Lobbist

Japan hires US lobby firms over 'comfort women' issue

IANS  |  Washington  Last Updated at February 7, 2014 04:35 IST

https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/japan-hires-us-lobby-firms-over-comfort-women-issue-114020700060_1.html

 

Japan has hired US lobby firms to deal with "comfort women" issue that has roiled Japan's relations with those countries whose women were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese Imperial Armed Forces during World War II, a US daily said Thursday.
At least two Washington-based lobby firms, Hogan Lovells and Hecht Spencer & Associates, are keeping tabs on the issue for the Japanese government, The Hill, a congressional newspaper, said in an article published online, Xinhua reported.

Citing Justice Department records, the paper said the government in Tokyo paid Hogan Lovells more than $523,000 from September 2012 to August 2013, while Hecht Spencer received $195,000 over the same period.
The Japanese government said it has repeatedly apologised over the treatment of women during Japan's occupation of Asia and Pacific islands in the 1930s and 40s, including a 1993 statement issued by then chief cabinet secretary Yohei Kono in which Japan acknowledged the military's responsibility for forced recruitment of women into sexual servitude and apologised to the victims.
"But past efforts in Japan to revise the statement, and remarks by some Japanese officials downplaying the issue, have inflamed activists and lawmakers," The Hill report said.
The US House of Representatives adopted resolution 121 in July 2007, urging the Japanese government to "formally acknowledge, apologise and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner" over the issue of "comfort women."
The US Congress included language in an omnibus spending bill last month that urged Secretary of State John Kerry to raise the issue with Japan.
"They (Japan) tried to stop it, but once it passed, they kept quiet. They tried to ignore the issue of comfort women," Chejin Park, a staff attorney for Korean American Civic Empowerment, was quoted as saying by The Hill.
"Every year, we have been asking them to do it... but they have never paid attention to the resolution," he added.
For Mike Honda, a Japanese-American congressman from California who introduced resolution 121, the issue "remains unresolved".
"There are those who believe the Japanese government has apologised and sufficiently addressed this issue. I vehemently disagree," Honda wrote in a letter sent Tuesday to Kerry.
He cited recent remarks by several Japanese public figures including the mayor of Osaka saying that comfort women were "necessary".
In his letter to Kerry, Honda noted that few of the survivors are still alive: 55 remain in South Korea, 26 in the Philippines, five in Taiwan, and a few others elsewhere in Asia and the Pacific.



 In New Jersey, Memorial for ‘Comfort Women’ Deepens Old Animosity
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/nyregion/monument-in-palisades-park-nj-irritates-japanese-officials.html
By KIRK SEMPLEMAY 18, 2012

Two delegations of Japanese officials visited Palisades Park, N.J., this month with a request that took local administrators by surprise: The Japanese wanted a small monument removed from a public park.

The monument, a brass plaque on a block of stone, was dedicated in 2010 to the memory of so-called comfort women, tens of thousands of women and girls, many Korean, who were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese soldiers during World War II.

But the Japanese lobbying to remove the monument seems to have backfired — and deepened animosity between Japan and South Korea over the issue of comfort women, a longstanding irritant in their relations.

The authorities in Palisades Park, a borough across the Hudson River from Manhattan, rejected the demand, and now the Japanese effort is prompting Korean groups in the New York region and across the country to plan more such monuments.

“They’re helping us, actually,” said Chejin Park, a lawyer at the Korean American Voters’ Council, a civic group that championed the memorial in Palisades Park, where more than half of the population of about 20,000 is of Korean descent, according to the Census Bureau. “We can increase the awareness of this issue.”

Korean groups have been further motivated by a letter-writing campaign in Japan in opposition to a proposal by Peter Koo, a New York councilman and Chinese immigrant, to rename a street in Flushing, Queens, in honor of comfort women.

Mr. Park said that in the past week or so, his organization had received calls from at least five Korean community organizers around the country — in Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey and Texas — expressing interest in building their own memorials. These would be in addition to at least four memorials in the works in California and Georgia, he added.

The monument in Palisades Park is the only one in the United States dedicated to comfort women, borough officials said.

“Starting from Flushing, N.Y., we will continue the construction in the areas of major Korean-American communities,” said Paul Park, executive director of the Korean-American Association of Greater New York, one of the oldest Korean community organizations in the region. “We Korean-Americans observe the issue on the level of a global violation of human rights.”

Tensions between Japan and South Korea over the legacy of comfort women were reignited in December when a bronze statue in honor of victims was installed across the street from the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, the South Korean capital. Japanese officials have asked the Korean authorities to remove that statue.

Japanese leaders have said that their formal apologies, expressions of remorse and admissions of responsibility regarding the treatment of comfort women are sufficient, including an offer to set up a $1 billion fund for victims. But many Koreans contend that those actions are inadequate. Surviving victims have rejected the fund because it would be financed by private money. The victims are seeking government reparations.

 

Mayor James Rotundo of Palisades Park said the lobbying began obliquely late last month. Officials at the Japanese consulate in New York sent e-mails requesting a meeting with borough administrators.

 

“I called the secretary and said, ‘What is this about?’ ” the mayor recalled in an interview, “and she said, ‘It’s about Japanese-U.S. relations,’ and I said: ‘Oh. Well, O.K.’ ”

The first meeting, on May 1, began pleasantly enough, he said. The delegation was led by the consul general, Shigeyuki Hiroki, who talked about his career, including his work in Afghanistan — “niceties,” Mr. Rotundo said.

 

Then the conversation took a sudden turn, Mr. Rotundo said. The consul general pulled out two documents and read them aloud.

One was a copy of a 1993 statement from Yohei Kono, then the chief cabinet secretary, in which the Japanese government acknowledged the involvement of military authorities in the coercion and suffering of comfort women.

The other was a 2001 letter to surviving comfort women from Junichiro Koizumi, then the prime minister, apologizing for their treatment.

 

Mr. Hiroki then said the Japanese authorities “wanted our memorial removed,” Mr. Rotundo recalled.

The consul general also said the Japanese government was willing to plant cherry trees in the borough, donate books to the public library “and do some things to show that we’re united in this world and not divided,” Mr. Rotundo said. But the offer was contingent on the memorial’s removal. “I couldn’t believe my ears,” said Jason Kim, deputy mayor of Palisades Park and a Korean-American, who was at the meeting. “My blood shot up like crazy.”

Borough officials rejected the request, and the delegation left.

The second delegation arrived on May 6 and was led by four members of the Japanese Parliament. Their approach was less diplomatic, Mr. Rotundo said. The politicians, members of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party, tried, in asking that the monument be removed, to convince the Palisades Park authorities that comfort women had never been forcibly conscripted as sex slaves.

“They said the comfort women were a lie, that they were set up by an outside agency, that they were women who were paid to come and take care of the troops,” the mayor related. “I said, ‘We’re not going to take it down, but thanks for coming.’ ”

 

The Japanese consulate in New York has been reluctant to discuss its lobbying.

In interviews this week, Fumio Iwai, the deputy consul general, would not say whether the consul general had requested that the monument be removed. But he denied that the consul general had offered to help the borough in return for the monument’s removal. Mr. Hiroki “did not offer any such condition,” he said.

Mr. Iwai said the issue of comfort women, if not Palisades Park specifically, was the subject of continuing discussions “at a very high level” between the governments of South Korea and Japan.

he said, pausing as if to choose his words carefully, “things are quite complicated.”