US House seeks Japan's apology on 'comfort women'

WASHINGTON/TOKYO, July 31 (Reuters) The US House of Representatives called on Japan to apologise for forcing thousands of women into sexual servitude to its soldiers during and before World War II.

On a voice vote, the House approved a nonbinding resolution intended as a symbolic statement on the Japanese government's role in forcing up to 200,000 ''comfort women'' into a wartime brothel program starting in the 1930s.

The vote marked a rare rebuke by Washington politicians of Washington's closest ally in Asia, but drew only a muted response from Tokyo.

''Today, the House will send a message to the government of Japan that it should deliver an official, unequivocal, unambiguous apology for the indignity the comfort women suffered,'' said Rep. Mike Honda, the California Democrat who pushed the legislation through the House.

One of those women, Yong Soo Lee, a Korean, was inside the House chamber watching the debate and vote.

Honda, 66, is a Japanese-American who spent his early childhood in a World War II internment camp in Colorado.

The Japanese government offered a low-key response today.

''The Prime Minister went to America in April and explained his thinking on this problem again,'' Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki told reporters. ''It is unfortunate that the US House of Representatives nonetheless passed this resolution. Our government has dealt sincerely with the problem of the comfort women.'' In 1993, Japan acknowledged a state role in the wartime program, which mostly victimised Chinese and Korean women. Japan's government later established a fund, which collected private donations and offered payments of about 20,000 dollars to 285 women.

But more recently, Japanese officials including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, have denied there was evidence the government or military were directly involved in procuring the women. He later apologised for the women's suffering and said he stood by the 1993 statement.

''There can be no denying the Japanese Imperial military coerced thousands upon thousands of Asian women,'' House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos of California said.

''Those who posit that all of the 'comfort women' were happily complicit and acting of their own accord simply do not understand the meaning of the word rape,'' added Lantos, a Holocaust survivor.

Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party was dealt a crushing defeat in an upper house election on Sunday amid a string of government scandals, gaffes by ministers and a row over mismanaged pensions.

But Abe vowed to stay in his post.

In June, Japanese Ambassador Ryozo Kato wrote a letter to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California saying Honda's resolution ''will almost certainly have lasting and harmful effects on the deep friendship, close trust and wide-ranging cooperation our two nations now enjoy.'' There was no immediate comment from the conservative Japanese lawmakers who placed an advertisement in the Washington Post last month stating that the women had worked as licensed prostitutes, sparking harsh criticism from US lawmakers.

Reuters RJ GC1200