Japanese Mayor Apologizes for Saying US Troops Should Visit Adult Businesses to Reduce Rapes

Photo Credit: APA Japanese mayor apologized Monday for saying earlier that U.S. troops should patronize legal adult entertainment businesses as a way to reduce rapes and other assaults.

Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, who is also the co-head of an emerging nationalistic party, said his remarks two weeks ago rose from a “sense of crisis” about cases of sexual assaults by U.S. military personnel on Japanese civilians in Okinawa, where a large number of U.S. troops are based.

“I understand that my remark could be construed as an insult to the U.S. forces and to the American people” and was inappropriate, he said at a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Tokyo.

Hashimoto had created another uproar when he said that Japan’s wartime practice of forcing Asian women, mostly from South Korea and China, to work in front-line brothels was necessary to maintain discipline and provide relaxation for soldiers.

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