Japan has long had strained relations with its neighbours, who claim Japan has not faced up to its wartime brutality. Earlier this year, Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, provoked outrage when he suggested that the so called 'comfort women' used in brothels by Japanese soldiers during World War II weren't coerced.
During the war, historians say the Japanese kidnapped up to 200,000 women - some as young as 12 - and forced them into army brothels to act as sexual slaves for Japanese soldiers.
For decades the issue was widely unknown in Japan, where history books paint a very different picture of the war. But a series of protests by former comfort women over the past 15 years has led to expressions of regret from Japanese politicians - but no official government apology or offer of compensation.
The outcry that followed Mr Abe's recent comments forced the prime minister to backflip, offering a very ambiguous apology. However, a Congressional Committee in the United States wants more.
As Mr Abe prepares for a visit to Washington, a resolution has been put before the US Congress denouncing Japan's sexual enslavement of women during the war, and demanding an official apology.
The congressman behind the resolution is Mike Honda, a Japanese-American, who was put in an internment camp during the war. He tells Australia Network's Helen Vatsikopolous why an official apology is needed.
>Mike Honda, US Congressman >Mike Honda is a Democratic member of the US Congress. A Japanese-American, he was put in an internment camp during World War II. >This Viewpoint is based on an interview conducted with Helen Vatsikopolous and broadcast on Australia Network's Asia Pacific Focus program on April 22, 2007. >
日本の残忍で恐るべき慣習「慰安婦」制度は占領下の米兵相手でも運営されることとなった TOKYO - Japan's abhorrent practice of enslaving women to provide sex for its troops in World War II has a little-known sequel: After its surrender - with tacit approval from the U.S. occupation authorities - Japan set up a similar "comfort women" system for American GIs.
An Associated Press review of historical documents and records shows American authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution. The Americans also had full knowledge by then of Japan's atrocious treatment of women in countries across Asia that it conquered during the war.
Tens of thousands of women were employed to provide cheap sex to U.S. troops until the spring of 1946, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur shut the brothels down.
The documents show the brothels were rushed into operation as American forces poured into Japan beginning in August 1945.
"Sadly, we police had to set up sexual comfort stations for the occupation troops," recounts the official history of the Ibaraki Prefectural Police Department, whose jurisdiction is just northeast of Tokyo. "The strategy was, through the special work of experienced women, to create a breakwater to protect regular women and girls." The orders from the Ministry of the Interior came on Aug. 18, 1945, one day before a Japanese delegation flew to the Philippines to negotiate the terms of their country's surrender and occupation.(以下略)