Sparky: Maybe Mike Honda is on to something if Nakasone is now copping to holding a WWII officer's mess chess club using Korean female tweens as pawns...

And expect no mercy from me for anyone claiming a GOP stalwart and rapist Ronnie Reagan as a bud. Fair warning - eh?

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denies wartime responsibility for sex slaves

March 2, 2007

A Chinese girl from one of the Japanese Army's 'comfort battalions' awaits interrogation at a camp in Rangoon. Source: IWMCollections IWM Photo No.: SE 4523

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the leader of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, denied responsibility for military brothels set up during World War II. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Abe said, "There is no evidence to prove there was coercion, nothing to support it. So, in respect to this declaration, you have to keep in mind that things have changed greatly."

His statement contrasts with earlier comments in which he seemed to support a 1993 government declaration that Japan had in fact set up wartime military brothels.

Korean believe around 200,000 women from a multitude of different nations were forced into brothels during the war, where they would be raped dozens of times daily. However, conservative elements in the Japanese government have often denied or minimized the extent of war crimes taken place during World War II.

In 1992, historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi discovered a document titled Regarding the Recruitment of Women for Military Brothels in the Defense Agency's library (The content of this order is "A Japanese army prohibits the use for the malignant Korean people broker. "), prompting the government's 1993 declaration. Over the years, several former sex slaves have stepped forward, providing testimony in direct contrast with the Japanese government's.

Sources

• Norimitsu Onishi "Japan's prime minister denies responsibility for wartime brothels". International Herald Tribune, March 2, 2007
• Carl Freire "Growing Chorus Slams War-Brothel Remarks". The Washington Post, March 2, 2007
• Irish Examiner "Sex slaves 'were not coerced' says Japanese Prime Minister". Irish Examiner, March 3, 2007
• Daniel Kohns "Honda Testifies in Support of Comfort Women". http://honda.house.gov/, February 15, 2007

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Former Japanese leader Nakasone denies setting up sex slave brothel in World War II

Former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone speaks to reporters during a press conference in Tokyo, Friday, March 23, 2007.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone speaks to reporters during a press conference in Tokyo, Friday, March 23, 2007. (AP Photo)
A Japanese former prime minister and elder statesman Friday denied setting up a military brothel staffed by sex slaves during World War II, despite writing a memoir that critics say shows he did so while in the navy.

Yasuhiro Nakasone, who served as prime minister from 1982 to 1987 and was known for his friendship with then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan, described the facility he set up as a place for civilian engineers to relax and play Japanese chess.

"I never had personal knowledge of the matter," Nakasone told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan when asked about wartime sex slaves, known in Japan euphemistically as "comfort women."

"I only knew about it from what I read in the newspaper," he said, adding that such enslavement was "deplorable" and that he supported the Japanese government spokesman's 1993 apology to victims.

Historians say thousands of women -- most from Korea and China -- worked in the frontline brothels, and estimates run as high as 200,000. Victims say they were forced into the brothels by the Japanese military and were held against their will.

The U.S. House of Representatives is considering a resolution that calls on Japan to make a full apology for the brothels, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stirred criticism earlier this month when he denied there was evidence the women were forced into service.

A Nakasone memoir published in 1978 said that members of his 3,000-man navy unit in wartime Philippines and Borneo "began attacking women, while others took to gambling."

"At one point, I went to great pains to set up a comfort station" to keep them under control, he wrote. The essay was in an anthology of war accounts, "The Eternal Navy -- Stories to Hand Down to the Younger Generation."

In the 1990s, former Philippine sex slaves cited the memoir as further proof Nakasone was involved with enslavement, bolstering their demands that Tokyo compensate the victims. The Japanese government in 1995 set up a private fund for the women, but never offered direct government compensation.

A Nakasone spokesman in 1997 told The Associated Press that the brothel was operated by local business people and that the prostitutes worked there voluntarily and had not been forced into sexual slavery.

But on Friday, Nakasone was vague about the activities at the facility, skirting a question about whether prostitutes were active there.

"The engineers ... wanted to have a facility to relax and play 'go,' so we simply established a place so they could have that," Nakasone said, explaining that the men -- civilian engineers -- needed someplace for rest and entertainment.

Nakasone's government, as all Japanese governments until the 1990s, denied any official involvement with the wartime brothels.

The former prime minister is known in Japan for his nationalist stance. In 1985, he was the first Japanese prime minister to visit a Tokyo war shrine after it began honoring executed war criminals. (AP)

March 23, 2007

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For good folks who were real heroes - Guy Kawasaki's blog will link to this.

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Kinda back - Sparky

PS Look! Mel and his anger issues are news at my old Alma Mater! I'm with the Mayans here you hate filled bastard! Convert and get cut and give up your belief in a man as God bull and then you have a chance ...