Public Events To Welcome Grandma Yong Soo Lee, WW 2 "Comfort Women" Survivor

Public Events To Welcome Grandma Yong Soo Lee, WW 2 "Comfort Women" Survivor

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Supervisor Eric Mar's Schedule Of Public Events To Welcome Grandma Yong Soo Lee, WW 2 "Comfort Women" Survivor
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Contact: Victor Lim, 415-260-1096

***MEDIA ADVISORY***

SUPERVISOR ERIC MAR’S SCHEDULE OF PUBLIC EVENTS FOR

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2015



1:00PM

Supervisor Mar will hold a press conference with members of the “Comfort Women” Coalition, joined by community organizations and leaders to welcome Grandma Yong Soo Lee, WWII “Comfort Women” survivor. Grandma Lee will share her personal experiences as victim of sexual slavery captured the Japanese Imperial Army for two years at a Kamikaze unit in colonial Taiwan.



Members of the “Comfort Women Coalition”, with representatives from the Chinese, Korean, Filipino and other leaders from community organizations will express their support in passing Supervisor Mar’s resolution to build a “Comfort Women” memorial in San Francisco.



Location: City Hall of San Franciso, Room 278, Conference Room

The following members and organizations will join Supervisor Mar:

Grandma Yong Soo Lee, Korean “Comfort Women” survivor, and women’s rights activist

Lillian Sing, Rape of Nanjing Redress Coalition

Julie Tang, Rape of Nanjing Redress Coalition

Julie Soo, Commissioner, San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women

Phyllis Kim, Executive Director of the Korean American Forum of California

Kathy Masaoka, Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress-LA

Other leaders from Asian American community organizations

Note: Supervisor’s schedule is subject to change.

COMFORT WOMEN COALITION
A MULTI-ETHIC HUMAN RIGHTS COLLABORATION



MEDIA ALERT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Miho Kim Lee
September 15, 2015 comfortwomencoalition(at)gmail.com (510) 823-9514


WHAT: Press Conference with the Comfort Women Coalition and an 87-year-old “comfort woman” survivor in advance of a San Francisco Board of Supervisors Committee Hearing to Support a “Comfort Women” Memorial in San Francisco

WHEN: Thursday, September 17, 2015, 1:00 PM

WHERE: San Francisco City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton Goodlett Place, Room 278
San Francisco, CA 94102
WHO:
· Comfort Women Coalition, a San Francisco-based multi-ethic coalition of human rights advocates, interfaith leaders, and community organizations
· Yongsoo Lee, an 87-year-old “comfort woman” survivor from Korea
· Rita Semel, founder, San Francisco Interfaith Council
· Jeff Adachi, San Francisco Public Defender
· Hydra Mendoza, Commissioner, San Francisco Board of Education


SAN FRANCISCO, CA – The San Francisco-based Comfort Women Coalition (CWC) is joined by other human rights and community organizations and leaders to urge support for a “Comfort Women” Memorial in San Francisco as outlined by a resolution introduced by Supervisor Eric Mar (File No. 150764) on July 14, 2015. A hearing on the resolution before the Board of Supervisors Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee is set for September 17 and a vote before the entire Board is expected on September 22.

From the 1930s through the duration of World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army instituted a “comfort women” system where young women and girls were kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery. According to most international historians, the term “comfort women” is a euphemism referring to the estimated 200,000 such victims. A handful of survivors now in their eighties and nineties still seek justice.

In 2001, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution urging the Government of Japan, on the 50th Anniversary of the U.S.-Japan Peace Treaty, to fully acknowledge and apologize for Japan’s wartime atrocities and provide just compensation for the surviving victims of aggression.

In 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed Rep. Mike Honda’s bipartisan resolution H.Res. 121, which also called on the Government of Japan to formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility for its Imperial Armed Forces’ coercion of young women into sexual slavery, stating “the ‘comfort women’ system of forced military prostitution by the Government of Japan, considered unprecedented in its cruelty and magnitude, including gang rape, forced abortions, humiliation, and sexual violence resulting in mutilation, death, or eventual suicide in one of the largest cases of human trafficking in the 20th century.”

In 2013, the San Francisco Board passed a resolution condemning Japan’s denial of its system of sexual enslavement during World War II and calling for justice for ‘comfort women.’

In 2014, High Commissioner Navi Pillay, the U.N.’s human rights chief, stated that Japan “has failed to pursue a comprehensive, impartial and lasting resolution” to address the rights of so-called “comfort women.” The U.N. Human Rights Committee called for access to justice and reparations for victims and their families, the disclosure of all evidence available, and education in the country surrounding the issue. The Commissioner stressed, “It is a current issue, as human rights violations against these women continue to occur as long as their rights to justice and reparation are not realized.”

This year 2015 marks the 70th anniversary to the end of World War II (1941-1945) and the Pacific War (1931-1945) and the defeat of Japanese Imperialism and militarism by the Allies.

San Francisco is a city of immigrants and their descendants, many of whom have ancestral ties to Asian and Pacific Islander nations and have direct or indirect experience with Japan’s past system of sexual enslavement.

Leaders of the Japanese American community continue to work closely with the broader Asian Pacific Islander community, as they have in past decades, to strengthen relations and build trust, understanding, and community for civil rights and social justice.

In the spirit of Holocaust memorials throughout the world, CWC urges the establishment of a “Comfort Women” Memorial in San Francisco, joining other U.S. municipalities that have such memorials, including Glendale and Rohnert Park, CA; Long Island, NY; Palisades Park and Union City, NJ; Fairfax, VA; and Michigan City, MI to bring truth and reconciliation and to remember the past so that people from all nations can move forward toward a peaceful and secure future. San Francisco, home to the signing of both the U.N. Charter and the Peace Treaty with Japan (also known as the San Francisco Treaty), is a natural place for such a memorial.

The memorial will also serve as a reminder that we must collectively work to end today’s human trafficking problem, exploiting an estimated 20.9 million victims globally, of which 55% are women and girls. Forced labor and human trafficking worldwide is a $150 billion criminal industry and San Francisco is considered a desired destination hub because of its transport accessibility and its large immigrant population.

FILE NO. 150764 RESOLUTION NO.

1 [Urging the Establishment of a Memorial for "Comfort Women"] 2

• 3 Resolution urging the City and County of San Francisco to establish a memorial for

• 4 "Comfort Women.”

5

• 6 WHEREAS, According to most international historians, the term “comfort women”

• 7 euphemistically refers to an estimated 200,000 women and young girls who were kidnapped

• 8 and forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during its colonial and wartime

• 9 occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War

• 10 II; and

• 11 WHEREAS, During the 15 years of invasion and occupation of Asian countries,

• 12 unspeakable and well-documented war-crimes, including mass rape, wholesale massacres,

• 13 heinous torture, and other atrocities, were committed by the Japanese Imperial Army

• 14 throughout the occupied countries and colonies; and

• 15 WHEREAS, Of the few top Japanese military leaders who were investigated and

• 16 convicted as war criminals in the postwar War Crime Tribunals in Tokyo, Nanjing, Manila,

• 17 Yokohama, and Khabarovsk, many escaped prosecution; and

• 18 WHEREAS, In 2001 the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed Resolution

• 19 No. 842-01, urging the government of Japan, on the 50th anniversary of the US-Japan Peace

• 20 Treaty, to fully acknowledge and apologize for Japan’s wartime atrocities and provide just

• 21 compensation for the surviving victims of its aggression; and

• 22 WHEREAS, In 2007 the U.S. House of Representatives passed Rep. Mike Honda’s

• 23 bipartisan House Resolution 121, which also called on the Government of Japan to formally

• 24 acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility for its Imperial Armed Forces'

• 25 coercion of young women into sexual slavery; and

Supervisors Mar; Kim, Cohen, Christensen, Yee, Farrell, Campos, Avalos
BOARD OF SUPERVISORS Page 1

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WHEREAS, In 2013, the San Francisco Board passed Resolution No. 218-13 condemning Japan’s denial of its system of sexual enslavement during World War II and calling for justice for “comfort women”; and

WHEREAS, The year 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II (1941-1945) and the Pacific War (1931-1945) and the defeat of Japanese imperialism and militarism by the Allies; and

WHEREAS, Several cities in the U.S., including, Glendale and Rohnert Park, CA; Long Island, NY; Palisades Park and Union City, NJ; Fairfax, VA; and Michigan City, MI have already erected memorials to help remember the "comfort women" during Japanese occupation in the Pacific War; and

WHEREAS, Today, human trafficking of women and girls is a form of modern day slavery with 20 million victims worldwide, including an estimated 1.5 million victims in North America alone, forced to perform labor and sexual acts; and human trafficking is a market- driven criminal industry based on the principles of supply and demand, and

WHEREAS, San Francisco is not immune to the problem, and has been considered a destination for human trafficking due to its ports, airports, industry, and rising immigrant populations; and

WHEREAS, Leaders of the Japanese American community have worked closely with the broader Asian Pacific Islander community in the past decades to strengthen relationships and build trust, understanding, and community for civil rights and social justice; and

WHEREAS, San Francisco is a city of immigrants and their descendants, many of whom have ancestral ties to Asian and Pacific Islander nations and have direct or indirect experience with Japan’s past system of sexual enslavement; and

WHEREAS, A growing coalition of immigrant communities, women’s organizations, and human rights groups have organized to establish a memorial for “comfort women” and the

Supervisors Mar; Kim, Cohen, Christensen, Yee, Farrell, Campos, Avalos
BOARD OF SUPERVISORS Page 2

• 1 millions of victims of the Japanese military in San Francisco to ensure that the plight and

• 2 suffering of these girls and women will never be forgotten or erased from history; now,

• 3 therefore, be it

• 4 RESOLVED, That appropriate City and County agencies will work with the community

• 5 organizations to design and establish the memorial; and, be it

• 6 FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San

• 7 Francisco during the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II expresses its strong support

• 8 of creating a memorial in memory of those girls and women who suffered immeasurable pain

• 9 and humiliation as sex slaves and as a sacred place for remembrance, reflection,

• 10 remorsefulness, and atonement for generations to come.

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Supervisors Mar; Kim, Cohen, Christensen, Yee, Farrell, Campos, Avalos

BOARD OF SUPERVISORS

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--
Sincerely,

Victor Wai Ho Lim

Korean ‘comfort woman’ survivor appeals to San Francisco for a memorial
http://www.sfexaminer.com/korean-comfort-woman-survivor-appeals-to-san-francisco-for-a-memorial/
Yong Soo Lee, left, a “comfort woman” survivor, receives a commendation from Supervisor Eric Mar at the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday.(Mike Koozmin/S.F. Examiner)
By Joshua Sabatini on September 16, 2015 2:00 am

Yong Soo Lee, an 87-year-old “comfort woman” survivor, flew into San Francisco from Korea on Tuesday afternoon to call upon the Board of Supervisors to install a memorial for others, like her, who survived coercement into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II.

“I came to this beautiful San Francisco to meet with you and I want to ask you from the bottom of my heart, please, please let me get rid of my sadness in my heart by erecting a memorial in this beautiful city of San Francisco,” Yong Soo Lee, also affectionately called Grandma Lee, told the board through a translator.

Afterwards she met with Mayor Ed Lee for about 20 minutes.

Her visit comes as the board’s Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee is scheduled Thursday to vote on a resolution introduced by Supervisor Eric Mar that acknowledges the atrocity and supports the installation of the memorial. Survivors and women’s rights advocates have long fought to bring awareness to the wartime atrocities and obtain redress from Japan’s government.

The memorial is stirring controversy with opposition from some in San Francisco’s Japantown and is putting a strain on international relations given the nine-page letter Toru Hashimoto, mayor of the city of Osaka in Japan, sent to the board opposing it. Criticism ranges from taking issue with some of the facts presented in the resolution, suggestions it “projects hate towards a specific nationality” and focuses too narrowly on the “comfort woman” issue.

Mayor Ed Lee would not say Tuesday, before his meeting with Grandma Lee, whether he would support a memorial installed in San Francisco. No major U.S. city has installed such memorials but smaller municipalities have, like Glendale, where a similar debate ensued.

The mayor said he was “open” to a memorial but his focus was on the current debate around the resolution. The mayor said he has asked Mar to “reach out to many groups so that it is not misinterpreted” and that “the dialogue is appropriate.”

Mar commended Yong Soo Lee on Tuesday, calling her an “amazing leader.” He said the effort was “for justice and for empathy for hundreds and thousands of girls and women that were kidnapped and coerced into sexual slavery.”

Supporters expressed concerns over possible amendments. “The resolution tells an accurate historical account of what happened to the comfort women and why the resolution is necessary,” said Julie Tang, a retired San Francisco Superior Court judge, who is part of the coalition supporting it. She said the “most emblematic of sexual exploitation of women and girls of the last century should be remembered.”

Mayor Lee said he does “support the recognition that ‘comfort women’ is a bad piece of our world history and that we should do everything that we can to prevent it,” and he linked it to the modern day human trafficking issue, which he said San Francisco must continue to address.

The mayor has established an anti-human trafficking task force. A recent task force report found nearly 300 mostly young females were victims of sex trafficking in San Francisco during the last six months of 2014.

Mar already has seven other supporters for the memorial on the board. It would take six votes to pass at the board. Yong Soo Lee was 15 years old when the Japanese army took her from her home and transported her to a “comfort station” for kamikaze pilots. In an April 22 interview with the Washington Post, Yong Soo Lee recounted being tortured and having a miscarriage. When the war ended two years later she was sent home at age 17. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that she began to speak about the issue.

“I came here as the witness of the history,” an emotional Yong Soo Lee said. “But now I am more than that. I came here as an activist who is trying to resolve the history for the sake of all women’s rights of the world.”


70 years later, a Korean ‘comfort woman’ demands apology from Japan
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/70-years-later-a-korean-comfort-woman-demands-apology-from-japan/2015/04/22/d1cf8794-e7ab-11e4-9767-6276fc9b0ada_story.html


Yong Soo Lee, 86, is visiting Washington from South Korea to speak out about her experience as one of the “comfort women” for the Japanese military during World War II. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
By Pamela Constable April 22
Seated on a sofa in an embroidered silk costume, Yong Soo Lee is a study in grim dignity. She is 86 now, and the story of her long-ago wartime ordeal emerges slowly and hesitantly at first. She speaks in an embarrassed murmur, constantly rubbing a rosary.

But as she continues, Lee’s gestures grow animated and angry, bearing mute witness to the violence and humiliation she endured for two years as a teenage captive at a Japanese military base. Her face grimaces and crumples. Her hands chop the air, grab her neck, clutch her stomach.

“At first the other girls tried to protect me because I was so young,” she says through an interpreter, beginning to weep. “I saw the soldiers on them, but the girls put a blanket over me and told me to pretend I was dead so nothing would happen to me. I didn’t know what they meant. I was only 14. I didn’t know anything then.”

Lee is one of 53 surviving “comfort women,” the euphemistic term used to describe tens of thousands of girls and women from Korea, China and other Asian countries who were forced into farm labor and sexual servitude for Japanese combat or occupation troops before and during World War II.

She traveled to Washington this week from South Korea to tell her story on the eve of a high-profile visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whom some Korean American groups accuse of backtracking on promises to apologize for the wartime abuses and of trying to whitewash the past to placate conservative nationalist groups at home.

South Korean protesters place a defaced portrait of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe next to a statue of a South Korean teenage girl during an rally at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on April 1. (Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images)
[Abe urged to uphold Japan’s apology for wartime aggression]

Lee’s trip was arranged by the Washington Coalition for Comfort Women Issues, a group of activists who plan to stage protests when Abe arrives and have demanded that he make formal amends when he addresses Congress this coming Wednesday. Some scholars and politicians close to the Japanese premier have suggested that many comfort women were prostitutes rather than victims of an official military policy.

The issue has particular resonance in Washington because of the region’s large and successful Korean American community. Fairfax County is home to at least 42,000 Korean Americans, who have built churches and businesses and wield growing political influence there. Last May, a memorial to Korea’s comfort women was built next to the Fairfax County Government Center.


The creation of the memorial, following that of two others in California and New Jersey, provoked objections from some Japanese American residents and officials. But coalition leaders said their cause has attracted support from human rights groups in Japan, as well as from a Japanese American member of Congress, Rep. Michael M. Honda (D-Calif.), who has promoted a bill calling for an “unequivocal” apology.

“We don’t want to offend Japan or be aggressive. We just want this issue to be resolved peacefully and done with,” said Jungsil Lee, an art historian in Rockville who is the coalition’s president. “We do want Abe to acknowledge what happened and issue an official apology. Then we will be glad to dissolve our organization and move on.”

Masato Otaka, a spokesman for the Japanese Embassy, said his country’s government had bent over backward to make amends to the comfort women over the years, making statements of apology and remorse, paying “atonement money” to some victims through a special fund and sending individual letters to victims from a former prime minister.

“Japan has apologized over and over, on various occasions,” Otaka said Wednesday. “We have done our best, and I can’t think of anything better than sending personal letters to the victims, but South Koreans are still telling us we didn’t go far enough.”

Yong Soo Lee, 86, is visiting from South Korea to speak out about her experience. As she tells her emotional story, her travel companion, Kwark Hae Kyoung, touches her heart and pats her back. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
For 47 years after the war ended and Yong Soo Lee was taken home, she told no one what had happened to her. She said she felt ashamed, afraid and isolated. She had no idea that her ordeal had been shared by thousands of other young women at dozens of military “comfort stations” throughout the Pacific. Unable to confide in her family, she remained single and childless for life.

But in 1991, when another comfort woman broke a half-century of silence, Lee realized that she had not been alone. She registered with the government and traveled to the base where she had been held, accompanied by Japanese historians. She was able to learn the fate of crucial individuals, including a Japanese military officer who took pity on her and was later killed in combat. And finally, she began to talk.


As Lee recounted Tuesday during an interview at the home of friends in Fairfax, her nightmare began one night in October 1943. Lee said she was asleep in her family’s farmhouse when she heard a neighbor calling and went outside. Soon she found herself with four other girls being marched off by Japanese soldiers, then forced on a series of journeys by train, truck and ship.

Her final destination was a coastal base for kamikaze pilots, where she learned by heart a pep song the pilots sang before heading off on suicide missions. Although reluctant to state explicitly that she was forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers, she recounted numerous other details of her time in captivity that made the circumstances painfully clear.

Soon after reaching the base, she said, she was told to go into a curtained cubicle and wait for a soldier, but at first refused. As punishment, she said, she was brutally beaten and tortured with electric shocks to her wrists. After that, she said, she obeyed.

“It never entered my mind to run away,” Lee said in Korean, as members of her host family interpreted. “I had no idea where I was or what was outside. I didn’t have a chance to talk with the other girls. My food was brought to me. I thought I was alone.”

Outside, the war in the Pacific was raging. Lee recalled hearing loud sounds of combat, sounds she said she still hears at night. At one point, the building where she lived was hit by U.S. bombs. Injured in the collapse, she bled heavily and thought she might die. Much later, she learned she had miscarried.

When Lee was finally rescued and sent home after the war, she was 17. But in many ways, her life did not begin again until the plight of the comfort women became known. In her late 60s, she threw herself into the campaign to expose the abuses and demand Japanese atonement. She testified before commissions and legislatures. She was taken to the Vatican to meet the pope. In the process, she said she found purpose in the life she thought had been thrown away.


“I lost myself for a long time,” Lee said. “I thought I was worthless. I didn’t talk about it, and nobody asked me. Until the women came out, I did not exist.”

Nearly two hours into her story, Lee’s diffident demeanor changed. She stopped rubbing her rosary beads. When she spoke again, it was with deep rage against her abusers, against her lost youth, even against the term that is commonly used to describe her.

“I never wanted to give comfort to those men,” she said with a glare of disgust. “That name was made up by Japan. I was taken from my home as a child. My right to be happy, to marry, to have a family, it was all taken from me.” She wiped her eyes once more, then straightened up on the sofa.

“I am a proper lady and a daughter of Korea,” Lee declared. “I don’t want to hate or hold a grudge, but I can never forgive what happened to me. I must stand up for myself and the others. Mr. Abe should act like a man and face the truth of the crimes that were done to us. I was robbed of my youth, and I want him to apologize before I die.”



Pamela Constable covers immigration issues and immigrant communities. A former foreign correspondent for the Post based in Kabul and New Delhi, she also reports periodically from Afghanistan and other trouble spots overseas.