Collective Activism in San Francisco Preserves the History of the Military Sexual Slavery System by Japan Before and During WWII
On September 22, 2017, the Women’s Column of Strength memorial was installed at St. Mary’s Square in San Francisco. This marked the first major U.S. city to erect a memorial preserving the history of the Japan’s military sexual slavery system before and during World War II as well as the legacy of the survivors. The collective efforts of the city government and grassroots movement uniting people across ethnic backgrounds were key factors behind this historic achievement. Recognizing this past military sexual and gender-based violence was significantly relevant to addressing the city’s anti-human trafficking initiatives, both the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the San Francisco Board of Education passed resolutions to preserve and teach the history of Japanese military sexual slavery.
Referring to my professional and personal experience and educational activism working with many advocates of this grassroots movement, I wrote this reflection to provide a brief background highlighting the significance of collective efforts made in installing the memorial and launching educational initiatives. I’m honored to be part of a continuing force to expand this local history to address universal values—the advancement of women’s human rights and women’s empowerment.
Introduction
From the 1930s to the end of World War II in 1945, the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces established and operated numerous “comfort stations” for Japanese soldiers in the territories they occupied. Hundreds of thousands of women and girls from throughout Asia were forced into this military sexual slavery system. These Japanese military sex slaves are euphemistically referred to as “comfort women.” Since 2001, the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco has passed resolutions regarding Japan’s military sexual slavery and other WWII war crimes, demanding apologies and resolutions. The list of these resolutions is on the ESJF website.[1] This paper has three parts, first focusing on the installation process of the San Francisco “comfort women” memorial Women’s Column of Strength and the termination of the sister-city ties between San Francisco and Osaka. The second part recounts and expands the efforts of the San Francisco Board of Education and the San Francisco Unified School District community to preserve the history of Japanese military sex slavery. This paper concludes with a discussion of the significance of preserving this history and advancing the human rights of AAPI women.
I. Women’s Column of Strength
Installation
In 2011, Eric Mar, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (2009–2017), reached out to city officials and various community leaders as he developed plans to build a memorial honoring victims of the Nanjing Massacre (December 1937–January 1938), grave human rights violations committed by Imperial Japan in Nanjing, China. Mar, who grew up listening to his grandmother share stories of suffering people endured during the massacre and throughout China before and during WWII, was inspired to memorialize the victims of the Nanjing Massacre. In May 2012, Ignatius Ding of the Rape of Nanjing Redress Coalition (RNRC) suggested the memorial planning team expand the San Francisco memorial to include victims of Japanese military sexual slavery in Asia before and during WWII. The memorial team accepted his suggestion. Without his efforts, the memorial originally would have only honored the victims of the Nanjing Massacre.
In July 2015, continuing to spearhead the project and expand its support base, Mar introduced Resolution 342-15 to build a “comfort women” memorial in San Francisco. Mar and members from various civic groups, including Eclipse Rising, RNRC, APTSJW, GA, and Korean Chamber of Commerce of SF formed the Comfort Women Justice Coalition, a multi-ethnic and multi-interest human rights coalition. However, the push for the memorial was not without dissent. On September 17, 2015, urging the establishment of a memorial for “comfort women” was the first agenda item at the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee meeting. At the meeting, some speakers who opposed the memorial resolution called former “comfort woman” Yong-Soo Lee (b. Korea, 1928) a “prostitute” in her direct presence. In reaction to these remarks, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, David Campos, said three times in his closing statement, “Shame on you.” On September 22, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed the resolution unanimously.[2]
After the SFBOS passed the resolution to install the memorial, the Visual Arts Committee (VAC) of the SF Arts Commission held meetings and hearings in 2016 and 2017 to decide on the memorial design and inscription. In March 2016, San Francisco Rec & Park Commissioner and land use attorney Allan Low suggested the St. Mary’s Square extension for the memorial, which was supported by Mayor Lee. The following month in April, the site was finalized for the memorial. Russ Lowe, who later became co-founder of ESJF, and I attended this site selection meeting. After a blind selection committee selected Steven Whyte’s design, Women’s Column of Strength, on December 5, the committee submitted the final proposal to the SF Arts Commission’s VAC for consideration. On December 21 of that year, the VAC approved the design and scheduled a January meeting for an inscription language approval. After the VAC approved the inscription on January 18, more than 200 opposition letters came in, prompting a second hearing February 6. As a result, a minor change to the inscription was made from “to the crusade to eradicate sexual violence” to “to eradicate sexual violence” in the last sentence. I spoke in support of the final inscription at hearings held on January 18 and February 6 of 2017. In addition, I sent a letter of support to the VAC.
In his reflection, the sculptor of Women’s Column of Strength Steven Whyte said that his challenge was to actualize the ongoing struggle of the survivors fighting for justice while still making the monument universal. Both Whyte and gallery director Ellen Wilson knew that history being written by the victors “can lead to mistruths and to a history that is myopic, unbalanced, and incorrect.” As artists, they wrote that “we have an important role to play in making sure these lessons are reflected in the way we change the landscape of our communities. There is great responsibility in the scale and permanence of the work we create; it is a humbling honor that should never be underestimated.”[3]
Women’s Column of Strength was installed on September 22, 2017 on public land.
At the unveiling ceremony, survivor Yong-Soo Lee said she hoped “there will be a ‘comfort women’ memorial installed in the center of Tokyo and passersby will say ‘I apologize.’”
Termination of Sister-City Ties Between San Francisco and Osaka
Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura (served 2015–2019) opposed the installation of Women’s Column of Strength, which led to the termination of the established sister-city relationship between San Francisco and Osaka, Japan. On February 1, 2017, Osaka Mayor Yoshimura sent a letter to San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee (1952–2017, served 2011–2017) stating, “Thus, it is truly regrettable, for the act of establishing a ‘comfort women’ memorial and an identification plaque as property of San Francisco would be adverse to the spirit of the [2015 ‘Comfort Women’] agreement [between South Korea and Japan].”[4] In his response letter sent on February 3, San Francisco Mayor Lee indicated that the memorial project was privately funded and spearheaded by a coalition of local activists and that as an elected officer, it was his duty to be responsive to the community.
Despite the distortion and denial of the history of “comfort women” and objections to memorializing the victims, the memorial was installed and the response from Osaka was immediate. On September 29, 2017, Osaka Mayor Yoshimura sent a letter indicating he would end the longstanding sister-city relationship should the memorial and inscription plaque remain. The statement read, “If the ‘comfort women’ memorial and plaque were to be located upon public property as an expression of the will of the City and County of San Francisco, not only would it be extremely regrettable, but the City of Osaka must then rethink the sister-city relationship.”[5] In response, on October 2, 2017, San Francisco Mayor Lee wrote a letter to Mayor Yoshimura expressing that he was “deeply disappointed” but it is his duty to be “responsive to the community, even when it means we face criticism.”[6]
On November 14, 2017, the SF Board of Supervisors adopted Resolution No. 415-17, authorizing “the San Francisco Arts Commission [to] accept the memorial [Women’s Column of Strength] as a gift of artwork to the city and accept and expend the gift of the maintenance endowment to conserve and maintain the artwork located at the site.”[7] The following day, Mayor Yoshimura responded in a letter restating his intention to end the sister-city relationship.[8] In response, the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” Issue Kansai Network, a civic group based in Osaka, began a petition campaign to support the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ resolution adoption. More than a hundred Osaka residents and thirty-seven organizations endorsed the petition, which was then presented to Mayor Lee on November 21, 2017, along with messages of support from more than twenty Osaka citizens and major labor unions in Osaka, Tokyo, and Chiba. Eclipse Rising, a Zainichi (在日)[9] scholar-activist organization based in the San Francisco Bay area, organized and initiated this petition effort in Osaka. On November 22, 2017, Mayor Lee signed Resolution No. 415-17.
After Mayor Lee’s sudden death, discussions regarding the termination of sister-city status were paused. In July 2018, London Breed was elected to serve as the new San Francisco mayor and took office to serve out the remaining term of Mayor Lee. On a news program broadcast October 1, 2018, Osaka’s Mayor Yoshimura indicated a termination of the sister-city relationship between Osaka and San Francisco. The following day, the Osaka Municipal Government said that it had sent a document to officially end its sister-city ties with San Francisco, which had been in place since 1957.[10] In response to Osaka’s notice, Mayor Breed released a statement on October 4, 2018, emphasizing that “[The memorial] is a symbol of the struggle faced by all women who have been, and are currently, forced to endure the horrors of enslavement and sex trafficking. These victims deserve our respect and this memorial reminds us all of events and lessons we must never forget.”[11]
A day before the statement was released, Jeff Cretan, spokesman for Mayor Breed, repeated that the sister-city relationship wasn’t one between two mayors, but between two groups of citizens.[12] Cretan also added that the statue wasn’t going anywhere.[13]
II. Educational Effort
California
The 2017 H-SS Framework includes content on “comfort women.” The inclusion of this topic signifies the importance of examining the causes and consequences of this crime against humanity that occurred in Asia before and during WWII as part of world history in the U.S. education system. Before this framework was adopted on July 14, 2016, the California State Board of Education’s Instructional Quality Commission held two public hearings on May 19 and July 14 of that year. I attended both hearings and spoke in strong support of the inclusion of the draft below:
“Comfort Women,” a euphemism for sexual slaves, were taken by the Japanese Army in occupied territories before and during the war. “Comfort Women” can be taught as an example of institutionalized sexual slavery, and one of the largest cases of human trafficking in the twentieth century; estimates on the total number of comfort women vary, but most argue that hundreds of thousands of women were forced into these situations during Japanese occupation.
The “comfort women” draft the State Board of Education adopted for the H-SS Framework on July 14, 2016, included a link to the 2015 “comfort women” agreement from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), which presented the agreement as “final and irreversible.” In 2017, the California Department of Education published the framework with the final passage edited to include links to the agreement from both the Japanese and South Korean MOFA sites. A few months after the framework was published, the Special Task Force of South Korea reported that the agreement was made in secret. The published passage is below:
“Comfort Women” is a euphemism that describes women who were forced into sexual service by the Japanese Army in occupied territories before and during the war. Comfort Women can be taught as an example of institutionalized sexual slavery; estimates on the total number of Comfort Women vary, but most argue that hundreds of thousands of women were forced into these situations during Japanese occupation. On December 28, 2015, the governments of Japan and the Republic of Korea entered into an agreement regarding the issues of Comfort Women. Two translations of this document can be found at http://www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/na/kr/page4e_000364.html (accessed June 29, 2017) and
http://www.mofa.go.kr/ENG/press/ministrynews/20151228/1_71575.jsp?menu=m_10_10 (accessed June 29, 2017).
“Comfort women” history is in the 10th grade 2017 H-SS Framework section 10.8—titled “Causes and Consequences of WWII”—after the question “How was the war mobilized on different fronts?” It offers an important opportunity to teach students about the devastating impact of WWII on women and girls in Asia.
San Francisco
On October 13, 2015, one month after Eric Mar passed Resolution 342-15, President of the San Francisco Board of Education (SFBOE), Sandra Fewer (served 2014–2016), who later became a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (2017–2021), proposed Resolution 158-25A1 to teach “comfort women” history to 10th graders in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), and it was passed unanimously. The resolution urges educators “to incorporate an educational component of the history of ‘comfort women’ of WWII under the Japanese military in its curriculum to educate the community about the harmful effects of sex trafficking in its historical and modern-day contact for the purpose of preventing and protecting the youth community from sexual exploitation…”[14]
Two months later, on December 28, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) for both South Korea and Japan announced the 2015 “comfort women” agreement without the consent of survivors, who , in unison, demanded the nullification of the agreement. Although this agreement ignored justice procedures, because it is presented as “final and irreversible,” it can mislead educators into believing that the matter has been settled unequivocally. To ensure the accurate teaching of this history within SFUSD, in the first week of January 2016, district students, parents, and I launched a letter campaign requesting an immediate implementation of Resolution 158-25A1. I founded and implemented the Korean/English Two-Way Immersion Program within the district in 1994. From this professional experience, I was inspired by the power of students and parents to create and sustain positive change in children’s education.
At the meeting on January 15, 2016, the SFUSD’s Curriculum and Instruction’s Humanities Department confirmed its commitment to teach this history in SFUSD 10th grade. In need of resources for this history, the department asked me for a collection of appropriate materials. While I was researching and gathering resources, the San Francisco Board of Education took a further step to ensure the history of Japanese military sexual slavery is taught in schools. On April 26, the SFBOE passed a resolution in support of the inclusion of “comfort women” history into the statewide history curriculum, [15] called the California History-Social Science Framework. At the meeting, I spoke in support of the inclusion. The framework was published in 2017 with the content on “comfort women.”[16] With the adoption, the subject of “comfort women” was included for the first time in a framework that provides broad instructional philosophy and strategy, as well as grade-level specific pedagogical suggestions.
On December 5, 2016, Russ Lowe and I provided a collection of resources to the SFUSD’s Curriculum and Instruction’s Humanities Department. In June 2017, Lowe, Nancy Lee, and I founded the Education for Social Justice Foundation (ESJF) to provide education on past injustices relegated to the sidelines of history. In early 2018, when the SFUSD Curriculum and Instruction’s Humanities Department informed ESJF that the department needed more time to develop the curriculum, seeking to include the topic of “comfort women” history to the SFUSD 10th grade world history curriculum sooner than later, ESJF published “Comfort Women” History and Issues: Teacher Resource Guide in April 2018. Upon the release, the department distributed copies to eighteen high schools in SFUSD. Considering that SFBOE Resolution 158-25A1 is not a required topic, but a recommendation, the continuation of teaching this topic depends much on individual school communities, especially teachers. To assist teachers, ESJF’s teacher resource guides, which are also available online, provide multiple lesson plans and resources.
As it is in the case of the “comfort women” content in the framework, SFBOE Resolution 158-25A1 is not a required topic but a recommendation. Given that, the continuation of teaching this topic depends heavily on school communities. To support school communities and the general public, ESJF provides teacher resource guides, holds professional workshops and community events, and lectures at high schools and colleges, both locally and internationally. ESJF finds significant value in teaching this history because it serves as a critical part of countering sexual and gender-based violence across history worldwide.
Education for Social Justice Foundation
In 2017, two social justice advocates and I founded the Education for Social Justice Foundation (ESJF) based in San Francisco, the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone who are the original inhabitants of the SF peninsula. At ESJF, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization, we incorporate lessons learned from history to develop dignity-affirming and critical-thinking-based education. The foundation was created earlier than we originally planned in order to help Chiba Korean Elementary and Middle School, which was affected by a city budget cut in retaliation for exercising freedom of expression in support of survivors of Japan’s WWII military sexual slavery.
Here’s a brief background. In December 2016, Chiba Korean Elementary and Middle School hosted the 45th Student Art Exhibition with artwork from elementary through high school students. At the exhibition, Chiba Mayor Toshihito Kumagai spotted two pieces of artwork by two high school students of Korean ancestry expressing objection to the Japanese government’s position regarding “comfort women” issues. Using their artwork as an excuse, on April 27, 2017, Mayor Kumagai announced his decision to cut annual city funding for the school. This amounted to a loss of 500,000 JYP (around $4,757 USD in 2017), some of which had been used to organize the annual exhibition. In the summer of 2017, ESJF raised $5,000 USD to make up for the lost funding. Since then, ESJF has been supporting this school.
Our support for the two high school students and the school made our initial focus countering sexual and gender-based violence instead of preserving the history of and issues surrounding the Asian diaspora in the U.S., which had been our first planned topic.
III. Significance of Preserving This History and Advancing Human Rights of Women and Girls from Marginalized U.S. Populations, including Native Americans, Black Americans, and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI)
The history of “comfort women” is a deeply relevant topic rooted in imperialism, human rights violations, violence, discrimination, as well as distortion and denial of history—fundamental problems that echo into today. Although the military sexual slavery system represented widespread human rights violations against women and girls, justice has been denied to the survivors, even today. Unresolved crimes often repeat: women and girls in many countries and territories, including Syria, Iran, Tigray, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, continue to fall victim to sexual and gender-based violence.
The fundamental causes of injustice endured by “comfort women” continue today in America. It took nearly a century to repeal the 1875 Page Act, which restricted immigration of Asian women—in particular, Chinese women—to the U.S., under the racist assumption that Chinese women were entering the country to pursue prostitution. Yet despite the 1974 repeal of the Page Act, gender and racial discrimination continued in the U.S. In 2021, a shooting rampage in Atlanta, Georgia, killed eight people, including six Asian American women working at three spas. According to Capt. Jay Baker, of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, the suspect’s motive for the Atlanta mass shooting was to “eliminate [the suspect’s] sexual addiction.” He callously added it was his “bad day.” The lives of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) women are not and must not be considered subjects for “eliminating someone’s sexual addiction” on his “bad day.” What happened in Atlanta reminds us that the full humanity of AAPI women is far from secured.
Hollywood films, which often reflect or affect the values of various aspects of American society, have played a role in coloring, stereotyping, and undercutting the status of AAPI women. For instance, Full Metal Jacket (1987) reinforces the confining stereotype of AAPI women as hypersexualized, undermining their fundamental human rights and status. This film contain lines spoken by young Vietnamese women, including “Me so horny” or “Me love you long time.”
The undermined human rights and status of AAPI women can also be witnessed in missing women cases throughout the U.S. For example, in the 2021 case of missing woman Gabby Petito, the disappearance of a white woman garnered a huge amount of media coverage. Yet, three months before that, the disappearance of Lauren Cho, a 30-year-old AAPI woman, raised very little public attention. Petito was found ten days after she was reported missing, while it took more than three months to find Cho. Although both Petito and Cho were victims of sexual and gender-based violence, their values and lives were not treated equally. This racial disparity runs parallel to certain lines in the Hollywood film Hearts and Minds (1974). In the movie, the commander of American military operations during the Vietnam War said, “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient.”
The history of the Japanese military sexual slavery system teaches us that the trauma of sexual and gender-based violence impacts the survivors even years after the violence ends. It teaches us the tragedy extends to victims’ families and community members, often being passed down to the next generation. This vicious cycle creates, if not further solidifies, a social structure exposing women and girls to continued sexual and gender-based violence. In their fight for restorative justice, survivors of the “comfort women” system have made a clear and strong message that they do not want the crimes they suffered repeated against others. Their collective voice for genuine peace, security, and human rights for women, which began in the ’90s, has become even more urgent and timely as domestic and international conflicts continue to rise today.
According to the 2022 FBI San Francisco report released on August 16, the youngest victim of child sexual exploitation and human trafficking offenses in the U.S. was eleven years old, while the average age of victims located was 15.5.[17] The 2022 UN Secretary-General report on women, peace, and security indicates that since the year 2000—when the UN Security Council adopted the landmark Resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security[18]—conflict, coups, displacement and hunger have reversed decades of gains. Locally and globally, sex-trafficking continues to be a major problem. Applying the lessons learned from past dark history is one of the most effective ways to counter ongoing sexual and gender-based violence, advancing all women and girls’ human rights and empowering their voices.
Closing
What led to the successful passage of the two resolutions in San Francisco in 2015 and what followed are the results of collective activism that united students, parents, educators, scholars, activists, and politicians from multiple racial backgrounds.
I remember SFUSD middle and high school students and their parents actively participated in the 2016 letter campaign, supporting and demanding the immediate implementation of Resolution 158-25A1 in SFUSD. I remember meeting a dozen local residents in Sacramento at the California State Board of Education’s Instructional Quality Commission (IQC)’s final public hearing on July 14, 2016 on the content of “comfort women” in the framework—they came in the morning and stayed until the IQC announced the decision in the late afternoon. I remember Kevin Lu, a talented graphic designer of AD&C Design, who volunteered to design, pro bono, the cover pages and contents of “Comfort Women” History and Issues for both teacher and student editions. I remember reading the petition endorsed by more than a hundred Osaka residents and thirty-seven organizations in Japan supporting Resolution No. 415-17 regarding the installation approval to San Francisco Mayor Lee in November 2017. There are many more instances, too, including Ignatius Ding’s suggestion to memorialize Japanese military sexual slavery victims in Asia instead of only focusing on those from Nanjing, China. Lastly, I want to mention Christina Tang, who as a high school student vowed to teach “comfort women” history if she became a teacher one day. Tang in fact did become a teacher and kept her promise. Recognized as a 2020 awardee in the Thank a Teacher 4 Social Justice Award by the organization Teachers 4 Social Justice, Tang is actively involved with ESJF as the teacher committee chair.
I believe in the power and wisdom of people who carry the memory and resiliency of women and girls who endured and fought against human rights violations. Their stories and active legacy encourage people to join their effort to preserve and learn from what could have been sidelined history. I visited Bok-dong Kim (1926–2019), a Japanese military sexual slavery survivor who became a human rights activist, peace advocate, and inspirational leader, at a hospital several weeks before she passed away. She asked me to keep fighting for her. I know that she meant to ask this of all of us.
About the author
Sung Sohn, M.Ed. is the co-founder and executive director of the Education for Social Justice Foundation. She is a former bilingual resource and classroom teacher who founded the Korean/English Two-Way Immersion Program within the San Francisco Unified School District in 1994. She is keenly aware that her own grandmother could have become a victim of military sexual slavery since she was born in Korea only two years before Hak-Soon Kim, the first surviving victim to testify in public. Sung is the author of the Korean Two-Way Immersion Curriculum Guide (1994), “Comfort Women” History and Issues: Teacher Resource Guide (2018), and “Comfort Women” History and Issues: Student Resource Guide (2018).
[1] Available at http://www.e4sjf.org/resolutions.html.
[2] SF Board of Supervisors, Resolution Urging the City and County of San Francisco to Establish a Memorial for "Comfort Women" and to Educate the Community About Stopping Global Human Trafficking of Women and Girls, SFBOS Res. 342-15, (2015), Resolution 342-15 text available in the teacher and student resource guides of “Comfort Women” History and Issues (2018), 91–93.
[3] Steven Whyte and Ellen Wilson’s reflection can be found on the Education for Social Justice Foundation’s webpage and in the teacher and student resource guides of “Comfort Women” History and Issues (2018), 70–71.
[4] Hirofumi Yoshimura, Letter to Mayor Ed Lee, (Feb. 1, 2017).
[5] Hirofumi Yoshimura, Statement to Mayor Ed Lee, (Sept. 29, 2017).
[6] Edwin Lee, Letter to Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura, (Oct. 2, 2017), available at https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DLSn3bxU8AAUFmq.jpg (accessed Feb. 10, 2018).
[7] SF Board of Supervisors, Resolution retroactively authorizing the San Francisco Arts Commission to accept a gift of art, entitled The "Comfort Women's" Column of Strength, valued at $190,000 and accept and expend a donation from the "Comfort Women" Justice Coalition of $208,000 for the purpose of maintaining the artwork, entitled the "Comfort Women's" Column of Strength, for a period not less than 20 years, Res. 415-17, (2017), Resolution 415-17 text available in the teacher and student resource guides of “Comfort Women” History and Issues (2018), 99–101.
[8] Hirofumi Yoshimura, Letter to Mayor Ed Lee, (Nov. 15, 2017), available at http://www.city.osaka.lg.jp/keizaisenryaku/cmsfiles/contents/0000417/417243/ann.pdf.
[9] Foreigners born in Japan
[10] “Osaka Severs Sister-city Ties with San Francisco over ‘Comfort Women’ Statue,” The Japan Times, (Oct. 3, 2018).
[11] London Breed, Statement from Mayor London Breed on the Sister City Relationship between San Francisco and Osaka, SF City and County, (Oct. 4, 2018).
[12] San Francisco’s sister-city website still includes Osaka, available at https://oewd.org/san-francisco-sister-cities (accessed Nov. 15, 2018).
[13] Heather Knight, “Japanese Mayor Cuts Ties Between SF and Osaka Over Comfort Women Statue,” San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 3, 2018.
[14] SF Board of Education, In Support of Countering Human Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, SFBOE Res. 158-25A1, (2015), Resolution 158-25A1 text available in the teacher and student resource guides of “Comfort Women” History and Issues (2018), 96–98.
[15] SF Board of Education, In Support of the Inclusion of the “Comfort Women” History into the Statewide History Curriculum, Res.164-26A2, (2016).
[16] California Department of Education History- Social Science Framework for California Public Schools: Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve, (Sacramento, 2017), 353.
[17] FBI San Francisco Announces Results of Nationwide Sex Trafficking Operation: Operation Cross Country XII, FBI San Francisco, Aug. 16, 2022, available at
https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/sanfrancisco/news/press-releases/fbi-san-francisco-announces-results-of-nationwide-sex-trafficking-operation-operation-cross-country-xii.
[18] UN Security Council resolution 1325, On Women, Peace, and Sexurity, (S/RES/1325, 4213th mtg., Oct. 31, 2000), available at www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/wps/.
Referring to my professional and personal experience and educational activism working with many advocates of this grassroots movement, I wrote this reflection to provide a brief background highlighting the significance of collective efforts made in installing the memorial and launching educational initiatives. I’m honored to be part of a continuing force to expand this local history to address universal values—the advancement of women’s human rights and women’s empowerment.
Introduction
From the 1930s to the end of World War II in 1945, the Japanese Imperial Armed Forces established and operated numerous “comfort stations” for Japanese soldiers in the territories they occupied. Hundreds of thousands of women and girls from throughout Asia were forced into this military sexual slavery system. These Japanese military sex slaves are euphemistically referred to as “comfort women.” Since 2001, the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco has passed resolutions regarding Japan’s military sexual slavery and other WWII war crimes, demanding apologies and resolutions. The list of these resolutions is on the ESJF website.[1] This paper has three parts, first focusing on the installation process of the San Francisco “comfort women” memorial Women’s Column of Strength and the termination of the sister-city ties between San Francisco and Osaka. The second part recounts and expands the efforts of the San Francisco Board of Education and the San Francisco Unified School District community to preserve the history of Japanese military sex slavery. This paper concludes with a discussion of the significance of preserving this history and advancing the human rights of AAPI women.
I. Women’s Column of Strength
Installation
In 2011, Eric Mar, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (2009–2017), reached out to city officials and various community leaders as he developed plans to build a memorial honoring victims of the Nanjing Massacre (December 1937–January 1938), grave human rights violations committed by Imperial Japan in Nanjing, China. Mar, who grew up listening to his grandmother share stories of suffering people endured during the massacre and throughout China before and during WWII, was inspired to memorialize the victims of the Nanjing Massacre. In May 2012, Ignatius Ding of the Rape of Nanjing Redress Coalition (RNRC) suggested the memorial planning team expand the San Francisco memorial to include victims of Japanese military sexual slavery in Asia before and during WWII. The memorial team accepted his suggestion. Without his efforts, the memorial originally would have only honored the victims of the Nanjing Massacre.
In July 2015, continuing to spearhead the project and expand its support base, Mar introduced Resolution 342-15 to build a “comfort women” memorial in San Francisco. Mar and members from various civic groups, including Eclipse Rising, RNRC, APTSJW, GA, and Korean Chamber of Commerce of SF formed the Comfort Women Justice Coalition, a multi-ethnic and multi-interest human rights coalition. However, the push for the memorial was not without dissent. On September 17, 2015, urging the establishment of a memorial for “comfort women” was the first agenda item at the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee meeting. At the meeting, some speakers who opposed the memorial resolution called former “comfort woman” Yong-Soo Lee (b. Korea, 1928) a “prostitute” in her direct presence. In reaction to these remarks, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, David Campos, said three times in his closing statement, “Shame on you.” On September 22, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed the resolution unanimously.[2]
After the SFBOS passed the resolution to install the memorial, the Visual Arts Committee (VAC) of the SF Arts Commission held meetings and hearings in 2016 and 2017 to decide on the memorial design and inscription. In March 2016, San Francisco Rec & Park Commissioner and land use attorney Allan Low suggested the St. Mary’s Square extension for the memorial, which was supported by Mayor Lee. The following month in April, the site was finalized for the memorial. Russ Lowe, who later became co-founder of ESJF, and I attended this site selection meeting. After a blind selection committee selected Steven Whyte’s design, Women’s Column of Strength, on December 5, the committee submitted the final proposal to the SF Arts Commission’s VAC for consideration. On December 21 of that year, the VAC approved the design and scheduled a January meeting for an inscription language approval. After the VAC approved the inscription on January 18, more than 200 opposition letters came in, prompting a second hearing February 6. As a result, a minor change to the inscription was made from “to the crusade to eradicate sexual violence” to “to eradicate sexual violence” in the last sentence. I spoke in support of the final inscription at hearings held on January 18 and February 6 of 2017. In addition, I sent a letter of support to the VAC.
In his reflection, the sculptor of Women’s Column of Strength Steven Whyte said that his challenge was to actualize the ongoing struggle of the survivors fighting for justice while still making the monument universal. Both Whyte and gallery director Ellen Wilson knew that history being written by the victors “can lead to mistruths and to a history that is myopic, unbalanced, and incorrect.” As artists, they wrote that “we have an important role to play in making sure these lessons are reflected in the way we change the landscape of our communities. There is great responsibility in the scale and permanence of the work we create; it is a humbling honor that should never be underestimated.”[3]
Women’s Column of Strength was installed on September 22, 2017 on public land.
At the unveiling ceremony, survivor Yong-Soo Lee said she hoped “there will be a ‘comfort women’ memorial installed in the center of Tokyo and passersby will say ‘I apologize.’”
Termination of Sister-City Ties Between San Francisco and Osaka
Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura (served 2015–2019) opposed the installation of Women’s Column of Strength, which led to the termination of the established sister-city relationship between San Francisco and Osaka, Japan. On February 1, 2017, Osaka Mayor Yoshimura sent a letter to San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee (1952–2017, served 2011–2017) stating, “Thus, it is truly regrettable, for the act of establishing a ‘comfort women’ memorial and an identification plaque as property of San Francisco would be adverse to the spirit of the [2015 ‘Comfort Women’] agreement [between South Korea and Japan].”[4] In his response letter sent on February 3, San Francisco Mayor Lee indicated that the memorial project was privately funded and spearheaded by a coalition of local activists and that as an elected officer, it was his duty to be responsive to the community.
Despite the distortion and denial of the history of “comfort women” and objections to memorializing the victims, the memorial was installed and the response from Osaka was immediate. On September 29, 2017, Osaka Mayor Yoshimura sent a letter indicating he would end the longstanding sister-city relationship should the memorial and inscription plaque remain. The statement read, “If the ‘comfort women’ memorial and plaque were to be located upon public property as an expression of the will of the City and County of San Francisco, not only would it be extremely regrettable, but the City of Osaka must then rethink the sister-city relationship.”[5] In response, on October 2, 2017, San Francisco Mayor Lee wrote a letter to Mayor Yoshimura expressing that he was “deeply disappointed” but it is his duty to be “responsive to the community, even when it means we face criticism.”[6]
On November 14, 2017, the SF Board of Supervisors adopted Resolution No. 415-17, authorizing “the San Francisco Arts Commission [to] accept the memorial [Women’s Column of Strength] as a gift of artwork to the city and accept and expend the gift of the maintenance endowment to conserve and maintain the artwork located at the site.”[7] The following day, Mayor Yoshimura responded in a letter restating his intention to end the sister-city relationship.[8] In response, the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” Issue Kansai Network, a civic group based in Osaka, began a petition campaign to support the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ resolution adoption. More than a hundred Osaka residents and thirty-seven organizations endorsed the petition, which was then presented to Mayor Lee on November 21, 2017, along with messages of support from more than twenty Osaka citizens and major labor unions in Osaka, Tokyo, and Chiba. Eclipse Rising, a Zainichi (在日)[9] scholar-activist organization based in the San Francisco Bay area, organized and initiated this petition effort in Osaka. On November 22, 2017, Mayor Lee signed Resolution No. 415-17.
After Mayor Lee’s sudden death, discussions regarding the termination of sister-city status were paused. In July 2018, London Breed was elected to serve as the new San Francisco mayor and took office to serve out the remaining term of Mayor Lee. On a news program broadcast October 1, 2018, Osaka’s Mayor Yoshimura indicated a termination of the sister-city relationship between Osaka and San Francisco. The following day, the Osaka Municipal Government said that it had sent a document to officially end its sister-city ties with San Francisco, which had been in place since 1957.[10] In response to Osaka’s notice, Mayor Breed released a statement on October 4, 2018, emphasizing that “[The memorial] is a symbol of the struggle faced by all women who have been, and are currently, forced to endure the horrors of enslavement and sex trafficking. These victims deserve our respect and this memorial reminds us all of events and lessons we must never forget.”[11]
A day before the statement was released, Jeff Cretan, spokesman for Mayor Breed, repeated that the sister-city relationship wasn’t one between two mayors, but between two groups of citizens.[12] Cretan also added that the statue wasn’t going anywhere.[13]
II. Educational Effort
California
The 2017 H-SS Framework includes content on “comfort women.” The inclusion of this topic signifies the importance of examining the causes and consequences of this crime against humanity that occurred in Asia before and during WWII as part of world history in the U.S. education system. Before this framework was adopted on July 14, 2016, the California State Board of Education’s Instructional Quality Commission held two public hearings on May 19 and July 14 of that year. I attended both hearings and spoke in strong support of the inclusion of the draft below:
“Comfort Women,” a euphemism for sexual slaves, were taken by the Japanese Army in occupied territories before and during the war. “Comfort Women” can be taught as an example of institutionalized sexual slavery, and one of the largest cases of human trafficking in the twentieth century; estimates on the total number of comfort women vary, but most argue that hundreds of thousands of women were forced into these situations during Japanese occupation.
The “comfort women” draft the State Board of Education adopted for the H-SS Framework on July 14, 2016, included a link to the 2015 “comfort women” agreement from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), which presented the agreement as “final and irreversible.” In 2017, the California Department of Education published the framework with the final passage edited to include links to the agreement from both the Japanese and South Korean MOFA sites. A few months after the framework was published, the Special Task Force of South Korea reported that the agreement was made in secret. The published passage is below:
“Comfort Women” is a euphemism that describes women who were forced into sexual service by the Japanese Army in occupied territories before and during the war. Comfort Women can be taught as an example of institutionalized sexual slavery; estimates on the total number of Comfort Women vary, but most argue that hundreds of thousands of women were forced into these situations during Japanese occupation. On December 28, 2015, the governments of Japan and the Republic of Korea entered into an agreement regarding the issues of Comfort Women. Two translations of this document can be found at http://www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/na/kr/page4e_000364.html (accessed June 29, 2017) and
http://www.mofa.go.kr/ENG/press/ministrynews/20151228/1_71575.jsp?menu=m_10_10 (accessed June 29, 2017).
“Comfort women” history is in the 10th grade 2017 H-SS Framework section 10.8—titled “Causes and Consequences of WWII”—after the question “How was the war mobilized on different fronts?” It offers an important opportunity to teach students about the devastating impact of WWII on women and girls in Asia.
San Francisco
On October 13, 2015, one month after Eric Mar passed Resolution 342-15, President of the San Francisco Board of Education (SFBOE), Sandra Fewer (served 2014–2016), who later became a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (2017–2021), proposed Resolution 158-25A1 to teach “comfort women” history to 10th graders in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), and it was passed unanimously. The resolution urges educators “to incorporate an educational component of the history of ‘comfort women’ of WWII under the Japanese military in its curriculum to educate the community about the harmful effects of sex trafficking in its historical and modern-day contact for the purpose of preventing and protecting the youth community from sexual exploitation…”[14]
Two months later, on December 28, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) for both South Korea and Japan announced the 2015 “comfort women” agreement without the consent of survivors, who , in unison, demanded the nullification of the agreement. Although this agreement ignored justice procedures, because it is presented as “final and irreversible,” it can mislead educators into believing that the matter has been settled unequivocally. To ensure the accurate teaching of this history within SFUSD, in the first week of January 2016, district students, parents, and I launched a letter campaign requesting an immediate implementation of Resolution 158-25A1. I founded and implemented the Korean/English Two-Way Immersion Program within the district in 1994. From this professional experience, I was inspired by the power of students and parents to create and sustain positive change in children’s education.
At the meeting on January 15, 2016, the SFUSD’s Curriculum and Instruction’s Humanities Department confirmed its commitment to teach this history in SFUSD 10th grade. In need of resources for this history, the department asked me for a collection of appropriate materials. While I was researching and gathering resources, the San Francisco Board of Education took a further step to ensure the history of Japanese military sexual slavery is taught in schools. On April 26, the SFBOE passed a resolution in support of the inclusion of “comfort women” history into the statewide history curriculum, [15] called the California History-Social Science Framework. At the meeting, I spoke in support of the inclusion. The framework was published in 2017 with the content on “comfort women.”[16] With the adoption, the subject of “comfort women” was included for the first time in a framework that provides broad instructional philosophy and strategy, as well as grade-level specific pedagogical suggestions.
On December 5, 2016, Russ Lowe and I provided a collection of resources to the SFUSD’s Curriculum and Instruction’s Humanities Department. In June 2017, Lowe, Nancy Lee, and I founded the Education for Social Justice Foundation (ESJF) to provide education on past injustices relegated to the sidelines of history. In early 2018, when the SFUSD Curriculum and Instruction’s Humanities Department informed ESJF that the department needed more time to develop the curriculum, seeking to include the topic of “comfort women” history to the SFUSD 10th grade world history curriculum sooner than later, ESJF published “Comfort Women” History and Issues: Teacher Resource Guide in April 2018. Upon the release, the department distributed copies to eighteen high schools in SFUSD. Considering that SFBOE Resolution 158-25A1 is not a required topic, but a recommendation, the continuation of teaching this topic depends much on individual school communities, especially teachers. To assist teachers, ESJF’s teacher resource guides, which are also available online, provide multiple lesson plans and resources.
As it is in the case of the “comfort women” content in the framework, SFBOE Resolution 158-25A1 is not a required topic but a recommendation. Given that, the continuation of teaching this topic depends heavily on school communities. To support school communities and the general public, ESJF provides teacher resource guides, holds professional workshops and community events, and lectures at high schools and colleges, both locally and internationally. ESJF finds significant value in teaching this history because it serves as a critical part of countering sexual and gender-based violence across history worldwide.
Education for Social Justice Foundation
In 2017, two social justice advocates and I founded the Education for Social Justice Foundation (ESJF) based in San Francisco, the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone who are the original inhabitants of the SF peninsula. At ESJF, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization, we incorporate lessons learned from history to develop dignity-affirming and critical-thinking-based education. The foundation was created earlier than we originally planned in order to help Chiba Korean Elementary and Middle School, which was affected by a city budget cut in retaliation for exercising freedom of expression in support of survivors of Japan’s WWII military sexual slavery.
Here’s a brief background. In December 2016, Chiba Korean Elementary and Middle School hosted the 45th Student Art Exhibition with artwork from elementary through high school students. At the exhibition, Chiba Mayor Toshihito Kumagai spotted two pieces of artwork by two high school students of Korean ancestry expressing objection to the Japanese government’s position regarding “comfort women” issues. Using their artwork as an excuse, on April 27, 2017, Mayor Kumagai announced his decision to cut annual city funding for the school. This amounted to a loss of 500,000 JYP (around $4,757 USD in 2017), some of which had been used to organize the annual exhibition. In the summer of 2017, ESJF raised $5,000 USD to make up for the lost funding. Since then, ESJF has been supporting this school.
Our support for the two high school students and the school made our initial focus countering sexual and gender-based violence instead of preserving the history of and issues surrounding the Asian diaspora in the U.S., which had been our first planned topic.
III. Significance of Preserving This History and Advancing Human Rights of Women and Girls from Marginalized U.S. Populations, including Native Americans, Black Americans, and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI)
The history of “comfort women” is a deeply relevant topic rooted in imperialism, human rights violations, violence, discrimination, as well as distortion and denial of history—fundamental problems that echo into today. Although the military sexual slavery system represented widespread human rights violations against women and girls, justice has been denied to the survivors, even today. Unresolved crimes often repeat: women and girls in many countries and territories, including Syria, Iran, Tigray, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, continue to fall victim to sexual and gender-based violence.
The fundamental causes of injustice endured by “comfort women” continue today in America. It took nearly a century to repeal the 1875 Page Act, which restricted immigration of Asian women—in particular, Chinese women—to the U.S., under the racist assumption that Chinese women were entering the country to pursue prostitution. Yet despite the 1974 repeal of the Page Act, gender and racial discrimination continued in the U.S. In 2021, a shooting rampage in Atlanta, Georgia, killed eight people, including six Asian American women working at three spas. According to Capt. Jay Baker, of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, the suspect’s motive for the Atlanta mass shooting was to “eliminate [the suspect’s] sexual addiction.” He callously added it was his “bad day.” The lives of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) women are not and must not be considered subjects for “eliminating someone’s sexual addiction” on his “bad day.” What happened in Atlanta reminds us that the full humanity of AAPI women is far from secured.
Hollywood films, which often reflect or affect the values of various aspects of American society, have played a role in coloring, stereotyping, and undercutting the status of AAPI women. For instance, Full Metal Jacket (1987) reinforces the confining stereotype of AAPI women as hypersexualized, undermining their fundamental human rights and status. This film contain lines spoken by young Vietnamese women, including “Me so horny” or “Me love you long time.”
The undermined human rights and status of AAPI women can also be witnessed in missing women cases throughout the U.S. For example, in the 2021 case of missing woman Gabby Petito, the disappearance of a white woman garnered a huge amount of media coverage. Yet, three months before that, the disappearance of Lauren Cho, a 30-year-old AAPI woman, raised very little public attention. Petito was found ten days after she was reported missing, while it took more than three months to find Cho. Although both Petito and Cho were victims of sexual and gender-based violence, their values and lives were not treated equally. This racial disparity runs parallel to certain lines in the Hollywood film Hearts and Minds (1974). In the movie, the commander of American military operations during the Vietnam War said, “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient.”
The history of the Japanese military sexual slavery system teaches us that the trauma of sexual and gender-based violence impacts the survivors even years after the violence ends. It teaches us the tragedy extends to victims’ families and community members, often being passed down to the next generation. This vicious cycle creates, if not further solidifies, a social structure exposing women and girls to continued sexual and gender-based violence. In their fight for restorative justice, survivors of the “comfort women” system have made a clear and strong message that they do not want the crimes they suffered repeated against others. Their collective voice for genuine peace, security, and human rights for women, which began in the ’90s, has become even more urgent and timely as domestic and international conflicts continue to rise today.
According to the 2022 FBI San Francisco report released on August 16, the youngest victim of child sexual exploitation and human trafficking offenses in the U.S. was eleven years old, while the average age of victims located was 15.5.[17] The 2022 UN Secretary-General report on women, peace, and security indicates that since the year 2000—when the UN Security Council adopted the landmark Resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security[18]—conflict, coups, displacement and hunger have reversed decades of gains. Locally and globally, sex-trafficking continues to be a major problem. Applying the lessons learned from past dark history is one of the most effective ways to counter ongoing sexual and gender-based violence, advancing all women and girls’ human rights and empowering their voices.
Closing
What led to the successful passage of the two resolutions in San Francisco in 2015 and what followed are the results of collective activism that united students, parents, educators, scholars, activists, and politicians from multiple racial backgrounds.
I remember SFUSD middle and high school students and their parents actively participated in the 2016 letter campaign, supporting and demanding the immediate implementation of Resolution 158-25A1 in SFUSD. I remember meeting a dozen local residents in Sacramento at the California State Board of Education’s Instructional Quality Commission (IQC)’s final public hearing on July 14, 2016 on the content of “comfort women” in the framework—they came in the morning and stayed until the IQC announced the decision in the late afternoon. I remember Kevin Lu, a talented graphic designer of AD&C Design, who volunteered to design, pro bono, the cover pages and contents of “Comfort Women” History and Issues for both teacher and student editions. I remember reading the petition endorsed by more than a hundred Osaka residents and thirty-seven organizations in Japan supporting Resolution No. 415-17 regarding the installation approval to San Francisco Mayor Lee in November 2017. There are many more instances, too, including Ignatius Ding’s suggestion to memorialize Japanese military sexual slavery victims in Asia instead of only focusing on those from Nanjing, China. Lastly, I want to mention Christina Tang, who as a high school student vowed to teach “comfort women” history if she became a teacher one day. Tang in fact did become a teacher and kept her promise. Recognized as a 2020 awardee in the Thank a Teacher 4 Social Justice Award by the organization Teachers 4 Social Justice, Tang is actively involved with ESJF as the teacher committee chair.
I believe in the power and wisdom of people who carry the memory and resiliency of women and girls who endured and fought against human rights violations. Their stories and active legacy encourage people to join their effort to preserve and learn from what could have been sidelined history. I visited Bok-dong Kim (1926–2019), a Japanese military sexual slavery survivor who became a human rights activist, peace advocate, and inspirational leader, at a hospital several weeks before she passed away. She asked me to keep fighting for her. I know that she meant to ask this of all of us.
About the author
Sung Sohn, M.Ed. is the co-founder and executive director of the Education for Social Justice Foundation. She is a former bilingual resource and classroom teacher who founded the Korean/English Two-Way Immersion Program within the San Francisco Unified School District in 1994. She is keenly aware that her own grandmother could have become a victim of military sexual slavery since she was born in Korea only two years before Hak-Soon Kim, the first surviving victim to testify in public. Sung is the author of the Korean Two-Way Immersion Curriculum Guide (1994), “Comfort Women” History and Issues: Teacher Resource Guide (2018), and “Comfort Women” History and Issues: Student Resource Guide (2018).
[1] Available at http://www.e4sjf.org/resolutions.html.
[2] SF Board of Supervisors, Resolution Urging the City and County of San Francisco to Establish a Memorial for "Comfort Women" and to Educate the Community About Stopping Global Human Trafficking of Women and Girls, SFBOS Res. 342-15, (2015), Resolution 342-15 text available in the teacher and student resource guides of “Comfort Women” History and Issues (2018), 91–93.
[3] Steven Whyte and Ellen Wilson’s reflection can be found on the Education for Social Justice Foundation’s webpage and in the teacher and student resource guides of “Comfort Women” History and Issues (2018), 70–71.
[4] Hirofumi Yoshimura, Letter to Mayor Ed Lee, (Feb. 1, 2017).
[5] Hirofumi Yoshimura, Statement to Mayor Ed Lee, (Sept. 29, 2017).
[6] Edwin Lee, Letter to Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura, (Oct. 2, 2017), available at https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DLSn3bxU8AAUFmq.jpg (accessed Feb. 10, 2018).
[7] SF Board of Supervisors, Resolution retroactively authorizing the San Francisco Arts Commission to accept a gift of art, entitled The "Comfort Women's" Column of Strength, valued at $190,000 and accept and expend a donation from the "Comfort Women" Justice Coalition of $208,000 for the purpose of maintaining the artwork, entitled the "Comfort Women's" Column of Strength, for a period not less than 20 years, Res. 415-17, (2017), Resolution 415-17 text available in the teacher and student resource guides of “Comfort Women” History and Issues (2018), 99–101.
[8] Hirofumi Yoshimura, Letter to Mayor Ed Lee, (Nov. 15, 2017), available at http://www.city.osaka.lg.jp/keizaisenryaku/cmsfiles/contents/0000417/417243/ann.pdf.
[9] Foreigners born in Japan
[10] “Osaka Severs Sister-city Ties with San Francisco over ‘Comfort Women’ Statue,” The Japan Times, (Oct. 3, 2018).
[11] London Breed, Statement from Mayor London Breed on the Sister City Relationship between San Francisco and Osaka, SF City and County, (Oct. 4, 2018).
[12] San Francisco’s sister-city website still includes Osaka, available at https://oewd.org/san-francisco-sister-cities (accessed Nov. 15, 2018).
[13] Heather Knight, “Japanese Mayor Cuts Ties Between SF and Osaka Over Comfort Women Statue,” San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 3, 2018.
[14] SF Board of Education, In Support of Countering Human Trafficking and Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, SFBOE Res. 158-25A1, (2015), Resolution 158-25A1 text available in the teacher and student resource guides of “Comfort Women” History and Issues (2018), 96–98.
[15] SF Board of Education, In Support of the Inclusion of the “Comfort Women” History into the Statewide History Curriculum, Res.164-26A2, (2016).
[16] California Department of Education History- Social Science Framework for California Public Schools: Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve, (Sacramento, 2017), 353.
[17] FBI San Francisco Announces Results of Nationwide Sex Trafficking Operation: Operation Cross Country XII, FBI San Francisco, Aug. 16, 2022, available at
https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/sanfrancisco/news/press-releases/fbi-san-francisco-announces-results-of-nationwide-sex-trafficking-operation-operation-cross-country-xii.
[18] UN Security Council resolution 1325, On Women, Peace, and Sexurity, (S/RES/1325, 4213th mtg., Oct. 31, 2000), available at www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/wps/.