US wants Japan to apologize for sexual slavery.

This is not new, but the last few months the US has been urging the Japanese government to apologize for the forced sexual slavery of women during WWII. Yesterday, a resolution that demands this apology passed overwhelmingly in the Foreign Affairs Committee and will be going to the House.

Japan “has actively promoted historical amnesia; the facts are plain,” the committee’s chairman, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said. This resolution “seeks admission of the horrible truth, in order that this horror may never be perpetrated again.”
More than 140 lawmakers from both political parties have agreed to co-sponsor the nonbinding resolution, which urges Japan to “formally acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner” for the suffering of so-called “comfort women” during the 1930s and 1940s.

Now I am all for this, these women deserve more than an apology. I also think that a conversation about what happens to women’s bodies in a time of war is necessary. But I really think it is absurd for the US to be claiming that another country has a problem with historical amnesia. I mean really, when was the last time you heard a bill being voted on that apologized for the genocide of natives or reparations for slavery. Or for that matter an apology for blatantly racist immigration policies that continue to this day.
We are in no position to be calling another country out for its inability to remember events correctly.