These voices are heard not only from Asian countries but from European countries and even from the U.S., an ally of Japan.

Some U.S. senators sent an open letter to the U.S. president for the first time, urging him to press for the settlement of the issue of the sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army. On June 13 Honda, a member of the U.S House of Representatives, in an article held that the sexual slavery is not an issue of history or that of the Asian region but the one concerning human rights and sexual abuses.

On June 2 an Asian unity meeting was held in Tokyo as regards the above-said sexual slavery at which a statement was adopted.

The statement termed the Japanese government and army the arch criminals who set up and operated comfort stations and reduced women there to sexual slaves, adding that the sexual slavery was a grave human rights abuse committed by Japan in violation of the domestic and international laws.

On June 3 a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry at a news briefing urged Japan to honestly reflect on its past history of aggression with a clear understanding of it, respect the personality and dignity of the victims of the sexual slavery and reasonably settle the issues left by the relevant history including the comfort women issue in a responsible manner.

Defying such trend of the international community, the ultra-right conservative forces of Japan are desperately shunning the redemption of its past crimes, still not admitting the sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army.

Typical of them is Hashimoto, mayor of Osaka.

On May 13 last year he talked such rubbish as regards the sexual slavery that "anyone can easily understand that the system of comfort women was necessary for providing rest to nervous soldiers in battlefields under a hail of bullets and shells" and "various other countries in the world had such system of comfort women at that time."

His reckless outbursts sparked off strong censure of the public in Japan and abroad. However, he again jabbered on May 13 this year that he would be satisfied as a politician had the people showed even a little understanding of the issue of the sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army.

These are extremely brazen-faced politically-motivated reckless acts to justify at any cost the sexual slavery enforced by the Japanese government and military in the past.

The sexual slavery was a hideous crime the Japanese authorities perpetrated in an organized manner after establishing such a system with all state and military powers involved.

It is a crime to which no statute of limitation is applicable no matter how much water may flow under the bridge. It is a pending issue whose proper solution is demanded by the world public.

With no rhetoric can Japan conceal the sexual slavery and evade the responsibility for it.

It is a serious political issue the Japanese authorities should solve and a historic task to be carried out by them without fail.