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 in textbooks was an “incorrect description.” However, the Japanese government asserts that 16 or 18 approved history textbooks for use in high schools in 2006 specifically refer to comfort women. At the same time, however, a commission of scholars from Japan, South Korea, and China published a history textbook that contained a 60 page section on Japan’s occupation of Korea (1910–1945) and Japan’s invasion of Manchuria and China (1931–1945), which contained a detailed discussion of the comfort women issue. The September 2001 U.N. Human Rights Commission recommendation to Japan, cited above, also called on Japan to ensure that school textbooks and other teaching materials present history in “a fair balanced manner.”

Comfort Women Suits in Japanese and U.S. Courts

Since the three Korean women filed suit in a Japanese court in 1991, women claiming to be former comfort women have filed suit several times in Japanese courts. With the exception of one victory in a lower court in 1998, Japanese courts have rejected claims for Japanese government financial compensation, citing Japanese reparations agreements with several Asian governments, concluded in accord with the Treaty of Peace with Japan of 1951, and the South Korea-Japan Basic Treaty of 1965. The Treaty of Peace mandated that Japan enter into reparations agreements with Allied countries, whose territories were occupied by Japan, and it stated that “except as otherwise provided in the present Treaty, the Allied Powers waive all reparations claims of the Allied Powers, other claims of the Allied Powers and their nationals arising out of any actions taken by Japan and its nationals in the course of the prosecution of the war.” The South Korea-Japan Basic Treaty of 1965 stated that “rights and interests of the people of both contracting countries and other claims of both countries are solved completely and finally.” However, reports by the United Nations and by Amnesty International in 2005 have called for the Japanese government to provide direct compensation to former comfort women. Moreover, some advocates for individual claimants from Allied countries have cited an exchange of letters between the Japanese and Dutch governments in 1951 in which Japan asserted that the Peace Treaty did not negate private claims against Japan by Dutch nationals.

In September 2000, 15 former comfort women from China, Taiwan, South Korea, and the Philippines filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeking claims (including claims for financial compensation) against the Japanese government under the U.S. Alien Tort Statute. The case was titled Joo vs. Japan. The District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled against the women. The courts accepted the argument of the U.S. Executive Branch, filed in a third party brief, that the Executive Branch rather than the U.S. courts had jurisdiction over the “political question” of whether individual claims against Japan were valid in view of the provisions of the Japanese Peace Treaty of 1951. In July 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Court of Appeals must reconsider the case. In June 2005, the Court of Appeals