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 According to the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s statement of May 2004, 200 people were accommodated in those facilities.

The Asian Women’s Fund negotiated initially with the Dutch Foundation for Japanese Honorary Debts (FJHD), an NGO of Dutch war victims, including comfort women, but the FJHD rejected compensation from the Fund. With the support of the Dutch government, the Asian Women’s Fund concluded a Memorandum of Understanding with another private Dutch group, the Project Implementation Committee in the Netherlands (PICN), to assist the livelihood of former comfort women. The project provided medical and other social services to the women. Over a period of three years, the Asian Women’s Fund spent 241.5 million yen (approximately $24 million) for the project, which assisted 79 women.

H.Res. 759 called on the Japanese government to follow the recommendations of the United Nations and Amnesty International. H.Res. 121 calls on the Japanese government to follow the recommendations of “the international community.” The United Nations Human Rights Commission investigated the comfort women issue several times in the 1990s. Two reports to the Commission by U.N. Special Rapporteurs in 1996 and 1998 criticized Japan and called for Japan to pay official compensation to former comfort women and prosecute Japanese who were responsible for the system. However, while the Human Rights Commission acknowledged the reports, it did not fully endorse their recommendations in its resolutions. In September 2001, the Commission recommended to Japan that “victims [of Japan during World War II] must be compensated.” The international human rights organization, Amnesty International, has criticized the Asian Women’s Fund and has called on Japan to pay official compensation to former comfort women.

The Comfort Women Issue in Japanese Textbooks

Since Japan’s admission of responsibility for the comfort women system, there have been frequent disputes over whether Japanese history textbooks should discuss comfort women. The real battle today in Japan over the comfort women issue is whether Japanese history textbooks will discuss it. In 1997, the Japanese Ministry of Education allowed some new middle-school textbooks to discuss comfort women as a form of sexual slavery based on the “forcible recruitment” of women. This decision and the issuance of the textbooks produced considerable criticism from some Japanese politicians and interest groups who contend that Japan’s historical record in the first half of the 20th century is not as negative as it usually is portrayed. A Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform was formed to work for the publication of history textbooks that presented a positive view of Japanese history. Undoubtedly as a consequence of this