[Shenzo Abe]'s comments came on the heels of a resolution by several members of the U.S. House of Representatives, spearheaded by a Japanese-American Congressman, calling upon the Japanese government "to formally acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility" for the suffering of the comfort women.

Critics say the Japanese government's continued refusal to formally acknowledge the trauma inflicted upon comfort women and legal responsibility for what happened to them is in keeping with that country's unwillingness to face up to other equally abominable actions, particularly slave labour camps, the 1937 Nanking massacre in China and brutal treatment of Allied prisoners of war, including Canadians captured when Hong Kong fell.

Maintaining the loyalty of ordinary Japanese was linked to keeping Japanese unaware of the country's past actions, which cast dark shadows on those virtues - actions deliberately shrouded in ambiguities, masking such misdeeds as comfort women, the annexation of Korea and Manchuria, the massacre of Nanking, the Bataan death march, and biological and chemical experiments on subjugated people and captured military.