Interview: Why can't Abe visit other Asian places victimized by Japan in war: "comfort women" museum chief

"Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is leaving for Pearl Harbor to 'offer condolences', but why can't he visit and offer condolences to Nanjing and other places in Asia which were also victimized by Japan before and during Word War II?" asked Eriko Ikeda, chairwoman of a museum in Tokyo dedicated to remembering the "comfort women".

It's simply because the prime minister doesn't want to do it, as he is a historical revisionist who views history not based on facts but believes what he wants to believe, she added.

Ikeda has been chairwoman of the Women's Active Museum on War and Peace (WAM) since she retired in 2010 after making TV programs for Japan's public broadcaster NHK for some 37 years.

WAM, founded in 2005, based on the will of and historical materials collected by the deceased former Asahi Shimbun reporter and women's rights activist Yayori Matsui, is Japan's only museum focused on wartime sexual violence against women.

The museum, located in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward, displays materials and testimony on the "comfort women" who were forced into sexual slavery by Japan in China, Korea, the Philippines and other areas in Asia during the war.

According to Ikeda, with the Japanese government denying the historical truth as well as its culpability in forcing women to serve as "comfort women," the situation is now becoming more and more difficult for those who want to remember the war with factual accuracy.

Ikeda's team investigated museums all around Japan with the theme of peace and war. Very few of the museums exhibit materials on or even mention the "comfort women" issue, and some of the few that did mention the issue were forced to remove the displayed materials due to pressure from ultra-rightwing forces who claim that admitting the facts about "comfort women" reflects a "self-torturing" historical view.

"It is so regrettable that local governments and relevant bodies have failed to preserve those historical materials," she lamented.

The government is also suppressing the memory of the issue in its own way. Middle school history textbooks compiled by seven publishers in Japan mentioned the "comfort women" issue in 1997, while none of them mentioned the issue in 2012.

The media is also under pressure. When Ikeda was working for NHK, she took part in the production of eight programs about "comfort women" in the 1990s. But no such program has been made since then.

Meanwhile, WAM constantly receives harassing calls and threatening emails. It received a letter of threat in October which demanded it to remove war-related displays. The museum reported the letter to the police, noting that it was its first-ever bomb threat, but no result came out of the investigation.

Ikeda has been worried that with a government in denial of true history and ultra-right forces imposing pressure on those who want to remember the facts of the past, the Japanese people may soon not know the truth about the "comfort women" issue and Imperial Japan's coercion and abuse of thousands of sex slaves.

"Prime Minister Shinzo Abe hopes to shake off the burden and guilt caused by Japan's wartime history and just focus on the future, but it is impossible," she said.

"Just have a look at what the German leaders have done... I feel ashamed to have such a leader in Japan," she added.

She also said that it's time for the people to expose the Abe administration's problems one by one. "We will pass on the facts about the history of 'comfort women' to future generations, and people will know that such injustice can't go on," she said. Endit