employment in the occupied areas was very limited. On the other side, most of academia, especially of nations outside Japan, assert that the majority of comfort women were young girls abducted from their homes and forced into prostitution by the Japanese government and Imperial Japanese Army as sexual slaves and demand Japan take responsibility and formally apologize and educate the next generation about such an atrocity. Testing of chemical and biological weapons on civilians and POWs In 1942, the Japanese military began testing various chemical and biological agents as an alternate method to win the war. Human experiments were conducted on Chinese and Korean civilians; Allied POWs were also subjected to experimentation. After the war, China (PRC) demanded data from these experiments in exchange for not raising the issue, while the U.S. granted immunity from prosecution to many of the scientists involved (see Unit 731) in exchange for their weapons research. Senkaku Islands The Senkaku Islands, known in Chinese as the Diaoyu Islands, are a group of islands in the East China Sea with an area of 7 km2. Japan currently has control over the islands, but both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China government on Taiwan claim them. Tensions over the islands have surfaced in the late 1990s and were one issue in the 2005 protests in China. Gas and oil in the East China Sea Both China and Japan are interested in exploiting deposits of natural gas and oil in the Xihu Trough of the East China Sea. Both countries are net importers of energy, and the energy needs of China are mushrooming. The U.S. Department of Energy notes a moderate estimate of 100 billion barrels of oil in the South China Sea. notes China has been drilling in the Xihu Trough since 2003. China's claims to these islands come from its claim of the entire continental shelf. Japan's claim is by the standard 200 nautical mile (370 km) EEZ international maritime treaty. Practically speaking, both nations have split the territory. Japan fears that Chinese drilling is likely to remove oil from Japan's side of territory claimed by Japan through suction. After two years of repeated requests to China to disclose information on the deposits in the hope of co-development, on April 13, 2005, Japan granted drilling rights to two Japanese companies, a move immediately protested by the Chinese as the drilling will take