eve, he is like “Adam.”  The first. And Asahi Shimbun and other derivatives are the “Eve”. It’s taken up a life of its own and it’s clear that with some people it’s reached a cult status, like Greg Mortenson with his book “Three Cups of Tea,” or Iris Chang with “Three Cups of Nanking.” It reached a status at some point where to question Mortenson would be like to get struck by lightning. But then he was debunked and things fell apart, but there’s people that still believe in him, by the way, but it’s the same as with the comfort women thing. No matter what evidence that you come up with, some people will snake around it or try to explain away the obvious.

YK: Aha, right. On the part of the Japanese government, you started as sort of belated effort to try to send out messages to correct the misimpression of the whole nation of Japan, the people of Japan on this deriving from misunderstanding of the comfort women issue. For example, I think the Japanese government officially should raise a protest against the United Nations report, the report filed by some lady from Sri Lanka. 

We would encourage the Japanese government or the United Nations as the entities to start addressing this issue internationally and stand up for our historical truths. So would Japanese private sectors. 

MY: He was doing the same thing that in my Southern culture, or in Thai culture, in Japanese culture, too, you’re like, “I’ll just say I’m sorry, even though I’m not really guilty and that will make it go away.” But if you say, “I’m sorry,” to Koreans or Chinese or some people from New York City, you know, they’re going to come at you like piranhas. They’re going to say, “You admitted that you’re guilty!” and you’re like, “Yeah, I was saying I am sorry so that it would go away and we could go on with life. I wasn’t really saying I’m guilty.” I think that’s a slight danger with the Japanese culture, which is exactly the same as my Southern culture in the United States is that that, and the high level Thai culture as well, is that if you’re doing good things and you’re a good person in your heart, you think everybody will see it.  But many do not see it.

YK: For Japan, the reexamination of the Kono statement is a must. If the whole reexamination is diplomatically difficult, then the government should issue a new statement which weakens the message of Kono.  Status quo is not acceptable for the future generation of the Japanese people who’d have to face false accusation. 

MY: I think it’s important to re-examine the Kono Statement and to hit 121 and the UN report.  They are not built on a strong foundation. For people that have studied this, 121 means nothing. First of all, House Resolution 121 was non-binding. You’ve covered Washington. Those things don’t mean anything. Secondly, it was done by Mike Honda and Mindy Kotler and that crew? Thirdly, in the first draft of 121 Seiji was mentioned.  121 was based in part on Yoshido Seiji’s books which people on all sides admit is a total lie.  Japan must continue to argue the fallacy of those resolutions and UN reports. I think persistently hitting of over and over.  So finally they say, “Look, it’s clear that we made a mistake and admit to it,” because――Like Asahi Shimbun, if they had admitted to their mistake years ago, we wouldn’t have even known about it. We would have forgotten about it. You would have forgotten probably. I would have never heard about it if Asahi merely would have admitted to this years ago.

YK: The U.S. Supreme Court already had made a judgment that Japan has already paid or taken care of that, you know.

MY: Yes, these issues are old. For instance, the 1965 Treaty. Everything was settled, with a payout of 800 million dollars if I’m correct.

YK: I’m not sure. About the money Japan gave to South Korea is I think clearly disclosed. It’s never been called a reparation or apology money as such. I think it’s under the name of economic assistance or some kind of assistance, but both governments acknowledge that was the nature along the line of compensation, you know. Anything you want to emphasize something at the very end for the Japanese public?

MY: It is important to stand in the face of Korea shouting and China manipulating. Generally speaking, the United States is neutral regarding this issue. No American soldiers and no American women were involved. But what I don’t want to see is Japan-U.S. relations drift apart over some fiction made by Korea and, well, Seiji, Asahi, various groups, and China.  Japan is in the right.  Japanese people, Japanese culture, are the most honest I have seen anywhere in the world.  Perfectly honest?  Of course not.  Seiji and Asahi lied and caused massive damage.  But as a country, Japan is tops on honesty.  People’s Republic of China is as a country a pathological liar.  

YK: This message is very encouraging, Michael. It’s coming from someone like you because you don’t have any other motivations on this issue, a completely neutral observer. In the U.S. Congress, the Republicans take over both the senate and House and it could be a positive sign for Japan-U.S. relationship. I’ll try my best to win the battle of history with my pen.