WASHINGTON D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi hailed Rep. Michael Honda, a California Democrat and Japanese American, for bringing into focus the issue of "Comfort Women" of World War II. Rep. Mike Honda recently held hearings recently on a resolution asking Japan to issue a stronger apology to the Comfort Women who were used as sexual slaves by the Japanese invaders in Asia during World War II.

Rep. Michael Honda, a Californian Democrat and Japanese American, introduced the resolution urging Japan to apologize for its wartime sexual enslavement policy and to correct its history. In Manila, nearly two dozen elderly Filipino women called Japan’s prime minister “a liar” March 6 after he said there was no evidence that women were forced into front-line brothels by Japanese troops during World War II. “We are the living victims and witnesses,” said Virginia Villarma, 78. “How can we be prostitutes then when we were so young and innocent?  We are telling Abe that what he said was wrong. He is a liar.”