There are few people who take action on what they think is right thing to do even though it doesn't benefit them. The council man of Ridgefield, Dennis Shim is one of them. I thank him sincerely about the fact that he had made this exhibition a vivid event, and expect once again to America, a country of justice.
Also, I thank Mr. Bob Nadina and David Gonzalez who actually made this happen.
March 28, 2013 at 11:31 p.m.
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pedalmegone
USA
A very important story. I will boycott Nikon products in the future. I also write an email to them. Thank you for not letting this story disappear.
March 28, 2013 at 11:31 p.m.
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JiYeon Kwon
Palisades Park NJ
Thanks David..
We never forgets these women and stories..It's so sad..
March 28, 2013 at 7:14 a.m.
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Kensuke Arai
Pittsburgh / Tokyo
While I believe that there was at least some justice and practical rationale in Japan's motivation to go to war, I do believe tremendous criminal acts were committed by our military in China, Korea and in other parts of Asia. It is a disgrace that our government is trying to whitewash its past, and it sickens me to see xenophobia and racism rising again in my country. I hope Ahn Sehong and many others continue to tell the story of these women, and that it not be forgotten. I still haven't lost hope in the sense of justice in the heart of my compatriots.
March 28, 2013 at 7:14 a.m.
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verycreative
baltimore
would you care to explain your comment; "at least some justice and practical rationale in Japan's motivation to go to war"
March 28, 2013 at 11:28 p.m.
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Shar
Atlanta, Georgia
The "practical rationale" you speak of was domination of the Pacific Rim. Japanese brutality and racist nationalism was the cause of the suffering of millions and millions of people in the region through vicious campaigns of intimidation (see Nanking, the Phillipines, Guam, and many more), brutal oppression and every kind of cultural oppression. Japanese right wingers continue to try to deny this truth and suppress it both within Japan (whose textbooks remain under UN review due to the relentless attempts to scrub this history from the curriculum) and through censorship on foreign soil, among them the park mentioned above. Believing that Japanese aggression, racism and violation of all tenets of human rights was somehow justified shows that you reflect the partial victory of the nationalist apologists in your country.
March 28, 2013 at 11:29 p.m.
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Please use another name besides 'comfort station'. That's not what these places were. They were prisons for young Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery. When you use the words 'comfort station' you diminish the reality of what happened to these young women.
March 28, 2013 at 7:14 a.m.
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Jan
Florida
But the very fact that such places were called 'comfort stations' dramatizes the tragedy, accentuating the imbalance of 'importance' -- "comfort" for the powerful at the expense of helpless women who were seen as having no importance as human beings (probably even by many of the unfortunate women).
The irony of the phrase is part of the ugly history.
March 28, 2013 at 11:28 p.m.
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c harris
Rock Hill SC
It is hard to comprehend the cruelty of the Japanese during WW2. They certainly were on par with the NAZIs. Their theories of racial superiority are all too familiar. They raced into China thinking they would conquer and ended up in a bloody stalemate. Which I might add contributed to the victory of the CCP over Chiang kai shek. These are the tragic victims of a criminal regime trying to pleasure its heroes. These sad faces whose lives were of no account. But for this effort to bring their lives to the worlds attention.
March 28, 2013 at 7:14 a.m.
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Tony
Franklin, Massachusetts
Just as Germans share the collective guilt of The Holocaust, the Turks - the Armenian Genocide, the Chinese - Tibetan genocide and oppression, the British - their "colonial policies" in India, Americans - African Slavery, so the Japanese share the collective guilt of their brutality in the years leading up to the second world war. They should not be denying this still. They should be down on their knees in shame and humility begging the world for forgiveness.
March 28, 2013 at 7:13 a.m.
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A reader
San Francisco
Truly heart breaking! Is there a fund that we can donate to that will directly help these women? Those who are still alive as well as those who have passed on (such as Ms. Park Dae-Im whose dying wish to be buried in Korea)?
March 28, 2013 at 3:51 a.m.
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bthogan
Philadelphia
Indescribably moving. A magnificent tribute, and a tremendous memorial to those no longer with us.
March 28, 2013 at 3:51 a.m.
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Jsonny
NYC
Thanks David, and Mr.Ahn,
We never forget these women and the stories...
So sad ...
March 28, 2013 at 3:51 a.m.
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JR
Providence, RI
Heartbreaking story and photos.
And Japan's continuing resistance to acknowledging its crimes against humanity is shameful.
Were they Jewish, there would be activists putting pressure on China and Japan to compensate these poor women.
South Korea is the world's 13th largest economy. As a woman President Park Geun-hye should have sympathy on these impoverished women and enable them a dignified existence in the final stage of their life.
March 28, 2013 at 2:53 a.m.
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Rachel B.
Cambridge, MA
It does not strengthen the argument against prejudicial oppression to unfavorably compare one race with another. There is something smacking of anti-semitism in this comment.
March 28, 2013 at 7:11 a.m.
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j. von hettlingen
Switzerland
Verified
I'm not an anti-Semitist. It's just a fact that Jewish victims have strong lobbies behind them. Don't get me wrong, their claims were/are justified!
March 28, 2013 at 5:47 p.m.
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Jackie
Albany, NY
There are only 3 left....how much would it cost ?
March 28, 2013 at 11:28 p.m.
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Rex Cheung
Philadelphia, USA
It was unfortunate that the communist Chinese had to rape these Korean women for the second time. Current communist China is at a fevered pitch of a fascist nationalism, Hong Kong discriminated their 300000 Indonesia and Philippine maids, not to let them bring their families and not to let them apply for residency like other foreign workers. CCP is known to oppress their minority Chinese. Communist Chinese perversion and violence against women is unfortunately more than a passing habit, a mother of 4 in Tibet was just violated so much that she set herself alight to protest against the communist rule. History sadly repeats itself, The current mainland Chinese problem is that CCP does not seem to understand they live in a century when every body is watching their hacking and violation of human rights.
When Mr Ahn states “They have suffered the biggest pain created by the war" his ignorance nearly disqualifies him.
March 28, 2013 at 12:24 a.m.
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JR
Providence, RI
These women are still suffering from the consequences of their sexual enslavement more than 70 years ago.
How unfortunate that you feel the need to diminish their experience by comparing it to the pain and loss of other victims of the war.
March 28, 2013 at 7:11 a.m.
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RC
Pompano Beach FL
JR
I don’t sense that Thewiseking is seeking to diminish the tragic experience that these poor souls underwent. No one can question that these women being forced into “Voluntary” sexual servitude constitutes a war crime.
I’m a student of WWII. I possess dozens of non-fictional treatments of the war from highly credible historians. I have even more books of personal accounts and memoirs of combatants and non-combatants from several parts of the world who lived through the conflagration that was WWII.
I also am not diminishing the experiences that these women underwent when I say that there were far worse atrocities undergone by thousands upon thousands (millions) of others during the war. I don’t need to provide a long list of examples, but there were the concentration camps (death camps), abominable medical experimentation performed on unwilling subjects, parents being forced to choose which of their children lived and which one was sent to the gas chamber, POW camps where the prisoners lived in atrocious conditions so brutal that they wished for death to visit them…
Perhaps this, and much more, is what Thewiseking is referring to.
That aside, this ‘Lens’ feature is focused upon the ‘comfort women’, one specific horrible crime (amongst many) committed in WWII.
Though probably not possible, I’d also like to see photos of these women when they were young and vibrant. For me, those photos would show me, poignantly, who and what was stolen, never to be returned.
March 28, 2013 at 11:30 p.m.
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Little Panda
Celestial Heaven
Someone can tell Shinzo Abe to drop by there to visit those women?
March 28, 2013 at 12:24 a.m.
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Bathamo
New York
Truly moving. Any chance Nikon NY can be persuaded to show the work in their Manhattan gallery?
This is exactly the type of denial and obfuscation that Japan has been engaging at during all these years. Instead of defending a nationalistic agenda, look deep into your souls and see all of the pain and suffering that Japan's expanist policies have caused. The Germans have done a decent job of looking inwards and redeeming themselves of their Nazi past. I would strongly suggest you and japan do the same. Otherwise your country is forever locked in defending the indefensible.
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Elizabeth
Riverside, CA
Nobumasa Ohta wrote: "Testimony of the ex-Korean Japanese CW or any other woman herself based on her memory alone is usually deemed not reliable enough"? Perhaps you do not realize how very insulting this is.
Mr. or Ms. Ohta, I don't know what your intention in posting here was, but you have only served to underscore the callous attitude of denial that still surrounds the issue of sexual slavery.
I am disappointed and frankly disgusted that anyone would see these very moving photographs and read the stories of these women, and respond with denial and dismissal. Where is compassion? Understanding? A wish to better the life of someone who was clearly wronged? I would not have believed it possible had Nobumasa Ohta not demonstrated it for us.
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Kensuke Arai
Pittsburgh / Tokyo
Um, Nobumasa, no they were not treated equally. I'd like to consider your "facts", but unfortunately you didn't give any.
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anae
NY
Interesting. I've heard many horror stories about the lives of "comfort women." But what the above commenter says is new to me. I'd love to know what historians have to say.
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jeannypark
New York, NY
Are you denying that Korean women were raped based on the superficial account of their being "Japanese" as a colonized people during WWII? Yes, Koreans were "Japanese" during colonization but by name only, as Koreans living in Japan - known as Zainichi - were emphatically not treated as ethnic equals.
You imply that Korean women were not coerced but wanted to be sexual slaves for the Japanese Army in hopes of becoming "highly esteemed idols" as prostitutes. I believe the Edo period of glamorized prostitution as you say does not apply here to these victims.
You question the women's memory as unreliable, a damning skepticism that is precisely why these women, victims of sexual enslavement, felt ashamed to share their accounts.
These women did nothing wrong to deserve such treatment during their enslavement, and the decades of disgrace that followed them. Shame to anyone who feels they were complicit in their own enslavement by choosing to be comfort women.
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World Citizen
NYC
OMG!
The legend of slide 6 says "Bae Sam-Yeop was born in 1925 and drafted in 1937"
DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE 12 YEAR OLD GIRL WAS A VOLUNTEER?
If you do, you must have learned distorted history from Japan.
Of course Japan couldn't gather volunteers, and then it forced its colonies to send people as soldiers or helpers (according to Japan's expression) for army.
I'd like to tell you that the thing unreliable is not victim's memory but assaulter's excuse.