This is the first time a national parliament endorsed a motion calling for thorough redressing of the sufferings of the so-called "comfort women" before and during World War II, said Hans van Baalen, who initiated the motion.

All 150 members of the Dutch lower house of parliament voted in favor of the motion, an unusual gesture from the Dutch parliament which is often embroiled in factional squabbling.

"This should send a strong and clear signal to the Japanese government and the Japanese people, that so many years after the World War Two, people in the Netherlands still want the Japanese to recognize the war crimes of the past and to recognize the victims," said van Baalen, foreign affairs spokesman of the Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) in the parliament.

The motion urges Japan to fully recognize the fate of the "comfort women," take full responsibility for the war crimes of the Japanese military, and offer formal apologies and financial damages to survivors.

The motion calls on Japan to remove the history-distorting content from its history text books and give a more accurate picture of World War II, including moves by the Japanese military to force Asian and Western women into prostitution.

The motion also urges Tokyo to "refrain from any declaration that will devalue the 1993 declaration of remorse," which was made by the then Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono.

Kono acknowledged in 1993 that the Japanese military and government forced foreign females into being "comfort women" and offered an apology on the part of the Japanese government. But some Japanese politicians have since distanced themselves from that statement.

"Japan's denial of the past war crimes hurts its relations with the Netherlands," van Baalen said.

"It is a matter taken very seriously in the Netherlands even solong after the war," he said. "Japan should do what we demand, because this is the only fair and honest way of treating 'comfort women'."

In July, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution urging the Japanese government to unambiguously acknowledge and accept responsibility for sexual enslavement of women during its colonial occupation of Asia in the past century. It was the first resolution ever holding Japan accountable for the "comfort women" issue.

Historians estimated that some 200,000 women were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese forces during World War II, including about 300 Dutch women and girls in the former Dutch colony of Indonesia.