ABSTRACT

At the end of World War II, the Netherlands, the United States, and other Allied nations set up special military tribunals to try Class B and C war offenses, and a number of Japanese military and civilian personnel were indicted, tried, and convicted of coercively procuring women for military comfort stations. By signing the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951, Japan agreed to accept the guilty “verdicts” of all Allied tribunals as stipulated in Article 11. The postwar Japanese state, however, has not reflected on the gravity of the war crimes its predecessor was convicted of committing. Rather it has enshrined military personnel tried and punished for their role in the comfort women system and other crimes in Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine. Thus, the present government knowingly honors as national heroes the former war criminals, including those who were jailed and executed for their behavior.

The San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed in 1951 at the height of the Korean War and strongly reflected U.S. Cold War objectives in East Asia. By then, the United States was no longer interested in pursuing Japanese war responsibility. The Japanese government’s disavowal of responsibility for the Imperial military’s system of sexual servitude over the past 20 years clearly violates Japan’s legal obligations under Article 11. Japan used the Cold War to settling outstanding war-related problems. Today, however, the Cold War era belongs to the past. Japan must now fully acknowledge its war responsibility and conscientiously work to resolve the comfort women problem and other human rights issues arising from the Asia-Pacific War. As a peace-loving nation, Japan has a duty to the international community to do no less.