Japanese journalist speaks about tribunal

  PRIYA SHARMA/Daily Bruin Yayori Matsui,
a Japanese journalist, spoke in Royce Hall Monday about crimes
Southeast Asian women suffered during World War II.

By Robert Salonga
Daily Bruin Contributor

One of the most atrocious World War II war crimes has gone
unrecognized and unpunished, a Japanese feminist journalist said
Monday in Royce Hall.

Yayori Matsui spoke to a room of approximately 200 listeners
about the sexual slavery and violence hundreds of thousands of
Southeast Asian women were subjected to during Japanese occupancy
of their countries.

“Justice needs to be restored to these women by any
means,” Matsui said.

Matsui visited UCLA to discuss war crimes against women during
World War II and an ongoing international trial to punish those who
carried them out.

“It is very significant that a leading Japanese feminist
was available to give us insight into Japanese life and the
censorship that denied the pain inflicted on the enslaved
women,” said Professor Miriam Silverberg, who teaches
women’s history in Japan as well as modern Japanese thought
and culture.

Matsui also talked about her involvement in the Women’s
International War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s Military Sexual
Slavery, held last December in Tokyo ““ which Silverberg also
attended.

The Tribunal was convened to charge Emperor Hirohito and other
high-ranking Japanese military and political officials with
“responsibility for crimes against humanity in approving,
condoning and failing to prevent the rape and sexual slavery of
women of the countries of the Asia-Pacific subjugated by the
Japanese military during World War II,” Matsui said.

“This Tribunal was called to emphasize that sexual slavery
was a war crime against not only women, but humanity,” she
continued.

Matsui has been campaigning since the 1960s to increase
awareness of the sexual violence crimes committed during WWII, and
also to encourage victims to demand reparations. She founded the
Asia Women’s Association in 1977.

“Women’s issues became active and needed to be
addressed,” Matsui said.

During World War II, in response to the outrage generated by the
massacres, rapes and pillage of Nanking, the Japanese government
instituted the “comfort women” system. It resulted in
the establishment of sexual slavery facilities and a complex
trafficking network to compel women into providing sexual
“service” for the Japanese military.

Collecting and securing women became an important part of the
Japanese war strategy, because it deterred open rape in occupied
territory and avoided international disgrace. Women and girls from
North and South Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia
were forced or coerced into these stations.

“Wartime sexual violence was not recognized at the
post-war trials,” Matsui said.

According to Matsui, a right-wing movement in Japan successfully
prevented any mention of comfort women from appearing in Japanese
history books. It finally made it into textbooks in 1994, but the
censorship did not cease.

“The Japanese government claimed that the victims were
prostitutes,” Silverberg said. “The Tribunal made it
clear that these women were enslaved.”

The judgment of the tribunal to find Emperor Hirohito guilty of
responsibility for the sexual slavery will be finalized March
8.

Students and faculty from UCLA, Cal Poly Pomona, UC Santa
Barbara and other local campuses attended Matsui’s
speech.

“I had only recently heard about “˜comfort
women,’ and hearing the testimony of victims shocked
me,” said Jennifer Tse, a fourth-year communication studies
student. “Hearing it first-hand helped me understand the
situation.”

Silverberg said Matsui created a strong sense of community in
the room.

“It was a community that wanted to consider the gravest
issues facing us as world citizens.”