Japan historians add insult to the wounds of comfort women

Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura has vowed to snap his city's six-decade sister-city relationship with San Francisco in protest against the US city accepting a statue of "comfort women" as public property.

"Comfort women", a euphemism for some 200,000 girls and young women who were coerced, kidnapped, sold or captured to be sexually exploited in Japan's military brothels before and during World War II, is a taboo term for many in Japan. And these people have been trying to sweep the issue under the carpet.

The statue in San Francisco features three women - a Chinese, a Korean and a Filipina - with the two words, "sex slaves" inscribed on a plaque. Yoshimura has written several letters to his San Francisco counterpart Edwin Lee this year, saying some historians don't recognize the historical facts about "comfort women".