S.F. Board of Supervisors Considering Comfort Women Monument

Rafu Staff Report

SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is considering a resolution to support the establishment of a “comfort women” memorial, as has been done in other U.S. cities, including Glendale in Los Angeles County.

Resolution 72 was introduced on July 21 by Supervisor Eric Mar and co-sponsored by Supervisors Jane Kim, Malia Cohen, Julie Christensen, Norman Yee, Mark Farrell, David Campos and John Avalos. The other supervisors are London Breed (whose district includes Japantown), Scott Wiener and Katy Tang.

After hearing comments for and against the resolution, the board referred it to the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee, which is chaired by Mar. The committee will meet on Sept. 17 and public comments will be taken. The resolution then goes back to the full Board of Supervisors on Sept. 22.

Resolution 72 reads as follows: “Whereas, according to most international historians, the term ‘comfort women’ euphemistically refers to an estimated 200,000 women and young girls who were kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during its colonial and wartime occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War II …

Supervisor Eric Mar

“During the 15 years of invasion and occupation of Asian countries, unspeakable and well-documented war crimes, including mass rape, wholesale massacres, heinous torture, and other atrocities, were committed by the Japanese Imperial Army throughout the occupied countries and colonies …

“Of the few top Japanese military leaders who were investigated and convicted as war criminals in the postwar War Crime Tribunals in Tokyo, Nanjing, Manila, Yokohama, and Khabarovsk, many escaped prosecution …

“In 2001, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed Resolution No. 842-01, urging the government of Japan, on the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-Japan Peace Treaty, to fully acknowledge and apologize for Japan’s wartime atrocities and provide just compensation for the surviving victims of its aggression …

“In 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives passed Rep. Mike Honda’s bipartisan House Resolution 121, which also called on the government of Japan to formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility for its Imperial Armed Forces’ coercion of young women into sexual slavery …

“In 2013, the San Francisco Board passed Resolution No. 218-13, condemning Japan’s denial of its system of sexual enslavement during World War II and calling for justice for ‘comfort women’ …

“The year 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II (1941-1945) and the Pacific War (1931-1945) and the defeat of Japanese imperialism and militarism by the Allies …

“Several cities in the U.S., including Glendale and Rohnert Park, Calif.; Long Island, N.Y.; Palisades Park and Union City, N.J.; Fairfax, Va.; and Michigan City, Mich., have already erected memorials to help remember the ‘comfort women’ during Japanese occupation in the Pacific War …

“Today, human trafficking of women and girls is a form of modern-day slavery with 20 million victims worldwide, including an estimated 1.5 million victims in North America alone, forced to perform labor and sexual acts; and human trafficking is a market-driven criminal industry based on the principles of supply and demand …

“San Francisco is not immune to the problem, and has been considered a destination for human trafficking due· to its ports, airports, industry, and rising immigrant populations …

“Leaders of the Japanese American community have worked closely with the broader Asian Pacific Islander community in the past decades to strengthen relationships and build trust, understanding, and community for civil rights and social justice …

“San Francisco is a city of immigrants and their descendants, many of whom have ancestral lies to Asian and Pacific Islander nations and have direct or indirect experience with Japan’s past system of sexual enslavement …

“A growing coalition of immigrant communities, women’s organizations, and human rights groups have organized to establish a memorial for ‘comfort women’ and the millions of victims of the Japanese military in San Francisco to ensure that the plight and suffering of these girls and women will never be forgotten or erased from history.

“Now, therefore, be it resolved that appropriate city and county agencies will work with the community organizations to design and establish the memorial;

“And, be it further resolved that the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco during the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II expresses its strong support of creating a memorial in memory of those girls and women who suffered immeasurable pain and humiliation as sex slaves and as a sacred place for remembrance, reflection, remorsefulness, and atonement for generations to come.”

Public Comments

Of the 20 people who spoke on the resolution at the July 21 meeting, 15 were supporters and 10 were opponents.

Rita Semel, a member of the San Francisco Human Services Commission and past chair of the San Francisco Interfaith Commission, said that she still wants to remember the Holocaust even though she bears no malice toward the Germany of today, and by the same token, “The Japan of today is not the Japan of 1941, but we still must remember those who suffered and died at that time.”

Koichi Mera, president of the Global Alliance for Historical Truth and a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the City of Glendale over the comfort women statue there, said that while issues such as jails and housing are “proper topics for debate” before the Board of Supervisors, the comfort women monument is “an issue which is between Korea and Japan … So city government should not intervene in this issue.”

He added, “U.S. is a country having immigrants from various places. They should be living together in harmony. This comfort women issue will divide people, and that is not really good. In addition, one point I’d like to make is that the usual comfort women’s story is a fabricated story. In fact, those women were not sex slaves. They were paid well. They had very good life and had lots of income.”

Mariko Okada-Collins, who teaches Japanese at Central Washington University, said, “This statue represents a return to the dark days when … neo-fascist organizations such as Sons of the Golden West organization were active in many anti-Japanese activities … The school board, supported by the mayor and the city council, joined with the racist American South and segregated San Francisco schools for Japanese students.”

Calling the resolution part of a “modern-day racist campaign,” she said, “To assume that Japanese are sex-crazed rapists, it appear to be like current supervisors is set to continue the tradition in the 21st century … (The resolution) promotes exaggerated claim against the Japanese while overlooking equal violations by Americans, Koreans and Russians … (and) does absolutely nothing to raise awareness to save one woman from human trafficking.”

Terumi Imamura, who also spoke on the issue at Glendale and Fullerton city council meetings, told the supervisors, “My biggest concern is that Japanese and Japanese Americans who live here in America, are we being targeted because our nationality, and again? Many of us remember those painful camp days during wartime … We are scared, we are concerned, we are worried.”

She stated that “there is no solid evidence” that 200,000 women and girls were abducted, and said a 1944 report by the U.S. Office of War Information did not back up such claims.

Jean Bee Chan of the Rape of Nanking Coalition noted that a number of prominent Japanese Americans have been involved with her organization, including Dr. Clifford Uyeda, Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi and Ronald Takaki. “We miss them very much. They have passed on. But their legacy of justice and fairness will live forever.”

Recalling the Japanese invasion of China, she said, “We had to run away in the middle of the night. I had a little brother. My little brother got sick and he didn’t have enough food, he didn’t have enough medicine. He died … When I was 8, one day we had to run away from the Japanese again … I saw Japanese pointing the bayonets at me behind the thick bushes. Luckily they didn’t find me, so I survived. But the comfort women and sex slaves didn’t survive. Many of them died … and 35 million Chinese and Asians did not survive like I did.”

Marilyn Mondejar of the Filipina Women’s Network said that she first learned about the comfort women from her mother: “She would tell us stories about she would hide or her sisters would hide when Japanese soldiers would go house to house looking for women and girls. A thousand Filipina comfort women have been documented …

“I met Eve Ensler, the author and the playwright of ‘The Vagina Monologues,’ who wrote a special monologue about the comfort women when she met the Filipina comfort women when she was in the Philippines. So every year our organization puts on the show to raise awareness about the stories of these women. We raised money for them … Every Wednesday they are at the Japanese Embassy in the Philippines waiting for their apology …

“All 200,000 of them, Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Australians, Malaysians, Indonesians, Taiwanese, Burmese, and women of the Netherlands — their stories cannot die. We have to keep reminding our next generation about what they have done.”

Jennifer Chung of the San Francisco Bay Area Coalition to Commemorate the Pacific War said, “I’ve heard a story from an 87-year-old Vietnamese woman. She told me … she saw her neighbor’s daughter’s breasts get cut off by Japanese soldiers when the Japanese invaded her village. Unbelievable, isn’t it? But that is the truth, not fabricated …

“This young woman’s painful experience was (part of) the first large-scale human trafficking in the world in the last century. They were forced. They had no choice. They suffered from torture, rape and humiliation every day. They cry, they scream, but no one can help them. Some of them died from it. Some of them committed suicide … Some of them survived, but they have to carry this for the rest of their life …

“Erecting this memorial will be significant to the proud San Francisco community we call home. This memorial will serve as a lesson to our future generation to learn that we all have our equal right to live. No one has the right to commit atrocity against others and then tell the victim community, ‘Let’s just forget it and go on.’”

Michael Wong of Veterans for Peace-San Francisco stated, “The comfort women history is well established by Korean, Chinese, Japanese sources as well as European, Filipino and other independent sources … Confronting the truth and openly discussing the past is the best way to avoid repeating that past and together building a better future for all people. This statue honors the suffering of innocents and is one step towards closure and moving on to a better mutual future for all people.

“One of the reasons that I am here is because the Japanese peace movement reached out to Veterans for Peace and asked us to support them in speaking out against the militarization of Japan, the denial of World War II war crimes … Polls in Japan actually show the peace movement has majority support even though the right wing in Japan has the big money. So this is not about Japan-bashing … This is about working with our counterparts in Japan.”

Hisako Blair, who was a high school student in Japan during the war, recalled seeing Korean prostitutes accosting Japanese soldiers at the train station in Kyoto. Although she was unable to finish her statement due to the two-minute limit, she seemed to be suggesting that the comfort women were not sex slaves.

Another immigrant from Japan, Haruko Yoshida, who came to San Francisco in 1972, warned that a comfort women statue “might create hate issue between Korea and Japan. It’s really a political issue … You supervisors need to study … where it’s coming from and evaluate it. It’s for the future, for the kids and everybody else in the city. I think it has nothing to do with San Francisco … This happened a long time ago.”

A Japanese-born social worker made a similar argument, saying that such a statue would open the door to monuments to historical events in other countries rather than focusing on San Francisco’s and America’s history.

Ignatius Ding, executive vice president of Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia, delivered a letter from Rep. Honda in support of the resolution. “Mr. Honda was interned during World War II because of his ethnicity, and later he becomes a leading force advocating the apology and reparation to Japanese Americans,” Ding said. “He has been fighting for human rights throughout his career from supervisor to assemblyman in California, then congressman.”

Community activist Lotus Yee Fong commented, “There isn’t a difference between local and national … I think we need to do some historical reconciliation, discussion about how to deal with these issues because of our children in preschool, K-12, community college and higher ed … We don’t want war.”

Testimony in support of the resolution was also given by representatives of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and Eclipse Rising, an activist group of Zainichi Koreans in the U.S.

Los Angeles-based Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress, which supported the Glendale monument, said in statement to be sent to the Board of Supervisors, “The Japanese government still has not given reparations or an apology directly to the remaining 50+ women who are still alive. Instead, Japanese media has been under scrutiny for their coverage and individual reporters have been threatened. The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times have published articles about the attack on the Asahi Shimbun.

“According to a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece, ‘Nationalist revisionists have attacked the Asahi newspaper and one of its former reporters who was among the first to bring the sexual slavery to light. Seizing on fabrications from a single source in a series of stories more than 20 years ago, the critics are arguing that Asahi alone was responsible for leading the world to believe a falsehood about Japan’s wartime behavior — an analysis that ignores the volumes of testimonies from the women themselves.’

“The newspaper sent a team of reporters to talk with groups here, including NCRR, in an attempt to show that it is reviewing its reports on the comfort women. NCRR continues to view this issue as a human rights and women’s rights issue that can be resolved by direct and individual reparations and an apology to each halmoni (the preferred term) from the Japanese government.”