New comfort women memorial to be installed in Union City

July 15, 2014

A new memorial commemorating the comfort women victimized during World War II will be installed inside Liberty Plaza in Union City, New Jersey.

Lee Ok-soon and Kang Il-chool, two comfort women from Korea, will attend the unveiling ceremony on Aug. 8.

The tribute is in the form of a copperplate print on a rock that remembers the violation of human rights inflicted on comfort women from Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, the Netherlands and Indonesia by Japanese soldiers during World War II, Union City officials said Monday. The names of Union City Mayor Brian P. Stack and commissioners are also inscribed onto the memorial in a gesture of support.

The memorial was not requested by the Korean society in New Jersey but commissioned by the town’s city council and supported by Kim Ja-hye, artistic director of the Union City Philharmonic Orchestra, and by the Korean American Civic Empowerment.

The tribute is the fourth of its kind in the New York and New Jersey area alone and the sixth across the United States.

Union City officials will put on music and theater performances to fundraise for the memorial, including a gala show titled “Comfort,” to be put on inside Union City Museum at 7 p.m. on July 25.

18 Comments

  1. 萩野谷敏明

    July 15, 2014 at 8:42 PM

    もう、いいかげんにしろよ、バカ朝鮮人とバカアメリカ人。

    日本人にも我慢の限界があるぞ。

  2. Bob Schaub

    July 16, 2014 at 1:29 AM

    Check this Reuters news article from South Korea:

    Former Korean ‘comfort women’ for U.S. troops sue own government
    BY JU-MIN PARK, PYEONGTAEK South Korea Fri Jul 11, 2014 6:45am EDT

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/11/us-southkorea-usa-military-idUSKBN0FG0VV20140711

    • Nao

      July 31, 2014 at 10:26 PM

      Korean’s next performance will be against the UN Army, won’t it?

      Korean’s lastest performance will be against the South Korean Army, won’t it?

  3. Terry Feletian

    July 19, 2014 at 9:36 AM

    US needs to be careful. The memorial could be used for commemorating Korean comfort women enslaved for US military in the future or regarded as the memorial that US was deceived by Korean propaganda.

    http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/07/13/uk-southkorea-usa-military-idINKBN0FI06O20140713

  4. Bob Schaub

    July 20, 2014 at 4:45 AM

    What a shame would this memorial be, reminding us that South Korean comfort women served US troops.

    WSJ: “Claims South Korea Provided Sex Slaves for U.S. Troops Go to Court”

    http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2014/07/15/claims-south-korea-provided-sex-slaves-for-u-s-troops-go-to-court/

  5. moguro fukuzo

    July 21, 2014 at 12:12 PM

    Build a monument of Korean comfort women served US troops in Korea.

    All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!(Jesus Christ Gespel of John)
    http://www.howitzer.jp/korea/page24.html

  6. moguro fukuzo

    July 21, 2014 at 1:19 PM

    1. The Korean government employed comfort women and operated state-owned brothels for the Korean Army during the Korean War while it ignores the fact and never deals with the fact in the same way as it deals with the Comfort Women Issue related to the Japanese Army. Why?

    2. The Korean government has employed comfort women and operated state-owned brothels for US troops up until today for a long period after the Korean War, while it never deals with the fact in the same way as it deals with the Comfort Women Issue related to the Japanese Army. Why?

    3. Korean government pays so great attention to the past comfort women while it ignores the present-day Korean women who are compelled to become modern-day comfort women because of their dire situation of being deeply in debt. Why?

    Korean government is a bunch of hypocrites! Koreans have no right to criticize the present day Japanese.

    US military used the Government run Korean sex slaves after the Korean War.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfuR2usD2U0

  7. Naoatjp

    July 22, 2014 at 7:57 AM

    Thank the U.S. Army in Japan, for their maintenance of peace and order of Far East.

    By the way, I have heard that you have a plan to construct the statue of the Korean Comfort women in your town.

    I recommend you to never fail to write on the statue, as “during the Imperial Japan, Koreans were also Japanese. Many Korean Prostitution suppliers have often committed fraud to take girls out, and many of them have forced to the ex-comfort-women to pretend that those crimes have committed by Japanese. Koreans, when they commit crimes, sometimes pretend to be Japanese. There have been a lots of Korean crimes of sexual services even in U.S., for example “Brothel TOKYO” or “Brothel OSAKA” ”.

    (Sorry, I’m not good at English.)

  8. konohazuku001

    August 2, 2014 at 9:19 PM

    Based on these following facts,there was no Korean comfort-woman unwillingly kidnapped by Japanese army or officials.
    1.No one knows the names of the villages or towns where the comfort-women were actually kidnapped.
    2.So far as the comfort-women kidnapping issue is concerned, there is no obvious record which had been written before 1990s.
    3.It is quite strange that so many as 200,000 victims had kept silence from 1945 to the 1990s.
    4.A large amount of money were paid to the Comfort-women in reward for their jobs. Back in those days,it was not a rare case that poor parents necessarily sold their daughters to get money.
    5.There have been no witnesses who can testify the kidnapping incidents. If there had been many comfort-women who were kidnapped, there must have been many witnesses. But nobody saw the incident.
    6.There was no real testimony by the kidnappers. It was already proved that Seiji Yoshida’s testimony was absolutely false statements. At that time in Korea, most of policemen and officials were Koreans, not Japanese.
    7.There was no protest opposing to the kidnapped comfort-women.If there had been kidnapped comfort-women as real events, riots must have been raised.
    8.In Korea, from time immemorial to now ,there always have been many prostituts. In the period of the World WarII,it is quite natural that there must have been prostitution markets there.
    9.Most of Korean comfort-women say “I was sold.” or “I was deceived.” A small number of women say “I was kidnaped.” The credibility of their testimonies are in question. The contentions are rather suspect evidences.
    10.Although The Japan-Korea Basic Relations Treaty was concluded in 1965, South Korea currently lodges various reasons in order to draw out as much money as possible from Japan.
    However,at the time of the conclusion of the treaty, they never argued about the comfort-women issue at all.

  9. moguro fukuzo

    August 3, 2014 at 11:06 PM

    The pot calls the kettle black.
    http://www.howitzer.jp/korea/page24.html

  10. moguro fukuzo

    August 5, 2014 at 1:53 AM

    If a grandma sheds tears and you felt some sympathy, you have to remember Nayirah Testimony in 1990.

  11. moguro fukuzo

    August 5, 2014 at 2:56 AM

    Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said building the comfort women memorial in Union City was contrary to the Japan’s views on this matter and extremely regrettable. I don’ know from what intentions the Americans build the comfort women memorials in the US, but surely one thing is clear. It has become a highly sensitive political matter now.

  12. humanrightsTiananmen64

    August 16, 2014 at 5:53 AM

    I am very confused because I found the following news.
    http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/08/05/national/politics-diplomacy/asahi-shimbun-admits-errors-in-past-comfort-women-stories/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=asahi-shimbun-admits-errors-in-past-comfort-women-stories
    It says that on August 6, 2014, the Asahi Shimbun, pro-Korean and liberal news paper in Japan, admitted to serious errors in many articles on the “comfort women” issue, retracting all stories going back decades that quoted a Japanese man who claimed he kidnapped about 200 Korean women and forced them to work at wartime Japanese military brothels. It means that as far as the present-day Korean Peninsula is concerned, no hard evidence had been found to show the Japanese military was directly involved in recruiting women to the brothel system against their will.
    Is this memorial based NOT on historical facts, but on political propaganda to bully Japan and the Japanese?

  13. moguro

    September 13, 2014 at 3:05 AM

    It seems Americans are makig their own country the Planet of the Comfort Women.
    http://www.howitzer.jp/korea/page11.html

  14. Mogro Fuuzo

    March 22, 2015 at 7:41 PM

    If you seriously want to know about the Comfort Women Issue, you should watch the following two interviews.

    Ikuhiko Hata & Yasuaki Onuma: “Panel Discussion on Comfort Women Issue”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wy1-ckr8FIE

    Michael Yon IB Interview
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl7vmF8rTOA

  15. Mogro Fuuzo

    March 29, 2015 at 5:10 AM

    In the recent publication of April 2 edition of the Bunshun Weekly, it is reported that there were military comfort stations in Saigon (now Ho-chi-min City) and many other cities in South Vietnam specifically used by the Korean Army.

    In the weekly magazine, TBS Washington Branch Manager Noriyuki Yamaguchi reports that:

    One letter sent by a US commander to S.K. Army commander states that the Turkish Bath was a Republic of Korea Army Welfare Center for the sole benefit of Korean troops.

    U.S. troops also used the Turkish Bath, but nicknamed them Steam and Cream Parlor.

    Most of the women working there were under 20 years-old and U.S. servicemen frequented there were chided as Yellow Fever.

  16. Mogro Fuuzo

    April 2, 2015 at 3:27 PM

    From Kent Gilbert in Japan:

    There Were Vietnamese Comfort Women for the Korean Troops!

    A scoop article was published in the Shukan Bunshun magazine which went on sale today (April 2, Spring Special Bumper Issue) with the headline:
    “There Were Vietnamese Comfort Women for the Korean Troops!”

    Beginning in 2013, TBS Television Washington Bureau Chief Noriyuki Yamaguchi obtained an enormous number of official documents from the Vietnam War era and preserved by the United States National Archives and Records Administration, and made a thorough study of their contents.

    In the summer of 2014 he found an official document (criminal record) which detailed the fact that the Korean Army utilized Vietnamese women to work in a comfort woman facility in Saigon exclusively for Korean troops.

    He then interviewed former U. S. marine officers who had knowledge of the situation at the time, for substantiation visited the actual site and conducted interviews, and today released this scoop.

    How the Korean government handles this disclosure will no doubt be closely watched.

  17. Mogro Fuuzo

    November 3, 2015 at 11:05 AM

    Korean activists in the US achieved great success in instigating and stoking the fire of hatred between Japan and S. Korea. Japanese companies’ direct investment in S. Korea in 2014 dropped by 45% of that of 2012. The number of Japanese tourists visiting S. Korea in 2014 dropped to 2/3 compared to that of 2014. There is end of this decreasing in sight.

    It is not PM Abe who created this situation. It is South Korean people who caused Japanese to hate them. Americans, who cooperate with S. Koreans in their defamation campaign against Japan, should have some lion’s share in creating this situation.