shuttler
ELITE MEMBER
- Joined
- Feb 21, 2012
- Messages
- 9,253
- Reaction score
- 3
- Country
- Location
'Comfort women' get memorial
Updated: 2013-07-31 11:22
By Chen Jia in San Francisco and Liu Yiyi in Glendale, California
China Daily
Bok Dong Kim, a victim of Japanese military during WWII from South Korea, sits in the empty chair of the statue on the official unveiling ceremony in City of Glendale, California on Tuesday. The statue stands for the human rights of Asian comfort women who were sexually abused by Japanese soldiers in WWII. Liu Yiyi / China Daily
The West Coast unveiled its first public memorial to WWII-era "comfort women" in Glendale City, California on Tuesday.
The 1,100-pound statue of a woman in Korean dress sitting next to an empty chair has won high praise from both Korean Americans and Chinese Americans, who consider it a moving tribute to the tens of thousands of Asian women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during the war.
"We received thousands of protest e-mails, but history cannot be denied. This is a testament to the history and to the will of Korean people," city councilwoman Laura Friedman said at the unveiling ceremony.
"We are proud to be the first city on the west coast to have the memorial. We care about the Korean population in the US," she said. "The comfort women were innocent victims of the war. The sexual abuse was horrible."
City officials rejected an unexpected request from the Japanese consulate general in Los Angeles days ago to not display the statue in a public park.
A similar onslaught from Japanese lobbyists trying to get a monument to the comfort women removed in New Jersey happened last year.
Peter Li, a professor emeritus at Rutgers University, said the recent actions by Japanese politicians reflect "a total rejection of any responsibility" by Tokyo for the establishment and administration of the comfort women system.
"This is morally abhorrent," he said, "the Japanese government should unambiguously assume responsibility and admit their wrong doing."
There is no governmental legislation which officially apologizes for the enslavement of the "comfort women" or official governmental compensation for the victims, he said.
The Japanese are good at expressing their "regrets" for the suffering that occurred, but they do not assume the responsibility, which is rightfully theirs, he added.
On Tuesday, three Chinese women in their 80s joined with 174 local supporters in Osaka to request disciplinary action against Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, whose recent remarks on "comfort women" seriously damaged their sense of dignity and caused them mental anguish, said a report in the Xinhua News Agency.
A surviving Chinese "comfort woman" abducted by the Japanese military, 86-year-old Li Xiumei and two other women now live in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi.
The Chinese victims said this Japanese mayor, though born in peaceful times after the war, had hurt them with his insensitive message defending acts of aggression by the Japanese military during the war.
According to the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of WWII in Asia, Japanese ultra-rightists voted down an official apology resolution in 1995 after then Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama of the Socialist Party made a personal apology to WWII victims.
"What the Japanese military did in WWII also influenced Japanese American's human rights and freedoms in the US," said Kathy Masaoka, co-chair of the Japanese American organization Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress. "The Japanese government owes an apology to everyone who was a victim of what they did in the war."
The apology was very important as the victims would finally be able to heal their deep wounds, she said, adding that learning from the past was the only way to move forward.
Statue Brings Friction Over WWII Comfort Women To California
by AARON SCHRANK
July 29, 2013 5:08 PM
link
For decades, Koreans have been pushing to preserve the legacy of women forced to provide sex to Japanese army soldiers during World War II. Glendale, Calif., will dedicate a statue memorializing the victims, known as "comfort women," on Tuesday. But the statue has spurred controversy in this Southern California city, where some area residents say it is a divisive reminder of the horrors of war.
The sculpture is a bronze statue of a young girl. She looks about 14 around the same age as many comfort women when they were forced into military brothels run by Japan's imperial army.
Ok-seon Lee, 86, was one of them. She's in California, visiting with Korean-American activists. These activists don't say "comfort women" when she's around. Instead, they call her halmoni, Korean for "grandmother."
As she tells her story, Lee stares out at no one through her red-tinted glasses. She's back inside her darkest days, decades ago. Lee says she was taken to a facility in Yanji, China, at age 15, where she was abused for three years until the end of the war.
"The comfort station where we were taken was not a place for human beings to live," Lee says through an interpreter. "It was a slaughterhouse. I'm telling you, it was killing people."
Lee, who lives near Seoul with several other former comfort women in a facility called House of Sharing, has many disturbing stories. She tells one about being stabbed by a Japanese officer, and raises her arm to expose a scar a few inches long just below her right wrist.
"So I blocked the blade like this," she recalls. "And I was enraged, because I didn't die. You can't imagine how agonizing it was."
Historians say as many as 200,000 women from East Asia were trafficked as comfort women during the war.
"It is really necessary that we remember the rights that were violated, and the monument will be there to remind people not to repeat that history," says Won Choi, coordinator for the Korean American Forum of California, the group that raised the funds for the Glendale memorial.
The statue in Glendale is an exact replica of one in Seoul, South Korea, that sits right across from the Japanese embassy there. That "peace monument," as it is called, has become a focal point for dissent between Japanese leaders and Korean victims.
South Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by Japan during World War II embrace the "Peace Monument" dedicated to them in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Dec. 14 (Credit: Yonhap News Agency)
Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., and Ok-seon Lee, who says she was forced into sex slavery during World War II, celebrate the anniversary of a 2007 House resolution that asks the Japanese government to apologize to comfort women.
Courtesy of Won Choi
Echoes Of An International Controversy
When Frank Quintero, a Glendale City Council member, announced a plan to put the very same statue in his city's central park, hundreds of angry emails flooded his inbox mostly from Japan.
"The tone of probably 98 percent, 99 percent of the email was total denial," Quintero says. "Not just of the comfort women issue, but the Rape of Nanking and all of the other atrocities. They're in total denial."
"The story told by Koreans about comfort women is not based on the fact. It's a kind of, say, manufactured story," says Koichi Mera, one of a few dozen Japanese-Americans who showed up at a recent City Council meeting to oppose the monument.
Yoshi Miyake, who also attended the meeting, says the women were working voluntarily. That claim flies in the face of the evidence, but has even been suggested by Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe.
"These girls were allowed to refuse customers if they want to," Miyake says. "You call this sex slave?"
This isn't the first time the comfort women dispute has flared up on U.S. soil. Last year, Japanese officials lobbied Palisades Park, N.J., to remove a similar monument that was dedicated in 2010. And Buena Park, Calif., is reconsidering plans to build a comfort women memorial after a spate of emails opposing the proposal.
Japan and South Korea clash on many details about the history of comfort women. They're also at odds over Japan's responsibility to the victims. Japan did issue an apology 20 years ago, but many of its leaders have since tried to take it back.
Thomas Berger, a professor of international relations at Boston University, says some in Japan long to promote a positive image, even if that means revising the past.
"There is a belief among many conservatives in Japan that history has been used as a tool against Japan, that Japan suffers not from too much patriotism, but too little," Berger says.
But the victims say they need that history to be accepted and taught. There are only 58 "halmonies" like Ok-seon Lee left. And like Lee, many are still traveling and speaking out.
"Why didn't I die? Why am I alive? I lived for this long, and that's why I can at least say something about this," Lee says. "But think of what sorrows the other women must have died with. We need to speak for them, too."
But Ok-seon Lee can't do this forever. She hopes monuments like the one in Glendale will be around to tell this story when she and the other women can't.
If you want to know the horror stories from these women:
Paini, born 1930, Getasan, Central JavaFrom age 13, Paini was forced into labor at a local barracks. She gathered food, dug ditches and worked in the kitchen and in the evening was taken from home to the barracks and raped repeatedly. The man Paini was to marry through an arranged marriage disowned her after the war. Credit: npr and photos by Jan Banning; Original captions edited for length
Iyoh, born 1924, Baros, West Java Iyoh worked as a cleaning lady in a Japanese household. A member of the Japanese military, who was a steady visitor there, regularly assaulted the female personnel. He entered Iyoh's room regularly, too, and raped her so brutally that she sustained internal injuries. Credit: npr and photos by Jan Banning; Original captions edited for length
Find the stories and pix here:
Stories and Pictureshow: Comfort-women-untold-stories-of-wartime-abuse
Updated: 2013-07-31 11:22
By Chen Jia in San Francisco and Liu Yiyi in Glendale, California
China Daily
Bok Dong Kim, a victim of Japanese military during WWII from South Korea, sits in the empty chair of the statue on the official unveiling ceremony in City of Glendale, California on Tuesday. The statue stands for the human rights of Asian comfort women who were sexually abused by Japanese soldiers in WWII. Liu Yiyi / China Daily
The West Coast unveiled its first public memorial to WWII-era "comfort women" in Glendale City, California on Tuesday.
The 1,100-pound statue of a woman in Korean dress sitting next to an empty chair has won high praise from both Korean Americans and Chinese Americans, who consider it a moving tribute to the tens of thousands of Asian women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during the war.
"We received thousands of protest e-mails, but history cannot be denied. This is a testament to the history and to the will of Korean people," city councilwoman Laura Friedman said at the unveiling ceremony.
"We are proud to be the first city on the west coast to have the memorial. We care about the Korean population in the US," she said. "The comfort women were innocent victims of the war. The sexual abuse was horrible."
City officials rejected an unexpected request from the Japanese consulate general in Los Angeles days ago to not display the statue in a public park.
A similar onslaught from Japanese lobbyists trying to get a monument to the comfort women removed in New Jersey happened last year.
Peter Li, a professor emeritus at Rutgers University, said the recent actions by Japanese politicians reflect "a total rejection of any responsibility" by Tokyo for the establishment and administration of the comfort women system.
"This is morally abhorrent," he said, "the Japanese government should unambiguously assume responsibility and admit their wrong doing."
There is no governmental legislation which officially apologizes for the enslavement of the "comfort women" or official governmental compensation for the victims, he said.
The Japanese are good at expressing their "regrets" for the suffering that occurred, but they do not assume the responsibility, which is rightfully theirs, he added.
On Tuesday, three Chinese women in their 80s joined with 174 local supporters in Osaka to request disciplinary action against Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, whose recent remarks on "comfort women" seriously damaged their sense of dignity and caused them mental anguish, said a report in the Xinhua News Agency.
A surviving Chinese "comfort woman" abducted by the Japanese military, 86-year-old Li Xiumei and two other women now live in the northern Chinese province of Shanxi.
The Chinese victims said this Japanese mayor, though born in peaceful times after the war, had hurt them with his insensitive message defending acts of aggression by the Japanese military during the war.
According to the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of WWII in Asia, Japanese ultra-rightists voted down an official apology resolution in 1995 after then Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama of the Socialist Party made a personal apology to WWII victims.
"What the Japanese military did in WWII also influenced Japanese American's human rights and freedoms in the US," said Kathy Masaoka, co-chair of the Japanese American organization Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress. "The Japanese government owes an apology to everyone who was a victim of what they did in the war."
The apology was very important as the victims would finally be able to heal their deep wounds, she said, adding that learning from the past was the only way to move forward.
Statue Brings Friction Over WWII Comfort Women To California
by AARON SCHRANK
July 29, 2013 5:08 PM
link
For decades, Koreans have been pushing to preserve the legacy of women forced to provide sex to Japanese army soldiers during World War II. Glendale, Calif., will dedicate a statue memorializing the victims, known as "comfort women," on Tuesday. But the statue has spurred controversy in this Southern California city, where some area residents say it is a divisive reminder of the horrors of war.
The sculpture is a bronze statue of a young girl. She looks about 14 around the same age as many comfort women when they were forced into military brothels run by Japan's imperial army.
Ok-seon Lee, 86, was one of them. She's in California, visiting with Korean-American activists. These activists don't say "comfort women" when she's around. Instead, they call her halmoni, Korean for "grandmother."
As she tells her story, Lee stares out at no one through her red-tinted glasses. She's back inside her darkest days, decades ago. Lee says she was taken to a facility in Yanji, China, at age 15, where she was abused for three years until the end of the war.
"The comfort station where we were taken was not a place for human beings to live," Lee says through an interpreter. "It was a slaughterhouse. I'm telling you, it was killing people."
Lee, who lives near Seoul with several other former comfort women in a facility called House of Sharing, has many disturbing stories. She tells one about being stabbed by a Japanese officer, and raises her arm to expose a scar a few inches long just below her right wrist.
"So I blocked the blade like this," she recalls. "And I was enraged, because I didn't die. You can't imagine how agonizing it was."
Historians say as many as 200,000 women from East Asia were trafficked as comfort women during the war.
"It is really necessary that we remember the rights that were violated, and the monument will be there to remind people not to repeat that history," says Won Choi, coordinator for the Korean American Forum of California, the group that raised the funds for the Glendale memorial.
The statue in Glendale is an exact replica of one in Seoul, South Korea, that sits right across from the Japanese embassy there. That "peace monument," as it is called, has become a focal point for dissent between Japanese leaders and Korean victims.
South Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by Japan during World War II embrace the "Peace Monument" dedicated to them in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Dec. 14 (Credit: Yonhap News Agency)
Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., and Ok-seon Lee, who says she was forced into sex slavery during World War II, celebrate the anniversary of a 2007 House resolution that asks the Japanese government to apologize to comfort women.
Courtesy of Won Choi
Echoes Of An International Controversy
When Frank Quintero, a Glendale City Council member, announced a plan to put the very same statue in his city's central park, hundreds of angry emails flooded his inbox mostly from Japan.
"The tone of probably 98 percent, 99 percent of the email was total denial," Quintero says. "Not just of the comfort women issue, but the Rape of Nanking and all of the other atrocities. They're in total denial."
"The story told by Koreans about comfort women is not based on the fact
Yoshi Miyake, who also attended the meeting, says the women were working voluntarily. That claim flies in the face of the evidence, but has even been suggested by Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe.
"These girls were allowed to refuse customers if they want to," Miyake says. "You call this sex slave?"
This isn't the first time the comfort women dispute has flared up on U.S. soil. Last year, Japanese officials lobbied Palisades Park, N.J., to remove a similar monument that was dedicated in 2010. And Buena Park, Calif., is reconsidering plans to build a comfort women memorial after a spate of emails opposing the proposal.
Japan and South Korea clash on many details about the history of comfort women. They're also at odds over Japan's responsibility to the victims. Japan did issue an apology 20 years ago, but many of its leaders have since tried to take it back.
Thomas Berger, a professor of international relations at Boston University, says some in Japan long to promote a positive image, even if that means revising the past.
"There is a belief among many conservatives in Japan that history has been used as a tool against Japan, that Japan suffers not from too much patriotism, but too little," Berger says.
But the victims say they need that history to be accepted and taught. There are only 58 "halmonies" like Ok-seon Lee left. And like Lee, many are still traveling and speaking out.
"Why didn't I die? Why am I alive? I lived for this long, and that's why I can at least say something about this," Lee says. "But think of what sorrows the other women must have died with. We need to speak for them, too."
But Ok-seon Lee can't do this forever. She hopes monuments like the one in Glendale will be around to tell this story when she and the other women can't.
If you want to know the horror stories from these women:
Paini, born 1930, Getasan, Central JavaFrom age 13, Paini was forced into labor at a local barracks. She gathered food, dug ditches and worked in the kitchen and in the evening was taken from home to the barracks and raped repeatedly. The man Paini was to marry through an arranged marriage disowned her after the war. Credit: npr and photos by Jan Banning; Original captions edited for length
Iyoh, born 1924, Baros, West Java Iyoh worked as a cleaning lady in a Japanese household. A member of the Japanese military, who was a steady visitor there, regularly assaulted the female personnel. He entered Iyoh's room regularly, too, and raped her so brutally that she sustained internal injuries. Credit: npr and photos by Jan Banning; Original captions edited for length
Find the stories and pix here:
Stories and Pictureshow: Comfort-women-untold-stories-of-wartime-abuse
