Path: newsstand.tc.umn.edu!newshub.tc.umn.edu!paperboy.micro.umn.edu!bass!soprano.clari.net!e.news Comment: O:4.1H; Distribution: cl-3,cl-edu,cl-4 From: C-reuters@clari.net (Reuters) Newsgroups: clari.world.asia.japan Subject: Japan lawmaker says no force used on comfort women Organization: Copyright 1996 by Reuters Message-ID: Lines: 21 Date: Tue, 4 Jun 1996 7:10:32 PDT Expires: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 7:10:32 PDT ACategory: international Slugword: JAPAN-COMFORT Threadword: japan Priority: regular ANPA: Wc: 180/0; Id: a0916; Src: reut; Sel: reute; Adate: 06-04-N.A; Ver: 1/0 Approved: e.news@clari.net Xref: newsstand.tc.umn.edu clari.world.asia.japan:21551 TOKYO (Reuter) - A hard-line Japanese politician said Tuesday Japan's Imperial Army did not force ``comfort women'' into sexual slavery during World War II. ``The government has never exerted coercion. It was carried out as a commercial activity and (comfort women) were those who took part in it,'' said lower house legislator Seisuke Okuno. Okuno, a member of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and former education minister, said Japan's Imperial Army had helped the women travel to where front-line brothels were. ``But that does not mean (the army) hauled them by force,'' Okuno told reporters. Historians say as many as 200,000 women, mostly Korean, were rounded up and forced to serve as sex slaves for the Japanese Imperial Army as it swept through east and southeast Asia during World War II. Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto has promised he would write a long-awaited letter of apology to accompany a compensation payment to Asian women forced into sexual slavery during World War II, the prime minister's office said Monday.