Did the Japanese government compensate its victims of military sexual slavery?
The Japanese government denies any legal responsibility over the crime it committed against the comfort women and refuses to compensate the survivors directly. What the Japanese government set up instead was the Asian Women’s Fund, charity fund by donations from private citizens. With the Asian Women’s fund, The Japanese government has been able to maintain its position of not paying out even a yen in reparations. The Fund raised 480 million yen ($4 million) with the intent of disbursing to each former comfort women 2 million yen. Most surviving comfort women took this attempt at compensating them with charity money as an insult and refused to accept the money. The first director of the Fund resigned from her post, publicly charging that the operation has become a device for the Japanese government to evade its legal and moral obligations to the surviving comfort women and their families. The prominent Japanese women’s leader who first led the fund, Ms. Mitsuko Miki, has said that her
