F

orced prostitution was necessary in the war, said a Japanese mayor, to the shock of politicians and activists in Japan and beyond. It is clear to anyone, Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto said, that 'for soldiers who risked their lives, where bullets are flying like rain and wind, if you want them to get some rest, a comfort-woman system was necessary.'

Angry reactions included statements from China's foreign ministry that the mayor's comments on Monday were 'boldly challenging humanity and historical justice'.

But Hashimoto's statement is a revealing insight into Japan's past policy on the sex slaves called jugun ianfu, the comfort women. With the exception of then prime minister Yohei Kono in 1993, Japan has insisted it never had a state policy on the opening of brothels for their military during the 'Greater East Asia' campaign in the 1940s.

As the popular co-leader of the Japan Restoration Party suggested, the need for soldiers' rest, and recreation (R-and-R) would have been a concern to rulers sending men abroad in World War II, thus a comfort-women system would be needed 'to maintain discipline' ' reasoning leading to what is now recognized as war crimes given the forced recruitment and violence involved.

Scholars note that any government in any period of history when sending armies to battlefields considers that it must maintain discipline by facilitating the military's R- and-R (mainly their sexual needs). Such needs extend to peace times too. Around military bases, rape - such as those some years ago in Okinawa - is considered normal, if unfortunate.

The mayor has thus unwittingly shed further light on the testimonies of women forced to become sex slaves over 70 years ago.

Sri Sukanti was locked up and raped in a Japanese military base in Purwodadi, Central Java, when she was nine years old. Sri addressed a talk, exhibition and film screening on International Women's Day this March in Surakarta.

When she was 20, along with many other girls promised jobs as gardeners, cooks and laundresses, Wainem was taken from Karanganyar to Surakarta, where she was raped by 10 soldiers at the barracks in Ambarawa, Central Java.

Historian Yuki Tanaka writes that Allied troops exploited the sex slaves once they were 'liberated' from Japanese-controlled areas. Demanding accountability from Japan's leaders ' and the then chief military commander being the virtually untouchable Emperor Hirohito himself ' would implicate soldiers of other, 'friendly' nations. So no one did or said a thing.

Hashimoto also reportedly told an American military official that US troops at the Okinawa-based Marine Corps should 'make more use of adult entertainers' to avoid more incidences of rape, The New York Times reported. Prostitution is rife around American bases, Hashimoto posted on his Twitter account. So other countries' militaries use prostitutes too, he said.

The silence surrounding the 'normalcy' of women being made available for soldiers' sexual needs in many countries, voluntarily or not, was only broken at the 1996 International War Crimes Tribunal, when Bosnian Serb military and police officers were indicted for the rape of Bosnian Muslims.

Japanese leaders have confused the world, going back and forth on wartime apologies.

Incensed Japanese citizens have joined rallies condemning neighbors, especially the Chinese, who appear ungrateful after receiving so much of Japan's post-war development aid.

Koreans, Filipinos and Indonesians have also protested their dismay at Japan's denials.

Yes, Japanese leaders said, women were recruited for military camps ' for cooking and washing, as the girls in Java were told. And if some ended up in bed with soldiers of course this was beyond authorities' control. This has been more or less the official position since Japan effectively retracted the Kono statement in 1993 ' that the military was 'directly or indirectly involved in the establishment and managment of comfort stations.'

His statements were dismissed by subsequent leaders as merely his personal view, though they have apologized for the suffering of their former subjects.

Ask your parents or grandparents of the years under Japanese rule and you might find snapshots like those shared by Sri Sukanti and Wainem. My mother said that when living in Pontianak, West Kalimantan in the mid-1940s, the family moved a number of times to ensure their safety, as the several girls in the household could be taken by the Japanese military.

An elderly resident in Pontianak said she and other teenage girls instantly jumped into the large water containers lining the streets when the soldiers marched by ' to avoid being dragged to the military bases. And the river bank was where 'those women' washed, the locals said, of the women whom others whispered about.

Some Japanese historians say some of the comfort women were already sex workers ' a questionable explanation for the estimated 200,000 women recruited from China, Korea, the Phillippines, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, among others.

The few living former sex slaves across Asia will be deeply hurt on hearing Hashimoto's statements. Some Indonesian former comfort women may have benefited from the compensation from the Japanese government, which Indonesia used for an elderly home where they could stay.

But many more of the women and their families will only find peace, if Japan ends the life long stigma against the 'bad women', as many were labeled in their communities, by acknowledging responsibility for the recruitment of the sex slaves.