Yoshiaki Yoshimi
Yoshiaki Yoshimi (吉見 義明, Yoshimi Yoshiaki, born 1946) is a professor of Japanese
. He is a founding member of the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility.He was born in Yamaguchi Prefecture, and studied at the University of Tokyo.
Notable research
Yoshimi has done major research on war crimes perpetrated by the
Yoshimi is mostly noted for his work on sex slaves. He found the first documented evidence at the "Defense Agency Library" of Tokyo that the Imperial Japanese Army established and ran "comfort stations." He discovered plenty of documentation and testimony to prove the existence of approximately 2,000 comfort women centers where as many as 200,000 Korean, Filipina, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Burmese, Dutch, Australian, and Japanese women, many of whom were teenagers and some as young as fourteen, were detained and forced to perform sexual activities with Japanese troops.[1] One piece was a notice written on 4 March 1938 by the adjutants to the Chiefs of Staff of the
"Many agents should have required special attention. Some of them accentuated the name of the armies as much as they might hurt the credibility of the armies and cause misunderstanding among the public, others recruited women without control through war correspondents or entertainers, and others selected the wrong agents who took a kidnapping approach to recruit women so that the police arrested them. In the future, the armies in the field should control recruiting and select the agencies circumspectly and properly, and should build up a closer connection with the local police and the local military police in the implementation of recruiting. Take special care not to have problems which have the potential to damage the armies' credibility or are not acceptable to social standards."[2]
The publication of these documents led to admission statements by the Chiefs of the Cabinet: Secretary
In July 2004, Yoshimi and historian Yuki Tanaka proclaimed the discovery of documents at National Archives of Australia that demonstrated that cyanide gas was tested on Australian and Dutch prisoners in November 1944 on the Kai Islands.[4]
On 17 April 2007, Yoshimi and fellow historian
Selected publications
- Dokugasusen to Nihongun, ISBN 4-00-024128-1
- Yoshimi, Y.; O'Brien, S. (2000). Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II. Asia Perspectives: History, Society, and Culture Series. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-12033-3.
- Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, Dokugasusen Kankei Shiryō II (Materials on poison gas Warfare), Kaisetsu, Hōkan 2, Jūgonen sensô gokuhi shiryōshū, Funi Shuppankan, 1997
- Yoshimi and Kentarō Awaya, Dokugasusen Kankei Shiryō, Jūgonen sensō gokuhi shiryōshū, 18, Fuji Shuppan, 1989
References
- ISBN 9780231120333.
- ^ The original document can be found under reference code "C04120263400" on Japan Center for Asian Historical Records - National Archives of Japan
- ^ "'Comfort women' historian alarmed". 2007-03-12. Retrieved 2013-11-28.
- Japan Times, 27-07-2004
- Washington Post, 17-04-2007
External links
- Interview, 30 March 2007 with the New York Times
- In Japan, a Historian Stands by Proof of Wartime Sex Slavery, The New York Times, March 31, 2007
- Interview of 12 March 2007 about the declarations of Shinzō Abeon comfort women
- Comfort women' historian alarmed Archived 2013-12-03 at the Wayback Machine, China Daily, 2007-03-12
- Center for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility (JWRC)
See also
- Comfort women
- Japanese war crimes
- Prostitutes in South Korea for the U.S. military