This article outlines three concrete actions the Asahi Shimbun should take to rectify the damage caused by its false reporting on the comfort women issue.

The author argues that Asahi Shimbun must take direct responsibility for its false reporting by publicly correcting the record in the United States and at the United Nations.

2017-06-23
This is a continuation of “The Honor of the Nation Was Damaged.” Emphasis in the text is mine.

Three Things Asahi Must Do

What specifically should be done?

First, the president of Asahi Shimbun should visit the locations of comfort women statues and memorials built within the United States, meet with the mayors of those cities, and state: “These comfort women statues were likely erected through the activities of Korean residents in the United States. However, the inscriptions carved here, and the perceptions held by those Korean residents, are all based on the fraudulent articles published by my newspaper. Those articles were false, and all grounds for erecting these statues have been completely refuted.”
If the president of the newspaper personally states, “Our newspaper wrote falsehoods,” no one can deny it.
Furthermore, he should offer to bear the costs of dismantling the statues.
Since the number of such statues and memorials in the United States is still small enough to count on both hands, the expense would not be significant.

Second, the president of Asahi Shimbun should also explain in the United States Congress that “those articles were false.”
In 2007, during the first Abe administration, U.S. Representative Mike Honda proposed a resolution condemning Japan over the comfort women issue, which was adopted by the House of Representatives.
Although only around ten lawmakers supported it, the fact that it was adopted is undeniable, and its international impact has been immeasurable.
In reality, following this U.S. House resolution, the parliaments of the Netherlands and Canada, as well as the European Parliament, adopted resolutions demanding apologies from Japan to former comfort women.
Comfort women statues and memorials within the United States also began to be erected after 2007, making it clear that Korean activists in the U.S. were emboldened by this House resolution.
The president of Asahi Shimbun should go to the U.S. Congress and state: “The comfort women condemnation resolution once passed against Japan was based on falsehoods published by my newspaper, and all of those grounds have already been refuted.”
He should also convey this directly to Representative Mike Honda.

Third, he should go to Sri Lanka and directly explain the matter to Radhika Coomaraswamy, requesting the withdrawal of the “Coomaraswamy Report” adopted by the United Nations.
He should explain: “All of the issues regarding comfort women that you harshly criticized were based on articles written by my newspaper, but all of them were erroneous reports.”
She will likely respond, “I did not rely solely on Asahi Shimbun or the Yoshida testimony.”
However, the book The Comfort Women: Sex Slaves of the Japanese Imperial Forces by George Hicks, which she cites, was itself originally based on the Yoshida Seiji testimony that Asahi Shimbun heavily promoted.

This manuscript continues.