Fort Lee students give voice to 'comfort women' abused during World War II

FORT LEE — The statue stands about 5 feet tall, circular and with a hole in the middle shaped like a woman.

The hole represents a gap in history for the "comfort women," a group of people kidnapped in Asia during World War II and forced into sexual slavery. On Wednesday, the statue commemorating those women and their suffering was unveiled at Constitution Park in Fort Lee.

"History with gaps creates a divide in society and conflict is inevitable when people feel empty," said Euwan Kim, a member of the Youth Council of Fort Lee who designed the statue. "Their existence was denied and pushed out of history textbooks just so society could feel just a little bit happier for a little bit of time."

The roughly 20 members of the council, a group of local high school activists, worked for several years to create the monument while facing opposition from other members of the community.

Who were the comfort women?

Historians estimate between 20,000 and 200,000 girls and women were abducted and forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army. The victims came from all over Asia, with many from Korea. 

They lived in areas known as "comfort stations" and were raped multiple times per day. About 75 percent of the women at the stations died there. 

Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich said the memorial and Wednesday's ceremony was about remembrance.

"It reminds everybody that sees it from afar and close up and reads the beautiful poem, it reminds them of those atrocities and the path and the plight that those women took," Sokolich said. "It is respect of history so we never, ever forget what happened in the past so we don’t ever repeat it in the future."

The first memorial to comfort women in North Jersey and the United States was placed in Palisades Park in 2010.

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The poem on the memorial

Below the circular top of the memorial reads a poem written by local student Gabrielle Son, titled "Stories My Grandmother Tells Me."

The poem begins:

"Halmoni remembers, despite her failing memory: The first sightings of soldiers in her village, not yet knowing they would soon meet again, only at her doorstep. Taking one good look at her, seeing she was fit for the 'factory.' Not yet knowing, years later, she would never find her family."

The youth council held a poetry contest and Son's verses were selected to go on the monument. She explained that she wanted her poem to be a symbol of peace and not hatred.

"I understand that the comfort women issue is one that divides many," she said, "and as a result I didn’t want my poem to point fingers at anyone."

A controversial issue

A small group of people attended Wednesday's ceremony to oppose the memorial. They brought a sign that requested it be moved somewhere else, and not directly across from the World War II monument at the park.

Takeshi Furumoto, a Vietnam War veteran who moved to Fort Lee in 1971, worried it would cause a rift between the Korean and Japanese communities in the borough. 

"Something like this does divide the community unfortunately," Furumoto said. "It doesn’t mean the Japanese are bad or the Koreans are bad."

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He encouraged Fort Lee to find other avenues "to encourage healing discourse" and create a sense of solidarity in the younger Asian community in Fort Lee.

William Chung, president of the Youth Council of Fort Lee, recalled the group's members debating the issue in front of the Fort Lee Council. Chung was glad to see the monument finally happen.

"It’s really important for us because we want people to understand and acknowledge the struggles that these comfort women faced," he said. "This unveiling of the comfort women statue is a big landmark for us."

Email: jongsma@northjersey.com