A historian said Monday that newly discovered documents from post-World War II trials of Japanese war criminals offer fresh proof the military directly forced Asian women into sexual slavery.
The findings will likely cause a stir as conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last month sparked controversy by saying there was no proof the imperial army directly coerced so-called "comfort women."
Hirofumi Hayashi, a professor of history at Kanto Gakuin University, said he found seven items while combing through the massive storehouse of documents submitted during the 1946-1948 "Tokyo Trials" of war criminals.
One document, written by Dutch prosecutors and dated March 13, 1946, quoted a Japanese civilian employee of the Japanese army who said an officer made local women in occupied Borneo stand naked and slapped them in the face.
"We detained them under orders of the chief security officer to find excuses to put them into brothels," the Japanese employee was quoted as saying, according to Hayashi.
Another document also includes testimony by a Japanese lieutenant, who said the army forced women into sexual slavery on Indonesia's Moa island, he said.
"It says that it was in retaliation for local villagers who attacked the Japanese force," he said. "The army killed 40 villagers and put six of their daughters into brothels."
However, Abe has repeatedly said that Japan was responsible in a broader sense and that he stood behind a landmark 1993 apology to former comfort women.
But Hayashi's documents take added significance as they were officially submitted during the Tokyo Trials, whose validity Japan accepted in the San Francisco treaty under which it regained sovereignty from US occupation in 1952.
Hayashi, the chief researcher of the private Center for Research and Documentation on Japan's War Responsibility, plans to present his documents to the public on Tuesday.
Yoshimi, a professor at Tokyo's Chuo University, earlier discovered documents that showed the Japanese military set up "comfort stations" to cut down on soldiers raping local women in occupied China.
Yoshimi's revelations led to Japan's 1993 statement that voiced "sincere apologies and remorse" and acknowledging the imperial army was involved "directly or indirectly" in sexual slavery.
Abe's government has responded furiously to a bill before the US Congress, seen as more likely to pass since the Democrats took over in January, that would demand Japan issue an unequivocal admission and apology to comfort women.
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