Japanese sex slavery journalist files for defamation

TOKYO: A former journalist who wrote stories about women forced into sex slavery by Japan before and during World War II filed a defamation suit yesterday against a publisher and a scholar who accused him of fabrication.

Takashi Uemura said their criticisms triggered threats against him, his familiy and employer, a college in northern Japan. He wrote only two stories on the subject, including one for the Asahi newspaper in the early 1990s based on the account of a South Korean victim.

Uemura’s story was the first published interview with the first woman who came forward with her experiences, Kim Hak-soon.

The lawsuit says Uemura was defamed by a magazine article published in February by Bungeishunju, and Tsutomu Nishioka, a Tokyo Christian University professor of Korean studies.

The journalist wants Nishioka’s article removed from the internet, an apology published in the magazine, and 16.5 million yen ($138 700) in compensation for the damage he suffered from the defamation and subsequent threats.

Last August, the left-leaning Asahi acknowledged that its stories in the 1980s and 1990s quoted a wartime labour official who fabricated accounts about forcing Korean women to provide sex to soldiers during the war.

Uemura did not write stories quoting that official, Seiji Yoshida.

Historians say tens of thousands of women, including Japanese, Koreans and others from around Asia, were sent to frontline military brothels to provide sex to Japanese soldiers before and during the war.

A 1993 government investigation concluded many of the women were recruited against their will.

That investigation found no proof in existing official documents, however, and conservatives have cited that in arguing the women were not coerced. – Sapa-AP

PICTURE: AP REPORT: Takashi Uemura, a former journalist of the Asahi newspaper, shows a copy of his story during a press conference in Tokyo, yesterday.