In a recent interview with the Washington Post before his upcoming visit to the US next month, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe again made some offensive remarks. He described wartime "comfort women" as victims of "human trafficking," without specifying the perpetrator. "On the question of 'comfort women,' when my thought goes to these people, who have been victimized by human trafficking and gone through immeasurable pain and suffering beyond description, my heart aches," Abe was quoted as saying.

"Comfort women" were women and girls coerced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in Japanese military brothels during the 1930s and 1940s.

The use of the term "human trafficking" is an attempt to twist the fact of sexual slavery and was carefully calculated to avoid an unequivocal acknowledgment of Japan's responsibility for the atrocity.

The world-recognized Kono Statement, made by then Japanese chief cabinet secretary Yohei Kono in 1993, offered an official apology to the victims of Japan's wartime sex slavery, acknowledging that many of the women were coerced into sexual slavery.

However, since the revisionist Abe came to power, the Japanese government has made an all-out effort to deny the Japanese military's past involvement in forced prostitution.

There have been prevailing arguments, reportedly backed by the Japanese government, that "comfort women" were not sex slaves, but women licensed under the legalized prostitution system.

In November, the Japanese Foreign Ministry demanded the Japanese Consulate in New York protest against publisher McGraw-Hill, as its world history school textbook Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Pastsays the Imperial Japanese Army forcibly recruited as many as 200,000 women to serve in military brothels, a fact that Abe and the rightists have long rejected.

During Abe's visit to the US, he will become the first Japanese prime minister to address a joint session of Congress. Critics have claimed that Abe doesn't deserve the honor because of his attempts to whitewash Japan's wartime atrocities and denials of Japan's responsibility for the sexual slavery issue.

A group of retired US soldiers recently wrote a letter to Congress, arguing that Abe's speech could only be approved if he clearly acknowledges past historic wrongs. From his remarks in the Washington Post on the "comfort women" issue, an Abe apology is unlikely.

Rapprochement between Japan and its neighbors, including China and South Korea, hinges on Japan's attitude toward its wartime past. The US, as Japan's ally, in particular has a responsibility to remind Japan that it should sincerely reflect on history and apologize for its past wrongdoings, rather than being complicit in Japan's denials and revisionism.