AP News, November 29th, 2007
Canada's parliament asked Japan on Wednesday to apologize to thousands of foreign women forced into military brothels during World War II.
The nonbinding motion was backed by legislators who urged Tokyo to offer a formal apology to the women, known in Japan as "comfort women."
Left-leaning parliament member Olivia Chow introduced the motion in March in a bid to prompt the Canadian government to help educate current and future generations about the war crimes committed by the Japanese Imperial Army, Chow said Wednesday following the vote in Ottawa.
Along with an apology, the motion asks that Japan formally acknowledge that more than 200,000 Asian women were coerced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army.
Japan said it regretted the vote, which it said would not help bilateral relations.
Jun Yanagi, counselor at the Japanese Embassy in Ottawa, said at a press conference that Japan has "done everything it can and should do both political and legally."
The U.S. House of Representatives and the Netherlands passed a similar motion on the sex slaves.
Historians say the Imperial Japanese Army forcibly sent hundreds of thousands of women, mainly from Korea, China and the Philippines, to wartime Japanese military brothels in the 1930s and '40s.
Since the government acknowledged the practice in the early 1990s, Japanese leaders have repeatedly apologized over the issue. But in March, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe triggered anger across Asia by saying there was no proof the women were coerced — reflecting a view among Japan's right-wing politicians, who claim the issue has been fabricated or exaggerated.
