91歳の元日本軍医の告白

　　

こんなツイートを目にしました。

91歳軍医の告白。全文はこちら。Japan's wartime brothels were wrong, says 91-year-old veteran - Yahoo! News news.yahoo.com/japans-wartime… @yahoonewsさんから

— 池内さおりさん (@ikeuchi_saori) 2013年5月31日

この91歳の方は、第二次世界大戦当時はアジア解放の目的をもった聖戦であると信じさせられていたが今思い返すとそれは誤りであったこと、慰安所のシステムと女性へのひどい扱いは許されることではないこと、自分のことを戦犯のように思うこと、辛いことだが当時の経験を語らなければならないこと、などを語っています。英文ですが、ネットから削除される前に記録しておきます。

●Yahoo! News
Japan's wartime brothels were wrong, says 91-year-old veteran
http://news.yahoo.com/japans-wartime-brothels-were-wrong-says-91-old-035258436.html
By Linda Sieg and Ruairidh Villar | Reuters – Wed, May 22, 2013

SAGAMIHARA, Japan (Reuters) - When Masayoshi Matsumoto joined the Japanese army in 1943 and was sent to occupied China as a medic, he thought he was taking part in a righteous war to free Asia from the yoke of Western imperialism.
Seven decades later, the 91-year-old retired Christian pastor says it's his mission to speak out about the injustice of the war and the sufferings of women, mostly Asian and many Korean, forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels.
"I feel like a war criminal. It is painful to speak of such things and I would rather cover it up. It is painful, but I must speak," the slender, white-haired Matsumoto told Reuters in an interview at his daughter's home about 40 km (25 miles) from Tokyo.
"I think that to speak out is the meaning of my being alive," added Matsumoto, who returned to Japan in 1946 and later became the pastor of a Christian church. He is one of a dwindling number of veterans with experience of the brothels.
Outspoken Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto sparked a firestorm of criticism at home and abroad when he said last week that the military brothel system was "necessary" at the time and that Japan has been unfairly singled out for practices common among other militaries during wartime.
The remarks outraged China, where many suffered under Japan's military occupation, and South Koreans, where bitter memories of Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule run deep.
They also sparked a backlash in Japan. Support for Hashimoto's right-leaning Japan Restoration Party, already sliding, has fallen further ahead of an upper house election just two months away and another small party has broken off ties with it.
As a medic stationed in Yu County in China's Shanxi Province during the war, Matsumoto helped doctors examine a half dozen Korean women who provided sexual services for officers and non-commissioned officers, part of an effort to stem the spread of venereal disease among soldiers.
Whatever the rationale at the time, Matsumoto said, the system and the treatment of the women - known euphemistically as "comfort women" - were inexcusable.

"NO EXCUSE"

"It is not just Japan that did something wrong. But Japan also did something wrong ... Just because someone else is a thief, is it all right to be a thief? Because someone else kills people, is it all right to be a murderer? That is no excuse," Matsumoto said.
"The prime minister of Japan should apologize properly as the representative of the nation and compensate those who should be compensated."
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe caused controversy during his first 2006-2007 term by saying there was no proof that Japan's military had kidnapped women for the brothels. Such doubts are common among Japanese ultra-conservatives.
But Abe has sought to distance himself from Hashimoto's remarks, saying his government's stance is different.
"The stance of the government on this issue is that, as we stated previously, we are deeply pained when thinking of the women who experienced immeasurable pain and suffering. On this point, the Abe cabinet has the same position as prior cabinets," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference last week, although he declined direct comment on Hashimoto's remarks.
The issue has often frayed ties between Tokyo and Seoul. Japan says the matter of compensation was settled under a 1965 treaty establishing diplomatic ties. In 1995, Japan set up a fund to make payments to the women from private contributions, but South Korea says that was not official and so not enough.
Matsumoto said the women had no means of escape from the walled town where his military unit was headquartered and were in fact sex slaves. "No matter if they wanted to flee, there was no way to escape," he said.
Recalling the conditions in which the women lived, Matsumoto said soldiers lining up for sex would unfasten their leg wrappings and lower their trousers so as to waste no time when their turns came. "It was like they were going to the toilet," he said.
Only years later did Matsumoto come to believe his country had done something wrong. "We were taught that it was the mission of Japan, the mission of the Japanese people, to liberate Asian countries from European colonialism," he said.
"So we went to war gladly then. When I think of it now, it was monstrous, but I didn't think so then."
(Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

（転載ここまで）

戦後生まれの、親が政治家であったり恵まれた家庭に生まれ育ったりした苦労知らずの自民党の政治家が第二次世界大戦における日本の非道な行ないを正当化する言動や政策を繰り返しています。それがどんなに誤っているか、戦争当時を知らない私でも、このような高齢者の体験談を読めば想像がつくのですけど。日本ではそういう想像がつかない人間を多数生み出し、そのような人間が社会を支配する地位についてしまったことが痛恨の誤りなのだと思います。

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●国会議員への投書のための「議員名簿」→http://www.eda-jp.com/link/link1.html
●マスメディアへの投書のための「News for the people in Japan」マスメディア問い合わせ用リンク集→http://www.news-pj.net/link/media.html
●他の社会系ブログに行くにはうちの「私的リンク集　（適宜更新）」経由で→http://muranoserena.blog91.fc2.com/blog-entry-136.html