元朝日新聞記者の植村隆氏が、2015年5月1日～8日にかけて米国各地で講演を行います。
スケジュール・演題はこちら　Uemura Takashi (former Asahi reporter)’s Lectures in the U.S.

以下の英文は、なでしこアクションの協力者から送っていただきました。
ジャーナリストとしての責任を充分果たさず、被害者を主張している植村氏の状況を説明する英文です。
転載・コピー自由です。

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The comfort women issue was rather suddenly created in the late 1980’s to early 1990’s, just as the generations who knew the truth of the matter became lessened in population. Meanwhile, some Japanese anti-Japan activists went to South Korea and instigated litigation demanding reparations from the Japanese government. This was backed by the Asahi Newspaper which launched a public awareness campaign built on fictions, making the comfort women issue become a major diplomatic matter between Japan and South Korea. The Asahi Newspaper’s reporter who played the central role at that time was Mr Takashi Uemura. He continues his battle even after his former employer admitted its wrong doing and made a public apology.

Mr. Takashi Uemura, do you really want to hurt us more ?

Mr. Uemura, the former Asashi Newspaper reporter, who is directly responsible for disseminating inaccurate information and inflaming the comfort woman issue, is planning to give speeches at renowned universities in the United States from the end of April to early May this year. Despite the clear evidence that Mr. Uemura misled general public regarding the controversial comfort woman issue he claims that he has been unfairly “slammed and threatened by right wing revisionists”.

I would like to take this opportunity to make it very clear that it is totally incorrect for him to make the claim that it is only right wing extremists who are angered and unfairly harassing him. The truth of the matter is in fact that a significant portion of the Japanese general public is outraged at what he has done. We do sympathize with some of the inappropriate actions which have occurred and the safety of his family should be guaranteed but this situation could have been avoided from the beginning if he had taken responsibility for his actions as his former employer, Asahi Newspaper has done.

Mr. Uemura should have never been permitted to write articles regarding the comfort woman issue in the first place, because his mother-in-law heads the “Association for the Pacific War Victims and Bereaved Families” that organized a lawsuit, seeking an official apology and reparations from the Japanese government. He denies this clear conflict, but if that were the case, why did he write inaccurate articles in support of the court case without revealing this relationship?

What he wrote was also highly questionable.

On August 11,1991, the Asahi Newspaper published a major scoop written by Mr. Uemura. The article featured the statements of Kim Hak Sun, a former comfort women living in Seoul. The opening paragraph of the article began: “A ‘Korean military comfort woman’ forced to provide sexual services for Japanese military personnel after being taken to the combat zone under the name of the Women’s Volunteer Corps during the Sino-Japanese War and World War II has been found living in Seoul … ” From the beginning, the article gave the impression that the woman had been forcibly taken away by the Japanese military and forced to be a comfort woman. (Recently Mr. Uemura admitted that he confused the “Comfort women” with the “Women’s Volunteer Corps,” but he made an excuse that previously not only himself but also many others confused the two organizations.)

Only three days later, on August 14 1991, Ms. Kim Hak-sun held a press conference in Seoul. South Korean newspaper articles clearly depicted Ms. Kim’s personal history that “she was sold by her mother to a kisaeng( female entertainment) house in Pyonyang at the age of 14. After finishing three years of training, her adoptive father told her that she could make money if she went to China and took her to Northern China where the Japanese troops were stationed.”(Kisaeng is the traditional Korean prostitution system which legally operated until 2004)

Moreover, on December 6, 1991, when she sued the Japanese government, Ms. Kim firmly stated at the Tokyo District Court, “I had been in kisaeng house for three years from the age of 14 when, at 17 years old in the spring of 1939, I was told about a place where ‘if you go, you can make money.…’ ‘Accompanied by my adoptive father, I was delivered to that place in China.’”

Although we are deeply sympathetic with Ms. Kim’s plight, the implications of “a comfort woman forcibly taken away by the Japanese military” and an “unfortunate comfort woman sold off by her parents” are strikingly different. Mr. Uemura is fluent in Korean, so he had to have known what “being sold to a kisaeng house” meant, but he made no mention that she had been sold by her parent – only that she had been taken to the battlefield under the designation as a Woman Volunteer.

Today Mr. Uemura contends that he never fabricated the story. If he had made genuine mistakes, then he should’ve corrected or retracted his articles when he realized these mistakes. No matter what his intensions were it cannot be denied that what he did was at the very least highly unethical and misleading which significantly damaged Japan’s international reputation.

His former employer, the Asashi Newspaper, officially apologized in 2014 for continuously reporting the fabricated stories by Seiji Yoshida, that women were forcibly abducted, without any verification and for not withdrawing them following the revelation that those stories were totally unfounded. Mr. Uemura, should he wish to repair his integrity as a professional reporter should take responsibility for these inaccurate articles he published. Contrary to this, however, he is painting himself as being a victim of some backlash from right wing extremists.

We once trusted the Asashi Newspaper and his reporting of this issue. The Japanese general public have been deeply hurt and offended not only by his misleading stories but even more so by his attitude in refusing to accept responsibility for his actions and instead playing the role of a victim despite irrefutable evidence to the contrary. We sincerely request that he refrain from causing further damage with his filing of a lawsuit claiming he is the victim of ultra-nationalism.

安倍首相が2015年4月29日に米国の上院・下院合同会議の中で講演します。
日本人が英語で発信するブログ　Japanese Speak Out　より、安倍首相を応援するWilliam Matsushima氏の投稿をご紹介します。

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I wish Prime Minister Abe good luck in delivering a speech at a joint meeting of the US Senate and House of Representatives on April 29.
http://jpnso.blogspot.jp/2015/04/i-wish-prime-minister-abe-good-luck-in.html

Prime Minister ABE Shinzo will deliver a speech at a joint meeting of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on April 29, 2015.

This will be an epoch making event because no Japanese leader had done it. Seventy years will pass on August 15, 2015 since Japan officially surrendered to the US Forces. Until now all the Japanese leaders have been too bashful to request the US government to do it.

I sincerely hope that Premier Abe delivers a fine speech to have as many American citizens as possible understand Japan’s true figures, which were damaged and distorted ruthlessly by the propaganda produced by Kuomintang, the Chinese Communist Party, South Korea and not to mention communist Japanese/American politicians influenced by the ghost of Stalin.

On this occasion, visiting Prof. FUJIOKA Nobukatsu of Takushoku University contributed an article to the Yukan Fuji, (the Evening Fuji) on April 23, 2015 on an interview article between Prime Minister Abe and David Ignatius, Post Opinions Staff of the Washington Post, on March 27, 2015.

Prof. Fujioka in his article pointed out a possible misunderstanding which may arise from the words jinshin baibai on Korean comfort women during the past war time spoken by Prime Minister Abe to David Ignatius. The words were translated into “human trafficking”.

According to the definition of online Merriam Webster Dictionary on Human Trafficking as was quoted by Prof. Fujioka, we can see the following explanation

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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/human%20trafficking
noun
Definition of HUMAN TRAFFICKING
: organized criminal activity in which human beings are treated as possessions to be controlled and exploited (as by being forced into prostitution or involuntary labor)

Let’s see another explanation on Human Trafficking on Wikipedia Dictionary as follows.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking
Human trafficking is the trade of humans, most commonly for the purpose of sexual slavery, forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This may encompass providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage, or the extraction of organs or tissues, including for surrogacy and ova removal. Human trafficking can occur within a country or trans-nationally. Human trafficking is a crime against the person because of the violation of the victim’s rights of movement through coercion and because of their commercial exploitation. Human trafficking is the trade in people, and does not necessarily involve the movement of the person from one place to another.
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The Japanese government has translated “human trafficking” to “jinshin torihiki” meaning “human trading” without much knowledge on slave trafficking which was to abduct Africans and sell them as merchandise to white Americans in the US as labor sources.

In Japanese history, we have never had slaves unlike the US, which treated Africans brutally as if they had been merchandise being deprived of human dignity through human trafficking.

Since many Japanese don’t clearly understand the meaning of human trafficking, some Japanese people confuse the term with nenki boko, which can mean “indentured labor”. This habit was practiced often before World War II in Japan. Nenki boko meant that people worked for their employers on a contract basis.

In the case of comfort women, the parents of their daughters entered into an agreement with prostitution brokers, who advanced a chunk of money to the parents, and their daughters had to work as prostitutes until they earned the advanced money paid to their parents. Afterwards, they were set free.

Such a broker was called zegen in Japanese. Korea was part of Japan during the war time, and nenki boko was also practiced in Korea. This is what Prof. Fujioka explained in his article contributed to the Yukan Fuji.

Premier Abe was born in 1954, nine years after World War II ended. Many Japanese who were born after the war ended are not familiar with this old habit held by Japanese, and thus many of them don’t understand nenki boko either. In addition to nonexistence of slavery in Japanese history, it could happen that some Japanese confuse nenki boko with slavery.

Premier Abe is one of Japanese people born after World War II ended, so I am afraid that he might not have understood both terms well. However, he can’t be blamed because I had also been ignorant of the term nenki boko until Prof. Fujioka taught me its meaning at a Japanese izakaya (pub) in Tokyo where he, some other Japanese people and I got together, and were just chatting on political issues on modern Japanese history. Prof. Fujioka was the oldest among us, and as a renowned historian, he explained to all of the members at the Izakaya about the difference between nenki boko and human trafficking.

There is a possibility that Premier Abe’s staff members didn’t understand nenki boko precisely. In our discussion at the Izakaya, another member mentioned that one of Abe’s staff members might have suggested to Premier Abe to say human trafficking to please David Ignatius, because the words were quoted in Resolution 121 of July 30, 2007 in the House of Representative, the United States of America, in which we can see the following words.

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Whereas the comfort women system of forced military prostitution by the Government of Japan, considered unprecedented in its cruelty and magnitude, included gang rape, forced abortions, humiliation, and sexual violence resulting in mutilation, death, or eventual suicide in one of the largest cases of human trafficking in the 20th century
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According to Prof. Fujioka, this resolution had strong influence on Canada, the Netherlands, the European Union, South Korea, etc, thereby having motivated anti-Japan forces to build comfort women statues in the US. In fact this resolution authored by Congressman Michael Honda included incorrect information based on propaganda.

Prof. Fujioka in his contribution to the Yukan Fuji advised Premier Abe not to use the words “human trafficking” in relation to the comfort women issue even though Korean zegen was involved in recruiting comfort women because zegen didn’t abduct Korean women, and never sold them as merchandise to brothels. Zegen who mistreated comfort women, whether they were Koreans or Japanese, was punished as a criminal by the Japanese authorities. When some Korean or Japanese military men mistreated comfort women, they were also punished by the Military authorities. Comfort women were recruited in a nenki boko job system, which was entirely different from human trafficking practiced in the US a long time ago.

I sincerely hope that Premier Abe does not quote the words “human trafficking” in his speech at a joint meeting of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives taking place on April 29, 2015.

Premier Abe, you are the hope for all the Japanese people. I wish you good luck in delivering your speech as the leader of Japan to American citizens to commemorate this historically important moment in the US, and also to further strengthen the close tie between the United States of America and Japan.

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