Comfort Women Memorial at Bergen County Justice Center

Photo credit - WWP team

Among the four Comfort Women Memorials in NJ, this one was the last to be dedicated on March 8th, 2013. The memorial stands in front of Bergen County Justice Center in Hackensack, next to other monuments commemorating international human rights violations – the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the Irish Great Hunger, and the African-American Slavery. The Comfort Women Memorial Committee commissioned it, a stone with a plaque honoring the Comfort Women’s story, not letting it become forgotten.

The Comfort Women were hundreds of thousands of Asian girls and women abducted from their homes in South East Asia, and were forced into sex slavery by the Japanese imperial army during the second world war. They were held captive in comfort stations in inhuman conditions, suffered sexual violence daily. Most of them did not survive this brutality and horror to tell their stories, and those who did found the courage to testify only years later.

There are Comfort Women’s memorials all over the world. In New Jersey, there are three more: Fort Lee, Palisades Park, and Union City.

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10 Main St, Hackensack, NJ 07601

 

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