READERS FORUM To the Editor: Mainichi Daily News April 7, 1995 WE WERE ROUSED TO ACTION ONCE WE UNDERSTOOD I have been working principally in Komoro City, Nagano Prefecture, offering advice on every aspect of daily life to foreign workers and women. Sometimes I am confronted with truly painful scenes. There was one Thai woman who until one month ago was an elementary school teacher in Isan in the northeast of Thailand. She was astonished to learn that she owed 3.5 million yen when she came to Japan. When she arrived, she was aghast: Although she tried night and day to pay back the money, she was strictly supervised. Her opportunities to be with regular Japanese, not customers or gangsters, were almost nonexistent. The bar madams, even though they were compatriots, only conspired to increase the pressure. We were asked to deliver her and her friends from their situation. The youngest girl was 15 years old. Even in Japan, child prostitution is on the increase. Last summer, we invited two old women from South Korea, both of whom were so-called comfort women, to a place in Matsushiro, Nagano Prefecture, where the underground Imperial headquarters was constructed by forced labor. We contacted them in Seoul to confirm their decision because we did not want Korean women to be exposed to the public as a mere curiosity. They replied that they themselves hoped to have an opportunity to talk to the Japanese people before they pass away. That made it possible for them to come to Japan. We finally now know the truth about the forced labor and forced prostitution of the past. Can we use the excuse that the people were not told 50 years ago? Lets say that we can use this evasion. If so, what about the situation today? For example, do you think 30 years from now we will invite from Thailand a woman who has reached middle age to testify about events 30 years past? We already know about it now. Modern voluntary forced laborers and forced comfort women are being created in great numbers by the international financial system, in what can be called a kind of structural violence/coercion. This spring, organizations working to help foreign workers gatherd in Matsushiro from all over the country. Four hundred people came from both within and outside the prefecture. Fearing the racialism and anti-foreign feeling gaining power in Europe is threatening to flood Japan as well, a resolution was adopted. Although our meeting is obviously a small one, it is the one opportunity a year for volunteers who are participating in the aid movement to meet in person. It is not a party. Since we cope with sudden international problems with long-distance phone calls, it is absolutely necessary to have this opportunity to meet face-to-face. One more thing. We do not think of our activities as a movement to protect human rights. We think of ourselves as curious volunteers who began because, one we understood the reality we were roused by a feeling we could not shake off. TETSURO IROHIRA Doctor, Misato Kenawa Hospital =====
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 14:35:38 +0000