A US congressional committee will next week debate a resolution calling on Japan to apologize for the sexual slavery its military inflicted on 200,000 Asian women during the 1930s and World War II.
The resolution on so-called "comfort women" will be brought up in the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on June 26, a panel staffer said.
The "mark-up" session in the committee will allow lawmakers the chance to debate, amend and possibly vote to send the resolution to the full House.
The measure says the "government of Japan should formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Force's coercion of young women into sexual slavery, known to the world as 'comfort women.'"
It calls on the Japanese Prime Minister to make a public apology, urges the government to refute any claims that the episode never happened and wants future generations to be told of "this horrible crime."
Last week, a group of 44 Japanese lawmakers denied in a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post that Japan's military had forced the women into sexual slavery during World War II.
"No historical document has ever been found by historians or research organizations that positively demonstrates that women were forced against their will into prostitution by the Japanese army," the ad said.
It said the women were "working under a system of licensed prostitution that was commonplace around the world at the time," the ad said, adding that many of the women made more money than field officers "and even generals."
Historians say up to 200,000 young women, mostly from Korea but also from China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan, were forced to serve as sex slaves in Japanese army brothels.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sparked controversy in March by saying there was no evidence the imperial army directly coerced thousands of "comfort women" into brothels across Asia during World War II.
Abe has since stressed he stands by Japan's landmark 1993 apology to the women and expressed his deep sympathy for the women during a US visit in late April.
