San Francisco Dedicates Comfort Women Statue in St. Mary’s Square

Here is the latest comfort woman statue to be erected:

A statue for victims of Japan’s wartime sexual enslavement will be dedicated in San Francisco this week, South Korean officials here said Sunday.

The House of Sharing, a shelter for the former sex slaves, in Gwangju, east of Seoul, said that a monument will be unveiled at St. Mary’s Square in San Francisco on Thursday.

The ceremony will be attended by former comfort woman Lee Yong-soo, and former Congressman Mike Honda, who led the U.S. House of Representatives to pass House Resolution 121 that urges the Japanese government to apologize and compensate victims, it added.

The statue was established with funds raised by the nonprofit Comfort Women Justice Coalition led by Chinese-Americans and ethnic Korean civic groups in northern California, it said.

The sculpture depicts three girls holding hands on top of a cylindrical pedestal with a grandmother figure watching them from the ground.

A plaque is placed in front of it explaining that thousands of women from 13 Asian Pacific nations, including Korea and China, were forced into sexual slavery for Japanese troops between 1931 and 1945.

The monument also includes a message that urges the Japanese government to “acknowledge its responsibility and formally apologize.” It also shows testimony from a former comfort woman who expressed her fear that a painful history might be forgotten in the future.  [Yonhap]

My only problem with these statues being put up in the US is why should a public park be used to push a political agenda?  Especially a political agenda that is not true when its say the Japanese government has not apologized when the Prime Minister himself has apologized multiple times.

In Seoul on Monday, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said Abe “expresses anew sincere apologies and remorse from the bottom of his heart to all those who suffered immeasurable pain and incurable physical and psychological wounds as ‘comfort women.’” Abe later called Park to apologize, and she called for a new era of trust between the countries. [Seattle Times]

Just because some people in Korea don’t accept the apology doesn’t mean it did not happen.