He may not actually represent the official position of the Japanese diplomatic corps, but the sitting Mayor of Osaka (Japan's third-largest city after Tokyo and Yokohama) says sex-slaves captured and systematically raped across the Pacific theater during the Second World War were a "necessary" result of the needs of Japanese soldiers who risked their lives for their country.
During the War, hundreds of thousand females were enslaved as "comfort women", a Japanese euphemism referring to military-governed sex slaves. Japan's official support and funding for the maintenance of "comfort women" battalions was in direct opposition to the nation's purported position on slavery taken when it ratified the International Labor Organization Convention Concerning Forced or Compulsory Labor in 1932. Unlike consumer protection statutes in Texas, which have teeth because they provide individuals with a civil remedy for damages upon proven violation, the Convention Concerning Forced Labor asked all signatories to enact criminal statutes – so that the government would protect rights enshrined in the Convention. Since Japan enacted no criminal statutes to punish violations of the Convention, the nation's officials were free not only to violate it with impunity, but to profit in human trafficking designed to fill the ranks of the "comfort women" battalions.
National leaders continue to take absurd positions on the records of their own countries. The gulf between law and justice is vast.
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