Nuns Protest Japan’s Lack Of Remorse

About 1,000 Roman Catholic nuns held a protest Monday against what they said was Japan’s lack of remorse for its policy of forcing Asian women into prostitution during World War II.

During the one-hour protest in front of the Japanese Embassy, the nuns delivered a letter addressed to Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama demanding a full apology and compensation for the victims.

The nuns also called for rewriting Japanese textbooks to include details of Japan’s wartime brutality. Japanese textbooks frequently modify or delete references to the country’s wartime past.

Japan acknowledged for the first time last year that its imperial army operated front-line brothels and forced women from all over Asia into prostitution for its soldiers.

Korean historians say 70,000 to 200,000 teenagers and young women were forced to be prostitutes for Japanese troops in China, Southeast Asia and Japan during the war.

Many Koreans believe Japan has never adequately apologized for its brutality during the war and its 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula, when tens of thousands of Koreans were forced into prostitution and labor camps.

Japan has offered to establish a $1 billion fund over the next 10 years to build an Asia exchange center for youth programs, an archive of war documents and an Asian women’s center in Japan to help victims.

South Korea has rejected the Japanese move as insufficient. It demanded that Japan first disclose full details of its wartime atrocities and make a fuller apology.