Former Japanese Premier Nakasone Denies Setting Up War Brothel

Former Japanese Premier Nakasone Denies Setting Up War Brothel
By Kiyori Ueno

March 23 (Bloomberg) -- Former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone denied setting up brothels and recruiting sex slaves as a naval officer during World War II, while acknowledging that victims of such actions deserved an apology.

``I helped to set up rest houses and leisure centers for workers,'' Nakasone, who served as prime minister from 1982-1987, told reporters at the Foreign Correspondent Club of Japan in Tokyo today. ``They weren't comfort stations,'' he said, using the Japanese euphemism for wartime brothels.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has upset Japan's Asian neighbors and others recently with comments playing down the Japanese military's role in forcing as many as 200,000 women into sexual slavery during the war. Nakasone wrote in his 1978 memoir that he set up a ``comfort station'' to stop members of his unit attacking women.

Abe on March 1 said there was ``no evidence'' that the military forced women into sexual servitude during Japan's occupation of Asia during the war and his office released a report on March 16 backing his statement up.

As many as 200,000 women, mostly from Korea and China, served as prostitutes for Japanese soldiers during the war, and Abe has repeatedly said he supports a 1993 apology to the women.

``There were comfort women and I've heard the circumstance there were in,'' Nakasone said today. ``I don't know if there was coercion.''

He said he supports the Japanese government's 1993 apology to the women. ``We must embrace the fact and we must apologize to those women if there was violation of human rights.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Kiyori Ueno in Tokyo at kueno2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 23, 2007 05:20 EDT

Former Japanese leader Nakasone denies setting up sex slave brothel in World War II