Ugly crime will not be buried

Six days after it was released in domestic theaters, Twenty Two, a Chinese documentary film named after the number of “comfort women” in China still alive at the time of its filming in 2014, has harvested box office returns of more than 100 million yuan ($14.9 million). The documentary tells of the suffering the women experienced during World War II. It is estimated that 200,000 Chinese women were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese during their occupation of China.

In contrast, according to a Mainichi Shimbun report, when a Japanese middle school in Kobe used a history text book that included facts about “comfort women”, the school authorities received numerous letters of intimidation and threats from Japanese right-wing forces, claiming that the school had been brainwashed by “certain countries”.

Research shows some 400,000 women in Asia were forced to be “comfort women” for the Japanese army during World War II.

That such a large number of women were forced to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers during World War II is among the ugliest of the violent crimes committed by the Japanese military during those years. More than 70 years after the end of the war, Japanese rightist forces still refuse to face up to and acknowledge the crime, and even try to obliterate it through any available means.

This is an open and brazen challenge to history and the bottom line of human conscience.

As some said after watching the documentary, these “comfort women” have been waiting for an apology from Japan, while the Japanese government has been waiting for them to die.

But even after all these last remaining comfort women die, the truth of their suffering will not be distorted or denied no matter how hard some in Japan try.