Memoirs by military personnel who visited comfort stations were readily available, as were many movies and TV programs that depicted these facilities. If we include people who first learned about comfort stations through such channels, it would have been unusual if someone did not know the military was involved with them. I believe the report was a devious trick employed by the Asahi, which stretched an insufficient explanation given by a senior bureaucrat (to be detailed later in this book) during a comment made in the Diet, to write that the government “had denied the state’s involvement.”
In an article he contributed to the March 1992 issue of Sekai (World) magazine, Yoshimi described how he “discovered” the documents: “[I was aware they existed, but] I went to the Defense Agency library again for two days late last year and early this year to look mainly for materials pertaining to comfort stations.”7
Around that time, I frequently visited the NIDS library to conduct research on a different subject. Yoshimi, an old acquaintance of mine, told me about his “discovery” and the imminent publication in a newspaper. I remember feeling skeptical about whether such materials were worthy of a news story. A while later, just as I was starting to wonder why Yoshimi’s discovery had not been mentioned in a newspaper, the Asahi ran its sensationalized report on January 11.8
