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Generally, I try to keep this blog happy, positive and upbeat but I’m not happy today and if people don’t like it, that’s too bad. This news has made me very angry.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s grandfather was a war criminal who got away with it. However, as Shinzo Abe claims that convicted Class A war criminals aren’t criminals at all (“under domestic law” – nice bureaucratic touch that) he probably doesn’t have a problem with that. Now he is carrying on his grandpappy’s legacy with his own nationalistic agenda. His attempts to bury history and to instill a nationalistic pride in the nation’s youth with his education “reforms” are causing much concern in Japan and abroad. And now he is denying that there is any evidence Korean and Chinese women were coerced into sexual slavery during World War 2. The truth is that hundreds of thousands of young women and children were abducted by the Japanese military in a government approved program and forcibly raped by up to fifty men a day. They were called “comfort women”. Not many survived and those that did were left with severe physical and psychological injuries. Today, you will sometimes see them on a news program or in a newspaper. What you will see is an old lady crying outside of a courthouse because the Japanese legal system has yet to award these women recognition or compensation of any kind. There has been no official apology. And now the Prime Minister has the gall to say it never happened. Haven’t these people been hurt and insulted enough?

I seriously worry about Japan’s future with such a despicable man at the helm. How many people support him? Who will speak out?

Here are some more links on this issue:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/sla_japa.htm
http://taiwan.yam.org.tw/womenweb/conf_women/index_e.html
http://www.cmht.com/cases_comfortwomen.php