Comfort Women Memorial in San Francisco commemorates 2nd anniversary

Two years have passed since the Comfort Women Memorial was established in San Francisco, the U.S. Asian communities in the city gathered on Sunday (local time) to celebrate the second anniversary of the establishment of the memorial and call for justice for hundreds of thousands of women sexually victimized in World War II, according to Xinhua News Agency.

The memorial, the first of its kind to be installed in a major U.S. city, is dedicated to comfort women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. Unveiled in September 2017, the statue depicts three young women, one each from Korea, China, and the Philippines, holding hands. Looking at the them is another figure, Kim Hak-sun (1924-1997), who was the first comfort woman to come forward about her experiences.

Xinhua said that representatives from Chinese, South Korean and Philippine communities in the region joined the Sunday event organized by the San Francisco-based Comfort Women Justice Coalition (CWJC). Also, former U.S. Congressman Mike Honda as well as college students from Los Angeles and Fukuoka, Japan demanded an official apology from the Japanese government for the wartime crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Army.

Two university students from Fukuoka slammed the Japanese government, Xinhua said. Saying that it is extremely difficult to learn about Japan’s history of aggression or the comfort women issue in Japanese society today, the students added the history of comfort women was not even mentioned in Japanese textbooks. “We fear that hiding our country’s history is going to hurt us and our future,” the news agency quoted them as saying.


Bo-Mi Im bom@donga.com