That is the second museum and archive in China and the fourth worldwide, dedicated to exhibiting, researching, and documenting the comfort women issue, serving as a living testimony of the biggest sexual war crime ever happened in history. The first archives opened in Japan in 2005, the second in South Korea, and the third in Nanjing, China. The term Comfort Women is related to more than 200,000 girls and women from China, New Guinea, Burma, the Philippines, and Korea, who before and during WW2, were abducted from their homes, held in captivity at front-line brothels by the Japanese army, forcing them into sexual slavery. They lived in inhuman conditions, suffered violence and rape daily. The museum opened on October 22nd, 2016, the same day a Comfort Women statue was unveiled on the Shanghai Normal University grounds. In the museum, there are 48 display boards and 80 exhibits that include original items and artifacts donated by the victims and their families, some were collected from brothel stations. The research center holds written and recorded testimonials of Chinese comfort women and documents on the 158 comfort stations in Shanghai and 67 stations in southern Hainan Province. Recent researches show that there were 200,000 comfort women in China only. Both the museum and the statue are the effort of Su Zhiliang, a professor at Shanghai Normal University and head of research on the issue of comfort women. Read more...

That is the second statue outside South Korea that honors the Comfort Women. It is the same statue as the first statue that faces the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, but this one depicts two young girls, one Korean and the second Chinees. They are sitting, and next to them is an empty chair. Comfort Women is a euphemistic term given to more than 200,000 girls and women from China, New Guinea, Burma, the Philippines, and Korea, who during WW2 were kidnapped from their homes, trafficked, and held in captivity at front-line brothels by the Japanese army. They were sex slaves and suffered from violence, rape and lived in inhuman conditions. These crimes got worldwide attention only in 1991, when Kim Hak-sun, a comfort woman survivor, testified for the first time on her experiences as a Korean comfort woman. This testimony opened the subject worldwide, and in China, movies and books led to increased public awareness and the establishment of a museum and several statues. Su Zhiliang, a professor at Shanghai Normal University and an expert on the issue of comfort women, led to the erection of the statue. He also promoted the Comfort Women’s Museum and Archives that opened the same day the sculptures were dedicated, on October 22nd, 2016. Two of the few remaining survivors attended the dedication ceremony – Lee Yoon-soo (88) and Chen Liancun (90). They were very excited to get some recognition for the crimes they had suffered. Read more...

The Statue of Peace, Sonyeosang in Korean and Shōjo-zō in Japanese, also known as the Comfort Woman Statue, stands in Seoul facing the Japanese embassy waiting for an official apology and recognition for the crimes that happened to them during WW2. The term ‘comfort women’ refers to the hundreds of thousands of women abducted from their homes by the Japanese Imperial Army and forced into sexual slavery during the war. To this day, the Japanese government did not condemn these actions, never apologized, and no one was held accountable for these horrible actions. The statue stands in the same place where the Wednesday demonstrations have occurred since 1992, organized by The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan. It is the longest-running protest on a single theme in history. They demand the recognition of the Japanese government on these crimes, justice, compensation to the victims, documenting the truth, and creating a memorial and museum for the victims. Kim Seo-Kyung and Kim Eun-sung designed the memorial, a bronze sitting statue of a girl, wearing traditional cloth, looking forward at the embassy, waiting for her closure. The bird on her shoulder represents peace. Next to her is an empty seat. The statue was unveiled on 14 December 2011, the 1,000th day of the protest. More than 20 copies of this statue and tens of other memorials stand on almost every continent, from Australia to Berlin. The mission is to commemorate the comfort women and make sure their stories are not forgotten. Almost every memorial caused controversy with the Japanese authorities, who tried using every possible method to remove them. Sometimes they were successful, and the statue got removed (like in Berlin) or relocated to a less central location (like in Atlanta). Read more...

A large metal butterfly sits on top of a stone on the north side of Liberty Plaza, commemorating the Comfort Women of World War II. The plaque on the stone reads: “In memory of hundreds of thousands of women and girls from Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, the Netherlands, and Indonesia who were forced into sexual slavery of the armed forces of imperial Japan before and during World War 2.” On August 4th, 2014, the dedication ceremony took place. Two survivors came from Korea and reviewed how their life was during and after the war. “We’re here to recover our stolen honor and dignity, which had been stolen by the Japanese government, and we can do this now while we’re still alive.” This Comfort Women memorial is one of four memorials dedicated to Comfort Women in NJ, located only miles apart in Fort Lee, Palisades Park, and Hackensack. Read more...

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. Read more...

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. Read more...

This comfort Women memorial in Fort Lee’s Constitution Park was dedicated on May 23rd, 2018, by the Youth Council of Fort Lee, a student organization led by Korean-American high school students, who advocated for two years to create and fundraise the money to build it. The Youth Council goal was to “evoke memories of the Comfort Women and their strength, along with the strength that all other victims of war have displayed…. and serve as a beacon of hope for a better future avoiding these types of crimes against humanity on all fronts.” The memorial, designed by Euwan Kim, features a young woman cut into a circular stone. The artist wanted to express the gap this memorial fills when bringing the Comfort Women’s stories back into history. On the memorial’s pedestal, the poem by Gabriella Son is inscribed. Comfort Women is the name given to a hundred thousand Asian girls and women who were sex slaves during the second world war by the Japanese imperial army. They were abducted from their homes, kept in inhuman conditions, and suffered sexual violence daily. Most of these women did not survive 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 – in Hackensack, Palisades Park, and Union City. Read more...

A memorial that commemorates the thousands of Asian women and girls who were sex slaves of the Japanese Imperial Army in World War II. They were called “Comfort Women,” kidnapped from their countries, mostly Korea, China, Indonesia, and the Philippines; some were never able to go back home. The memorial aims to raise awareness of sexual and human trafficking still happening in our world. The one-ton bronze statue is depicting a seated Asian girl next to an empty chair surrounded by a butterfly-shaped garden. It was created by the couple Kim Woon-Sung and Kim Seo-Kyung, who sculpted 20 similar statues commemorating Comfort Women all over the world. It is the first kind of a statue in the deep south. Originally, it was supposed to stand near the Center for Civil and Human Rights in downtown Atlanta but was relocated to Brookhaven, a city in Atlanta’s metro area, due to Japanese pressure. It was dedicated on June 30th, 2017, in Blackburn II Park, but moved shortly after the dedication to Blackburn Park, a larger and more accessible location. Among the 300 people who attended the unveiling ceremony was a guest of honor from Korea – Chul Kang, a survivor of the “Comfort Women” era. There are nine other memorials in the US and several more all over the world, to remember these women, and to not let their suffering be eliminated from the history pages.   Read more...

Between 1931 and the end of WW2, hundreds of thousands of girls and women were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army. They were called euphemistically “comfort women.” The Japanese Administrations continued to deny the truth of this massive crime against humanity, but the women who survived the horror had the courage to reveal it to the world. In 2015, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors decided to build a memorial to the “Comfort Women” to educate the community about stopping human trafficking of women and girls. The memorial was unveiled on September 22nd, 2017. A year after the memorial dedication, San Francisco’s sister city, Osaka, ended their 60 years sister-city relationship due to the lack of acceptance of the accusation of Japan in this massive crime. The memorial of a 10-feet tall bronze statue, also known as the Column of Strength statue, made by Steven Whyte, was installed in 2017 to honor these women, their strength, and their courage to come forward and share their stories. The statue depicts three girls standing back to back holding hands. Each represents a country from which came the highest numbers of victims: China, Korea, and The Philippines. At a distance stands a bronze figure of an older woman watching the girls. This woman represents Kim Hak-Sun – a Korean human rights activist who was the first ‘comfort woman’ to tell her story in public. On August 16th, 2019, a smaller version of this statue was unveiled in Seoul’s Mt. Namsan, South Korea. Read more...