US defender of Japan's past makes dubious claims about bullying
Ikuyo Toyota says Japanese kids in California are being bullied because of history, but neither she nor any of the alleged victims can be found
Ikuyo Toyota has set herself up as the defender of Japanese children in Southern California. But no one can find her.
Toyota claims to be president of a California advocacy group calling itself the Mother's Association Protecting Japanese Children and has been quoted in right-wing Japanese media, expressing her outrage over the so-called Kono Statement of 1993. It amounted to an apology over the issue of sex slaves used by the Japanese military during the second world war.
After Korean-American lobby groups began placing statues for "comfort women" in a number of public parks in California and New Jersey - including one in a park in Glendale, California, in July 2013 - Toyota went on the warpath.
The - a tabloid that is part of the avowedly nationalist media group - cited an open letter of Toyota's to Kono, the former chief cabinet secretary who delivered the statement. Her letter claimed that as a result of the Kono Statement and the placing of the statue, Japanese children in Glendale were being bullied and harassed.
"Japanese children were being called 'rapists' by Americans," the reported, claiming that others were refusing to speak Japanese in public for fear of persecution.
Complaints that children had become the victims in the ongoing row over the "comfort women" have been echoed by several female politicians as proof of the damaging legacy of the Kono Statement.
