Sexual slavery issue, discussed internationally, pivots around one little monument in N.J.

PALISADES PARK — It's a modest little monument for a subject that doesn't get much attention in American history textbooks, but it's made international headlines more than a few times.

The memorial to "comfort women" — women, many of them Korean, forced into sexual slavery during World War II — sits just outside the Palisades Park Public Library on Second Street, where it was visited Friday afternoon by two sitting congressmen.

"You would think that it's something like 50 feet high," remarked California Rep. Michael Honda, a Japanese-American who visited the site as part of an event organized by the group Korean American Civic Empowerment. "It's very humble, some words on a plaque that speaks the truth. That small monument, and those few words, frightened some politicians."

koreanmemorial-1.jpg A Palisades Park memorial pays tribute to "comfort women" outside the public library.

The Palisades Park monument is the first in the United States to recognize what is widely believed to be an international atrocity — the systemic sexual slavery of women from Korea, the Philippines, China, Japan and the Netherlands during WWII.

Erected in 2010, it's also prompted a visit from members of the Japanese parliament, been defaced by groups upset with its existence, and inspired similar memorials in Hackensack, Fort Lee and elsewhere in the United States.

It's widely accepted in the international community that women were forced into servitude by the Japanese imperial government, but the issue remains controversial in some circles in Japan, and a point of contention between Japan and Korea.

A 2007 resolution introduced in Congress by Honda and co-sponsored by N.J. Rep. Bill Pascrell called on the Japanese government to formally apologize, a gesture that's yet to come.

Honda, Pascrell and state Sen. Loretta Weinberg visited Ridgefield Park Friday to lay flowers on the monument and again draw attention to the comfort women, renewing calls for a formal apology.

"This is a tragic chapter in history," Pascrell said. "It can't be ignored, it can't be forgotten, it must live in our own lives and mean something to us."

Weinberg said the New Jersey legislature is currently considering a resolution that would formally recognize the plight of the comfort women, an important issue to Korean-Americans in New Jersey, particularly in Bergen County, where they represent one of the fastest growing portions of the population.

"We can't correct anything that's going on presently if we don't acknowledge what went on in the past," Weinberg said.

It's not often taught in history classes, but the comfort women issue has been in the international press in recent months. Toru Hashimoto, the mayor of the Japanese city Osaka, recently caused an international incident when he declared that the so-called "comfort stations" were a "necessary" part of the war effort.

And in October of last year, as the Bergen County government considered plans to create its own monument to comfort women in Hackensack, the Palisades Park monument was defaced with two wooden spikes. A Japanese right-wing group later took credit for the vandalism.

Since the county's own monument was erected at the county courthouse alongside memorials for atrocities like American slavery and the Holocaust, an e-mail campaign has sent hundreds of letters of protests from people identifying themselves as Japanese citizens, calling the narrative of comfort women fiction. They claim that many of the women offered themselves up willingly as prostitutes, or were sold into sexual slavery by their own family members or governments.

Yet officials have stood firm in support of the memorials, even as members of the Japanese parliament visited Palisades Park Mayor James Rotundo last year to request the town remove the memorial (he declined.)

"We had requested at that time [for the Japanese parliament members] to give us whatever information their research uncovered, because that's what they talked about, that they'd done their own research," Rotundo said Friday. "We said, 'You've come a long distance, give us something that you've found.' And they had nothing for us."

CONNECT WITH US

Follow us on Twitter

Like us on Facebook

NJ.com/bergen

Still, officials were quick to point out that focus on the issue is not meant to fan flames of hatred between Koreans and the Japanese.

"It's the government, not the people," Honda said Friday. "It's about the Japanese government acknowledging the historic responsibility of sexual slavery systems during World War II."

"We should put this issue in the museum where it belongs," he said. "But this issue will never be in the museum until there's a recognition of responsibility by the Japanese government."

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.