Comfort Women Memorial in Palisades Park, NJ, honors the hundred thousand Asian girls and women who were sex slaves during the second world war by the Japanese Imperial army. They were kidnapped from their homes in China, the Philippines, Korea, and even Japan. They were held in comfort stations in Japanese-occupied territories in the Pacific Rim in inhuman conditions suffering sexual violence daily. Most of these women did not survive to tell their stories and those who did, testify only years later.
It is the first memorial honoring Comfort Women in New Jersey. Dedicated on October 23rd, 2010, in one of the parks in Palisades Park, and a few years later, relocated to stand at the entrance to the Palisades Park Library. The artist Steve Cavallo designed it after reading the victims’ testimonies. He created a bronze plaque on a large stone. A painting on the left side of the plaque depicts a girl curled on the ground, and a soldier is about to hit her. On the right is the information about the memorial – “In the memory of the more than 200,000 girls who were abducted by the armed forces of the government of imperial Japan 1930’s-1945 Known as “Comfort Women,” they endured human rights violations that no peoples should leave unrecognized. Let us never forget the horrors of crimes against humanity.”
Comfort Women Memorials stand all over the world. In the US, you can find them in San Francisco, CA, Atlanta, GA, Fairfax, VA, Union City, NJ, Fort Lee, NJ, Southfield, Michigan, and more.
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