Japan's extremist group attempts a petition drive on comfort women in US

Japan's extremist group attempts a petition drive on comfort women in US. January. 20, 2016 07:32. bookum90@donga.com.

An online petition has appeared in California, which decided to add Japan's wartime sex slavery to the instruction materials of its history textbooks as a "serious human rights violation." The petition drive claims that the materials should include that comfort women were prostitutes.

The Change.org petition urges the department of education of the California government to include that (to teach the comfort women issue) it should include that they were well paid prostitutes and also provided sex to U.S. soldiers. Aiming at getting 500 signatures, the petition has collected around 300 signatures as of midnight on Wednesday. The petition claims, "The fact that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are placed after the comfort women issue in the instruction materials of California’s history textbooks has an intention to justify the bombings."

Korean American Forum of California headed by Kim Hyeon-jeong who took the lead in making the comfort women issue public said, "This anonymous petition drive seems to have been driven by a Japanese extremist group that has claimed the removal of the comfort women memorial or the girl statue," adding, "The petition emerged at a time when the Korean community began to start a campaign to finalize the comfort women issue in the instruction materials." This means that it is a strategic and intentional tactic of Japanese extremist groups.

California's department of education added to the instruction materials for the 10th grade history and social science curriculum in December last year the fact that the Japanese imperial army brought comfort women, the so-called sex slaves, to its occupied areas by force before and during the second world war, and the comfort women can be taught as institutionalized sex slaves, the largest human-trafficking in the 20th century.

The Californian government will gather opinions on the website of its education department and review them by February next year and finalize the content by May next year.

The Korean American Forum in California said, "We plan to increase the petition drive (www.comfortwomenpetition.org) to stress that this is women's human rights issue, which needs to bring the world's attention, and anti-humanitarian crime that should be addressed in the textbooks used in public schools."