Imperialist Discourse and Neo-Fascism in Japan

Another unspoken rule of the dominant discourse: It's alright to deny one's responsibility for past crimes against humanity -- as long as the people against whom those crimes were committed were not White.

Case in point – Last week Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe publicly denied that the Japanese Government was responsible for the system of forced sexual slavery maintained in the areas of East Asia under Japanese control during World War II:

There is no evidence to prove there was coercion, nothing to support it... So, in respect to this declaration, you have to keep in mind that things have changed greatly.

The declaration Prime Minister Abe referred to was the one the Japanese Government made on August 4, 1993 in which it admitted playing an unspecified role in the maintenance of brothels – the so-called "Comfort Stations" – while denying any responsibility and denying that any war crime had been committed. This declaration came largely as a response to pressure from a movement led by some the few survivors of the Comfort Stations. The stories of these women – so-called "Comfort Women" who came from all over East Asia but mainly from Korea – are horrific. The following is the testimony of Chong Ok Sun:

I was born on 28 December 1920, in Phabal-Ri, Pungsan County, South Hamgyong Province, in the north of the Korean peninsula.

One day in June, at the age of 13, I had to prepare lunch for my parents who were working in the field and so I went to the village well to fetch water. A Japanese garrison soldier surprised me there and took me away, so that my parents never knew what had happened to their daughter. I was taken to the police station in a truck, where I was raped by several policemen. When I shouted, they put socks in my mouth and continued to rape me. The head of the police station hit me in my left eye because I was crying. That day I lost my eyesight in the left eye.

After 10 days or so, I was taken to the Japanese army garrison barracks in Heysan City. There were around 400 other Korean young girls with me and we had to serve over 5,000 Japanese soldiers as sex slaves every day - up to 40 men per day. Each time I protested, they hit me or stuffed rags in my mouth. One held a matchstick to my private parts until I obeyed him. My private parts were oozing with blood.

One Korean girl who was with us once demanded why we had to serve so many, up to 40, men per day. To punish her for her questioning, the Japanese company commander Yamamoto ordered her to be beaten with a sword. While we were watching, they took off her clothes, tied her legs and hands and rolled her over a board with nails until the nails were covered with blood and pieces of her flesh. In the end, they cut off her head. Another Japanese, Yamamoto, told us that 'it's easy to kill you all, easier than killing dogs'. He also said 'since those Korean girls are crying because they have not eaten, boil the human flesh and make them eat it'.

One Korean girl caught a venereal disease from being raped so often and, as a result, over 50 Japanese soldiers were infected. In order to stop the disease from spreading and to 'sterilize' the Korean girl, they stuck a hot iron bar in her private parts.

Once they took 40 of us on a truck far away to a pool filled with water and snakes. The soldiers beat several of the girls, shoved them into the water, heaped earth into the pool and buried them alive.

I think over half of the girls who were at the garrison barracks were killed. Twice I tried to run away, but both times we were caught after a few days. We were tortured even more and I was hit on my head so many times that all the scars still remain. They also tattooed me on the inside of my lips, my chest, my stomach and my body. I fainted. When I woke up, I was on a mountainside, presumably left for dead. Of the two girls with me, only Kuk Hae and I survived. A 50-year-old man who lived in the mountains found us, gave us clothes and something to eat. He also helped us to travel back to Korea, where I returned, scarred, barren and with difficulties in speaking, at the age of 18, after five years of serving as a sex slave for the Japanese.

The establishment of Comfort Stations in the areas of East Asia controlled by Japan began as early as 1932, became a widespread and regular practice by 1937 and continued until the Japanese surrender in 1945. Japanese Government documents, uncovered in 1992, reveal that military personnel – either directly or via middlemen – procured women for the brothels using coercion, deception and brute force. As the testimony of Chong Ok Sun and other survivors reveals, as well as the investigations of the United Nations and the International Commission of Jurists, the Comfort Stations were a system of Concentration Camps akin to the Lagers in Germany at the same time (in fact the SS also maintained "Joy Divisions" or "Womens Camps" in Auschwitz and other locations near the Eastern Front in which both Jewish and Non-Jewish women were forced into sexual slavery although the system was not as widespread as in the case of the Comfort Stations). Moreover, considering that most of these 200,000 women did not survive their enslavement, the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights stated in 1996 that the Japanese Government's establishment of the Comfort Stations should be considered an act of genocide.

Now imagine what kind of outrage would result if the Prime Minister of Germany were to declare that the German Government during World War II was not responsible for the Holocaust, that there never was a genocide and that the government was changing its position on the issue!

Remember how the news media of the core imperialist nations demonized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for questioning the historical veracity of the Final Solution and the Lagers? And Iran wasn't even responsible for the Lagers! Here we are talking about the very same country responsible for the forced enslavement and murder of nearly 200,000 women now denying its responsibility for the crime and denying that any crime was committed at all! Where are all the noisy reporters who were so upset about the President of Iran now?

North Korea

"Before a journalist starts to cover foreign policy issues, he or she should first be required to report on car accidents."

John Feffer, Co-Director, Foreign Policy In Focus and Director, Global Affairs, International Relations Center

Most journalists in the U.S. are simply mouthpieces for the foreign policy of whatever administration happens to be in office at the time. The notion that there exists an opposing view must strike them as utterly alien. It must be nice to get paid not to think. This is blatant when it comes to North Korea. We, the mentally retarded U.S. public, are told that the leaders of North Korea are a bunch of irrational lunatics just aching to shower us with nuclear weapons. Never mind that North Korea has had large stockpiles of chemical weapons for decades, and perhaps biological weapons as well, but has never used them. And never mind that the country has maintained its sovereignty for over 50 years! They're just a bunch of psychopaths. We're also fed a big juicy line on how our leaders just want to spread Democracy and Freedom to North Korea! Pardon me while I go somewhere private to vomit. Let's think about some of the great things the U.S. has done for Korea since World War II:

August 6 and 9, 1945 -- The U.S. drops nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ultimately killing hundreds of thousands of people including at least 60,000 Koreans mostly brought to Japan forcibly as laborers.

August 15, 1945 -- The U.S. authorities in the South support reactionaries who collaborated with the Japanese. These men formed the kernel of the government of South Korea which would eventually include military dictators like Park Jung Hee who used techniques to suppress dissent that they had learned from their Japanese masters before liberation.

Korean War -- U.S. forces, likely as a result of General MacArthur's view of all Koreans as "defeated enemies" as well as the knowledge that the North enjoyed widespread support among the people, are under orders to view any unidentified person on the battlefield as hostile.

Korean War -- The U.S. uses chemical weapons, especially napalm, extensively during the conflict.

July, 1950 -- Elements of the Second Battalion, U.S. Seventh Cavalry Regiment, massacre hundreds of civilians (mostly women and children) at No Gun Ri.

May 1980 -- The U.S. government approves the use of force against pro-Democracy demonstrators in the city of Kwangju and commits to direct intervention if the situation gets out of hand. A massacre ensues, the notorious Kwangju Massacre, that results in the deaths of between 500 and 2000 (the final death toll is still unknown because the military dumped bodies in mass graves and lakes) civilian demonstrators at the hands of the U.S.-backed South Korean military.

Now let's add that to all the other fucked-up shit the U.S. has done and continues to do all over the world and let's wonder why on earth the government of North Korea, which the President included in his "axis of evil" speech, would want to acquire nuclear weapons!