Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe acknowledged before U.S. Congress that the Japanese imperial forces set up brothels for its troops during the war.
Mr. Abe even went beyond offering his deep apology for Japan’s misdeeds at that time when countless number of comfort women were forced as sex slaves. Historians claimed that an estimated 200,000 comfort women–mostly from China, Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines–were victimized by the Japanese troops.
On the contrary, Japanese scholars have denied the imperial forces used force to round up the comfort women, saying that private contractors were responsible for the abuses, reports said.
But on Thursday, Mr. Abe has offered his sympathy before U.S. lawmakers to the victims of sex slavery in Asia during wartime.
Mr. Abe’s reaction was provoked in March, after he was questioned as to whether Japan had any hand in coercing comfort women to work as sex slaves during the war. However, Mr. Abe could only stand by his 1993 statement that its troops set up brothels for its wartime troops and nothing more than that.
Aside from the issue, Mr. Abe and President Bush also discussed measures that would pressure North Korea to abide by its earlier commitments of stopping its nuclear program, if only to attain world peace.
Also part of the discussions between the two top officials focused on the North Korea’s abductions of Japanese citizens in 1970s and 1980s, who were believed to have been used by the Korean intelligence network.