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LOS ANGELES — Outraged by a recent court ruling that the Japanese government need not compensate women forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during World War II, hundreds of activists staged a noisy protest Tuesday outside that country’s consulate. 

The demonstrators delivered a letter addressed to Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori calling on his government to fully disclose war crimes committed by Japanese troops.  

They also want Japan to acknowledge its complicity in those crimes, make reparations to victims, and approve textbooks that are historically accurate. 

The protesters screamed and waved hand-painted signs while denouncing textbooks recently approved by the Japanese government that they say fail to acknowledge World War II sex slaves, forced labor and civilian massacres. 

Historians say as many as 200,000 women, mostly Koreans but also Filipinos, Chinese and Dutch, were forced into sexual slavery during World War II. 

A Japanese appeals court last month overturned a 1998 ruling ordering the government to compensate women forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers.  

The Hiroshima High Court said the government need not pay three Korean women a total of $7,260 because no serious constitutional violations had occurred. 

“The recent court decision is a brutal slap in the face to the ’comfort women,”’ said Haena Cho of Young Koreans United of Los Angeles.  

“The Japanese government’s continuing refusal to redress these women for what they have suffered during World War II demonstrates the ongoing nature of their oppression.” 

The consulate released a copy of an April 3 statement by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda as its response to the protest. 

Fukuda cautioned critics against interpreting textbooks that receive authorization as representative of the government’s viewpoint.  

He said any problems found in textbooks are remedied during the authorization process and maintained that process was carried out impartially in this instance. 

He also pointed to a 1995 statement by the prime minister as proof that the country has acknowledged and apologized for damage and suffering caused in the past. 

The textbooks in question have caused a public furor in South Korea, where the ambassador to Japan is now scheduled to return home Wednesday because of the dispute. South Korea is asking the Japanese government to revise the textbook, which was written by nationalist scholars and approved by education officials earlier this month. Japan has rejected the demand. 

The controversy has rekindled anti-Japanese sentiments in Korea, where 35 years of Japanese colonial rule from 1910 until the end of the World War II in 1945 remain a bitter memory. 

Some protesters also called Tuesday for a boycott of Japanese products.  

Others said Japan should be denied a position on the United Nations Security Council, a seat the country has been pursuing for years. 

More than 100 organizations signed the letter written to Mori, questioning whether a “nation that violates human rights and approves revisionist history (is) prepared” to serve on the Security Council.