Yoshiaki Yoshimi

(1946- )is a professor of modern Japanese history at Chuo University in Tokyo. Yoshimi is a founder member of the "Center for Research and Documentation on Japan's war responsibility". Born in Yamaguchi Prefecture, he studied at the University of Tokyo.

Yoshimi has done major works on the study of war crimes perpetrated by the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy during the first part of the Showa era such as publications on the use by the army of chemical weapons ordered by emperor Showa himself.

He is mostly famous for his work about the comfort women, having found in the Defense Agency library in Tokyo the first documentary evidence that the imperial Japanese army established and ran "comfort stations". One of these was a notice written on 4 March 1938 by the adjutants to the Chiefs of Staff of the North China Army and Central China Expeditionary Force titled "Concerning the Recruitment of Women for Military Comfort Stations" stating that "the armies in the field will control the recruiting of women".

The publication of these proofs led to the admission statements of Chiefs Cabinet Secretary Koichi Kato on 12 January 1993 and Yohei Kono on 4 August 1993.

In July 2004, Yoshimi and historian Yuki Tanaka announced the discovery in the Australian National archives of documents proving that cyanide gas was tested on Australian and Dutch prisoners on November 1944 on Kaiislands [http://search.japantimes.co.jp/member/nn20040727a9.html] .

On 17 April 2007, Yoshimi and fellow historian Hirofumi Hayashi announced in press conference the discovery in the archives of the Tokyo tribunal of documents showing proof of coercion used by Tokeitai members against women from Indonesia, Indochina and China to forced them into sexual slavery [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/17/AR2007041701380.html] .

Some Publications

*Comfort women, "Sexual slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II", Columbia University press, 2002, ISBN 0231120333
*Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, "Dokugasusen Kankei Shiryô II" (Materials on poison gas Warfare), Kaisetsu, Jûgonen sensô gokuhi shiryôshû, Funi Shuppankan, 1997

External links

*Interview of 30 March 2007 with the International Herald Tribune [http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/30/asia/japan.php] , published in the New York Times
* [http://space.geocities.jp/japanwarres/center/english/appeal04.htm]
*Interview of 12 March 2007 about the declaractions of Shinzo Abe on comfort women
* [http://chinadaily.com.cn/world/2007-03/12/content_824829.htm]

*Link to the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility [http://space.geocities.jp/japanwarres/center/english/index-english.htm]

ee also

*Comfort women
*Japanese war crimes