Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged Thursday to increase efforts to alter views abroad on Japan¡¯s actions in World War II by disseminating the ¡°correct¡± view, as he put it.

He cited a U.S. textbook that informs its readers of the thousands of women and girls who were forced to work in Japan¡¯s wartime military brothels. This, he said, shows Japan must fight allegations that are not true. He said meekness is not valued in international society.

¡°I just looked at a document, (U.S. publisher) McGraw Hill¡¯s textbook, and I was shocked,¡± Abe said during the Lower House Budget Committee. ¡°This kind of textbook is being used in the U.S., as we did not protest the things we should have, or we failed to correct the things we should have.

¡°Being modest does not receive recognition in the international community, and we must argue points when necessary,¡± he said, answering to a question from Tomomi Inada, the right-wing policy chief of the Liberal Democratic Party and a close ideological confidant of Abe.

Inada quoted from the book, which she said is used in California public high schools, a passage about the ¡°comfort women,¡± Japan¡¯s euphemism for the females forced to provide sex to Imperial Japanese soldiers before and during the war.

She said it reads: ¡°The Japanese army forcibly recruited, conscripted and dragooned as many as 200,000 women ages 14 to 20 to serve in military brothels.¡±

The text goes on to report, she said, that the Japanese military massacred large numbers of comfort women to ¡°cover up the operation.¡±

Inada expressed outrage that students in the U.S. are being taught things that are ¡°completely against fact, that our ancestors were a group of rapists, murderers, and kidnappers.¡±

She added, ¡°This is not an issue of the past. I believe this is an ongoing issue that, for example, violates the human rights of Japanese children living in the U.S.¡±

Earlier this year, the Foreign Ministry said the Japanese government asked the publisher to remove ¡°inaccurate¡± descriptions, according to media reports.

Japan¡¯s mainstream historians say no historical records survived the war that can pin down ¡°the exact¡± number of women forced to work in the wartime military brothels Japan set up during its wars in the 1930s and ¡®40s, but their estimates range from 20,000 to 200,000.