News Update - PM Abe Denied WWII Forced Prostitution

We posted about the departure of Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, a while back but we just read that among the many other scandals of his time in office he denied Japan's role in forcing as many as 200,000 women in China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Korea and the Philippines, into prostitution for the Japanese military. These "Comfort Women" are widely recognized by historians and the Japanese government has apologized for the WWII practice in the past.

While the Japanese government apologized in 1993 for its role in trafficking women during the war, it has refused to provide government compensation to victims. In June, the US House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution aimed at urging Japan to take responsibility in "a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Forces’ coercion of young women into sexual slavery."

This is big, folks. This is like if today the German president denied there was a Holocaust. "Comfort women" aren't just a rumor; their existence is an extremely well documented fact.

Like many things of this nature, it is believed he denied it because to this day the Japanese government has refused to pay these women - its victims - reparations. (The same thing is still kind of happening with the German government and the Romani or 'Gypsy' survivors of concentration camps from WWII.)

PS. The image above is from the Wikipedia article on the subject.

News - Goodnight For Japan's PM

Shinzo Abe, Japan's youngest postwar prime minister (he's 52,) announced his resignation on Wednesday.
The move apparently surprised not only party members but members of his own Cabinet, "by deciding to resign only days after he pledged to stake his government on the success of legislation to extend Japan's naval mission in the Indian Ocean."

In a televised conference he stated, "I find myself unable to keep my promises — I myself have become an obstacle to fulfilling those promises."

Election defeat, resistance from an opposition leader, and unclarified health problems were all listed as contributing factors in his decision.

Abe's administration has been plagued with scandals and even suicide, after which support for the leader dropped to 30%.

"...Abe's unpopular government had become a liability for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party..."

We were surprised to find out (although we shouldn't have been) that Japan too is beset with imperialistic families who find multiple members of the same immediate family in the Prime Minister's seat generation after generation. In Abe's case, his grandfather was Prime Minister and his father was a foreign minister.

We were either naive or ignorant enough to think that it was just the US' problem.

PS. This just in; he has been hospitalized for exhaustion.