The move, which included an apology, came a month after the newspaper retracted a series of articles on another hot-button issue: the women from Korea and elsewhere who were forced by Japan to serve in military brothels during World War II. The articles used reports about the practice by one Japanese man whose particular accusations have been widely discredited.
Japan acknowledged in a landmark apology in that the women had been forced to work in the brothels. In May, the newspaper cited testimony by the Fukushima plant manager Masao Yoshida in reporting that about workers disobeyed orders and fled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant at a critical moment during the disaster in In recent weeks other Japanese news organizations have reported on Mr.
Reports from The Mainichi Shimbun, The Yomiuri Shimbun and The Sankei Shimbun, three other leading newspapers, and the Kyodo News agency portrayed his comments differently , saying the exodus was the result of miscommunication. Yoshida, who is regarded by many in Japan as a hero for preventing a wider disaster, asked before he died last year that the contents of his interviews not be made public.
The government, however, released the text of his interviews on Thursday, saying that the release was necessary to clarify the public record. Since the Fukushima disaster, the liberal Asahi Shimbun has campaigned against nuclear power in its editorial pages, saying it regretted its earlier support. Last month the newspaper retracted 16 articles , the first published in September , citing a Japanese Imperial Army veteran who said he had rounded up Korean women to serve as sexual slaves during World War II.
While most historians agree that Japan forced thousands of women to work in a network of wartime brothels, some have long questioned the particular evidence given by Seiji Yoshida, a soldier who later became a writer. Japan did not use Mr. Yoshida died in and had declined to help in previous efforts to investigate his claims, the newspaper said.
