hankyoreh

By Park Hyun, Washington correspondent and Gil Yun-hyung, Tokyo correspondent

Asian-American civic groups located around Los Angeles are banding together to call upon the Japanese government to make an official apology for the comfort women - women pressed into sexual slavery by the imperial Japanese army - and to defend the comfort women statue in the city of Glendale.

On Mar. 8 - International Women’s Day - members of civic groups composed of Korean-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Filipino-Americans, and Japanese-Americans visited the statue of the young girl in Glendale and read statements denouncing the Japanese imperial army’s treatment of the comfort women.

“On the occasion of International Women’s Day, members from a variety of community organizations in Southern California have gathered together to commemorate the so-called comfort women, who were sexual slaves for the Japanese imperial army,” the groups said in a statement. “These women - who included girls as young as 12 years old - were tricked or kidnapped and forced to live as sex slaves.”

Noting that the women, who bravely told the truth despite their fear of the social stigma they might face, deserved to be viewed as heroes, the groups said that they will “support these women’s struggle until the Japanese government owns up to the truth.”

The civic groups also criticized the suit brought by some Japanese-Americans demanding that the statue of the young girl in Glendale be removed because it violates the diplomatic imperative of the US federal government, vowing to join their efforts to protect the statue.

The organizations that submitted the statement include the Greater San Gabriel Valley lodge of the Chinese-American Citizens Alliance; the Los Angeles chapter of GABRIELA, a Filipino-American organization that advocates women’s rights; the Los Angeles chapter of the Association of Filipinas, Feminists Fighting Imperialism, Re-feudalization, and Marginalization (AF3IRM); the San Fernando Valley chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and the Pacific Citizen redress movement; and the Korean American Forum of California (KAFC).

Meanwhile, Japanese lawmaker Nariaki Nakayama made remarks about former Korean comfort women during a lecture held in Hyogo Prefecture on Mar. 8. “You don’t see any Japanese women coming forward to say, ‘I was a comfort woman.’ Things are different for Korean women. They have no shame and do nothing but lie. The only explanation is that we are from different races,” said Nakayama, a lawmaker with the Japan Restoration Party, which is calling for a revision to the Kono Statement.

In 2008, Nakayama resigned as Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism after blaming students’ low academic achievement on the strength of the Japan Teachers Union.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]