Yoshiaki Yoshimi

Yoshiaki Yoshimi (吉見義明) (1946- ) is a professor of Japanese modern history at Chuo University in Tokyo, Japan. Yoshimi is a founder member of the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan's war responsibility. Born in Yamaguchi Prefecture, he studied at the University of Tokyo.

Yoshimi has done major works on the study of war crimes perpetrated by the Imperial Japanese Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy during the first part of the Shōwa period such as publications on the use by the army of chemical weapons ordered by emperor Shōwa himself.

He is mostly famous for his work about the comfort women, having found in the Defense Agency library in Tokyo the first documentary evidence that the imperial Japanese army established and ran "comfort stations". One of these was a notice written on 4 March 1938 by the adjutants to the Chiefs of Staff of the North China Army and Central China Expeditionary Force titled "Concerning the Recruitment of Women for Military Comfort Stations" stating that "the armies in the field will control the recruiting of women".

The publication of these proofs led to the admission statements of Chiefs Cabinet Secretary Koichi Kato on 12 January 1993 and Yōhei Kōno on 4 August 1993.

In July 2004, Yoshimi and historian Yuki Tanaka announced the discovery in the Australian National archives of documents proving that cyanide gas was tested on Australian and Dutch prisoners on November 1944 on Kai Islands.

On 17 April 2007, Yoshimi and fellow historian Hirofumi Hayashi announced in press conference the discovery in the archives of the Tokyo tribunal of documents showing proof of coercion used by Tokkeitai members against women from Indonesia, Indochina and China to forced them into sexual slavery.

Some Publications

 * Dokugasusen to Nihongun, Iwanami Shoten, 2004, ISBN 4000241281
 * Comfort women, Sexual slavery in the Japanese Military during World War II, Columbia University press, 2002, ISBN 0231120333
 * Yoshimi and Seiya Matsuno, Dokugasusen Kankei Shiryō II (Materials on poison gas Warfare), Kaisetsu, Hōkan 2, Jūgonen sensô gokuhi shiryōshū, Funi Shuppankan, 1997
 * Yoshimi and Kentarō Awaya, Dokugasusen Kankei Shiryō, Jūgonen sensō gokuhi shiryōshū, 18, Fuji Shuppan, 1989