Collaborating with the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (the Korean Council), Facing History and Ourselves, Alliance for the Preserving the Truth of Sino-Japanese War (APTSJW), Bataan Legacy Historical Society, and Manilatown Heritage Foundation, ESJF will host the following events in September in San Francisco to raise awareness of atrocities in Asia during WWII.

Saturday, 9/15: ESJF, Facing History & Ourselves, and APTSJW jointly hold the teachers’ workshop at Old St. Mary’s Church in San Francisco. Meehyang Yoon, Chair of the Board of the Korean Council, is the keynote speaker, and Sung Sohn is one of the facilitators. 
Sunday, 9/16: ESJF and the Korean Council present the opening ceremony for exhibition Truth & Justice: Remembering “Comfort Women,” which begins at 6:30 pm at the Manilatown Heritage Foundation.

Exhibition Hours:
Monday & Tuesday: Docent tours                                                                                                                                    Wednesday, Thursday, & Saturday: 1 –  6 pm                                                                                                                                Friday: 4 – 9 pm
Friday, 9/21: Symposium with Desiree Benipayo, James Scott, and Meehyang Yoon at Golden Gate University, School of Law.

• Desiree Benipayo is the author of Honor: The Legacy of Jose Abad Santos. She and her husband, Mario Abad Santos Banipayo, produced a film on Jose Abad Santos (1886 – 1942), who was the fifth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines and Mario’s great uncle. During Japan’s occupation of the Philippines, Santos was executed by the Japanese forces for refusing to collaborate with Japan.

• James Scott is the author of Rampage-MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila

 
Saturday, 9/22: Benipayo, Scott, and Yoon speak at the 4th Conference on World War II in the Philippines at University of San Francisco. This conference is held by the Bataan Legacy Historical Society.

Tuesday, 9/28: Meehyang Yoon’s speech at SFBOS (9/28/18: 29 min)

from The Korea Herald
​
​A nongovernmental group said Monday it will distribute books on the history of the so-called “comfort women” and related issues later this month to 18 high schools in the San Francisco area.
The San Francisco-based Education for Social Justice Foundation published the not-for-sale, 106-page student edition of “’Comfort Women’ History and Issues for Students” last week, which will be the first educational material entirely about Japan’s military sex slaves during the World War II to be used in US high schools.
The San Francisco Board of Education passed a resolution in 2015 to allow 10th graders to learn about the history of women sexually enslaved by the Japanese military.
The NGO published and distributed a teacher’s edition of the book to the San Francisco Unified School District, in April this year.
The ESJF has published 100 copies of the student edition and plans to print more to provide to San Francisco public libraries.
The book includes the historical background of the comfort women, how the international community has moved since the 1990s to teach the history of the Japanese military’s organized exploitation of women as sex slaves, and how the San Francisco Comfort Women Memorial was installed last year near the city’s Saint Mary’s Square.
It contains basic data about the women, open-ended questions to further develop inquiry-based learning, and photographs.
Sohn Sung-sook launched the ESJF last year to make the educational materials and hold workshops for teachers.
Sohn has served as a co-chair of the education committee of the Comfort Women Justice Coalition, an NGO launched in 2015 by people of Korean, Chinese, Filipino and Japanese descent in the San Francisco area.
The ESJF, together with groups such as Facing History and Ourselves, plans to hold a workshop for high school teachers on the Nanjing Massacre and comfort women on Sept. 15 at the Old St. Mary’s Cathedral.
The ESJF is also scheduled to hold an exhibition on Japanese military sex slaves titled “Truth & Justice: Remembering ‘Comfort Women’” in the International Hotel Manilatown Center in San Francisco from Sept. 17-22.
By Kim So-hyun (sophie@heraldcorp.com)