SDHF Newsletter No.223 Report to Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination 8

NGO Report to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
NGO Report in relation to the tenth to eleventh periodic reports of Japan
Series No. 8: 7. The Comfort Women and Coomaraswamy Report
Submitted by the Japan NGO Coalition against Racial Discrimination

August 20, 2018

The seventh report of the Japan NGO Coalition is “7. Comfort Women and Coomaraswamy Report.”
This report points out that the Committee’s Understanding concerning the so-called comfort women, stated in its concluding observation, is terribly mistaken.
Primary source evidence such as US Office of War Information reports clearly indicates that “a comfort girl is nothing more than a prostitute or professional camp follower attached to the Japanese Army for the benefit of Soldiers”; they worked on contract to pay off the family debt, which was an advance loan payment provided by the procurer and their average income was 1,500 yen per month, when a skilled factory worker could earn only 30 yen per month; “all Korean prostitutes that PoW have seen in the Pacific were volunteers or had been sold by their parents into prostitution.” The Committee’s understanding neglects all of these fundamental facts.
Presumably, the Committee’s incorrect understanding of the comfort women is based on the 1996 Coomaraswamy Report. The NGO report carefully reviews the Coomaraswamy Report and concludes that the Report was written based on two books. One book was “The Comfort Women,” written by George Hicks. The book quotes heavily from a book titled, “The Emperor’s Forces and Korean Comfort Women,” by Kim Il Myon, which is filled with baseless rumors and ridiculous fabrications. The other book was Yoshida Seiji’s “My War Time Crimes”. It is widely known today that his story is a complete fabrication and, consequently, the Asahi Shimbun admitted to this, retracting 13 news articles that they had published.
The NGO report points out that the Committee’s Recommendations are based on falsities and recommends to the Committee that it entirely revises or invalidates the 1996 Coomaraswamy Report.

7. Comfort Women and Coomaraswamy Report
URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/essay-article/1226/
PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/2018-08-CERD96_Japan_JNCRD-8.pdf

Questions are welcome.

MOTEKI Hiromichi, Acting Chairman
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact