The Women's Active Museum on War and Peace, established by public donations,
will present videos and written materials in which former "comfort women," as
they are euphemistically called in Japan, from the Asia-Pacific region testify
about their suffering. Historians put their number at around 200,000.
The museum, due to open Aug. 1 as Japan's first resource center on the crime,
will also provide visitors with information about other wartime atrocities
through its collections of books, photo panels and other documents, including
court materials, said Rumiko Nishino, chief of the institution.
Former sex slaves have been waging legal battles in Japan, demanding apologies
and compensation from the state, but with little success.
In one case, the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal in February by seven former
sex slaves from Taiwan against a lower court rejection of their demands for an
apology and 70 million yen in damages from the state.
"We are also planning to exhibit materials to show violent acts against women
are still continuing in the world's conflict areas," Nishino said.
The Women's Fund for Peace and Human Rights, a nonprofit organization that
founded the museum, decided to launch it to coincide with the 60th anniversary
of the end of World War II.
"We feel concerns that the negative legacy of Japan's wartime past has been
distorted, with most school history textbooks removing descriptions of Japan's
wartime atrocities, including sex slavery, and postwar compensation," Nishino
said.
Protests have mounted in Asia over government-approved textbooks that gloss
over Japan's wartime aggression, while a June remark by education minister
Nariaki Nakayama praising the removal of references to comfort women from
textbooks further fueled anti-Japanese sentiment.
Given such circumstances, "It is necessary for us to pass the memory about what
Japan did during the war down the generations," Nishino said. "Otherwise, Japan
cannot get along with other Asian people."
The establishment of the museum owes much to the late journalist and women's
rights activist Yayori Matsui, who actively covered women's issues and human
rights for the daily Asahi Shimbun.
Matsui, who succumbed to liver cancer at age 68 in December 2002, is also known
for organizing a mock trial called the Women's International War Crimes
Tribunal in December 2000 in Tokyo, which concluded that the comfort-women
system constituted a crime against humanity, found wartime Emperor Hirohito
guilty and urged the Japanese government to take legal responsibility.
"The victims are aging, and we strongly hope they could see the Japanese
government admit to its legal responsibility for their hardships and reflect
this in its policies and in education so the women can find relief during their
lifetimes," Nishino said.
There are now plans to set up resource centers on Japan's wartime sex slavery
in Seoul and Shanghai, and the Tokyo museum will promote information exchanges
with these counterparts.
But the Japanese side "must not ignore the point that we were victimizers,"
Nishino pointed out.
