Osaka drops San Francisco as sister city over 'comfort women' statue

[sl8]

From https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/04/osaka-drops-san-francisco-as-sister-city-over-comfort-women-statue

Osaka drops San Francisco as sister city over 'comfort women' statue

Mayor of Japanese city says memorial for women used as sex slaves in Japan is not historically accurate

Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Thu 4 Oct 2018 01.56 EDT


The ‘comfort women’ monument was unveiled in San Francisco in 2017. Photograph: Eric Risberg/AP

The city of Osaka has ended its 60-year “sister city” relationship with San Francisco to protest against the presence in the US city of a statue symbolising Japan’s wartime use of sex slaves.

Osaka’s mayor, Hirofumi Yoshimura, terminated official ties this week after the US city agreed to recognise the “comfort women” statue, which was erected by a private group last year in San Francisco’s Chinatown district, as public property.

The statue depicts three women – from China, Korea and the Philippines – who symbolise women and teenage girls forced to work in frontline brothels from the early 1930s until Japan’s wartime defeat in 1945.

Campaigners and some historians say as many as 200,000 women – mostly Koreans, but also Chinese, south-east Asians and a small number of Japanese and Europeans – were forced or tricked into working in military brothels between 1932 and Japan’s defeat in 1945.

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More at link.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. Denial is an ugly thing.

[Fred Sanders]

4. If the Japanese say the statue is not accurate I am going with the Japanese claim.

Do Japanese cities have statues of American servicemen abusing women?

Why do we have statues of the abused women?

Someone dropped the historical ball.

[IMPEACH_45DJT]

5. Look up "Japanese War Crimes", "Rape of Nanking", "Comfort Women", "Unit 731", etc.

This is yet another example how Japan continues to deny its Nazi-like atrocities during WWII, with their textbooks often glossing over them.

The "comfort women" were basically raped to death, and those who survived such horrific ordeals are still hurting deeply due to Japan's general reluctance to properly acknowledge such tragedies.

And it's not the "Japanese" that are saying the statue is not accurate, it's the Japanese right wing politicians, who promote these denials in the first place.

As for why such statues exist in America: They exist for the same reason why we have Holocaust museums and memorials here. It's important to note that these statues have the full support of the Asian-American community in general, especially the Chinese-American and Korean-American community.

[Fred Sanders]

6. I suppose it could be just one mayor in one city with the RW opinion.

Although not the official government of Japan viewpoint now:

"On February 16, 2016, the United Nations' "Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women", Seventh and Eighth Periodic Reports, was held, with Shinsuke Sugiyama, Deputy Minister for Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Japan), reiterating the official and final agreement between Japan and South Korea to pay ¥1 billion.[153][154] Sugiyama also restated the Japanese Government apology of that agreement: "The issue of comfort women, with an involvement of the Japanese military authorities at that time, was a grave affront to the honor and dignity of large numbers of women, and the Government of Japan is painfully aware of responsibilities."[155]"

Wikipedia

[IMPEACH_45DJT]

7. It's pretty complicated

Unlike Germany, Japan still hasn't fully come to terms with its WWII crimes, which were actually worse than the Nazis in many ways. This is why there's still so much bad blood and tensions between Japan and the Asian countries it brutalized during WWII, especially Korea, China, Taiwan, etc.

Furthermore, the current RW Japanese government, particularly the current PM, is infamous for promoting historical revisionism regarding Japan's WWII atrocities. As mentioned in the Guardian article above, several RW Japanese politicians actually came to the US to try to get other statues honoring the Asian sex slaves removed - which failed, of course. It's like if some RW German politicians came to the US to try to get Holocaust memorials removed. These RW Japanese politicians even referred to the sex slaves as "well-paid prostitutes", which is a popular claim espoused by the Japanese right wing regarding the WWII sex slaves, who in reality were basically raped to death in many cases by the Japanese military. How disgusting.

Regarding the aforementioned "apology" and settlement for the comfort women, it should be worth noting that polls have shown that most South Koreans consider the apology to be insincere, especially since the Japanese government has demanded the South Korean government to get rid of the statues in South Korea - which is a truly outrageous demand, and part of a larger plan by Japan to whitewash its history.

It's just a sad state of affairs all around.

[Sqee]

2. There isn't alink

Oops, now there is.

[NewJeffCT]

3. Link is above the quoted text

not below