“If the city of San Francisco [in California] accepts the donated comfort women statue, then the sister city agreement will be dissolved.” Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura made this assertion in reply to a reporter’s question at city hall on September 25.
Three days earlier, on September 22, the comfort women statue was erected in an exhibition space within a San Francisco park, with the city council cooperating with Korean community groups. Unlike the figure of a small girl—the model used for other statues erected in other countries—the one in San Francisco features three women holding hands and forming a circle, with their backs to each other.
The city-approved inscription explaining the statue clearly calls the comfort women “sex slaves,” in contrast with how the Japanese government would characterize them.
On the morning of September 25, Yoshimura, together with Osaka Prefecture Governor Ichiro Matsui, met with the William Hagerty, the American Ambassador to Japan appointed in August.
During the talks, Matsui expressed his displeasure regarding the comfort women issue: “The comfort women issue is fake news from Asahi Shimbun Newspaper, and, as a result, incorrect information has circulated around the world.” He emphasized, “We are concerned that erroneous information may impede smooth relations between our two countries.” (Related story: Son of Comfort Women Perjurer Yoshida Removes “Unbearable” Apology Inscription)
Yoshimura also stated, “If it is the intention of the City of San Francisco to erect it in a public place, then the basis of the sister city relationship needs to be reconsidered.” He requested that Ambassador Hagerty undertake action toward the city of San Francisco.
Later that day, speaking to reporters at City Hall, Yoshimura said: “The US was also involved in the 2015 Japan-Korea Agreement on the comfort women issue. If San Francisco, as a municipality, accepts the donated statue, then the premise for sister city relations, the relationship of trust, will disintegrate.”
Given that community groups have already held an unveiling ceremony, and that San Francisco city has enacted a bill to establish “Comfort Women Day,” Yoshimura said that “the crisis has gone up a level.” He revealed his intention to dissolve the sister city relationship should the city of San Francisco accept the donated statue.
This year marks the 60th anniversary Osaka-San Francisco sister city relations. San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee and colleagues are scheduled to visit Osaka in October to commemorate the milestone.
(Click here for the original article in Japanese.)
Related articles:
‘Memory of the World’ Program: How Will UNESCO Tackle Historical Distortions Against Japan?
Comfort Woman Statues: A War Against the US, Not Japan
Mr. Yoshimura’s description of the problem is Japanese-ly kind.
Simply put, Japanese military samurai protected the comfort women against their employers and Korean traffickers, so the women executed their basic human right to adopt the high-paid profession of their choice.
Of course, samurai were not gods, and included a rotten one who behaved like a pimp— an exception to the rule of the Buddhist-Shintoist samurai of Japan. The rotten one was later executed.
Clinton-era’s exhaustive, years-long, official US Government IWG investigation into Japan for war-time crimes only added another strong piece of alibi for the absence of sex-slavery. Primary material alibis against the “200 thousand sex-slaves” had been abundant.
In contrast, the Korean accuser “victims” never verified their claims.
Why not?
Their population is documented to have astronomical lying rate, 420 times and 540 times the rate of the Japanese. (Korean Supreme Court, Korea Herald);
They also have Fire Disease, emotional bursts out of context with facts, e.g., 12% in a Korean sample in the US, NIH, US National Library of Medicine PMC4232959.
Would Asian leftists fund the lying Koreans enough and succeed in cutting US-Japan tie?
The mayor of San Francisco recognized the image of comfort women as public and decided to cancel the sister city with Osaka city.
The comfort women issue is a strategy to split America and Japan that China and Korea are planning.
Is the Chinese mayor of San Francisco the Chinese spy?
Mindy Kotler is a well known shill for the Chinese/Korea information operation directed against Korea, USA, Japan. (Yes, some Koreans are acting against the best interests of Korea.)
Kotler is a deceptive propagandist who for years has made unsubstantiated claims in pursuit of undermining Korea/USA/Japan relations. A simple divide and conquer strategy.
You said it, Michael. She has been disseminating anti-Japan propaganda throughout the world. I don't know why she is so much energetic in hating Japan.
This person forgot to include cross-eyed Bushmen, Hottentot babies, lesbian New Zealand Aborigines, transsexual Greenland Eskimos, a vegan Sasquatch couple, and 101 Dalmatians.
I get it. You're referring to one Mindy above as 'This person.'
The City of San Francisco could have presented an illusory façade as a defender of women’s rights and justice by erecting a female Japanese statue next to the rest, for ethnically those from Japan were probably the majority of all comfort women. Having adolescent girls as useful symbols is as fraudulent and offensive a revisionist history as assuming that Korean men did absolutely nothing to protect their women from institutionalized abduction by the Japanese military. Only those with serious mental problems would still believe such fantasy after reviewing the 1945 U.S. military report involving Korean civilian POWs’ opinion of the women who became comfort women: http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20160610/p2a/00m/0na/015000c
The Korean narrative is focused here because propagandists have been pitching the 200,000 number with a ‘most of them were Korean’ assertion for over 20 years, but now with Communist China, their Big Boss taking the lead role, the narrative is being ‘revised’ once again.
San Francisco had already chosen to be a sanctuary city before Sacramento officially declared California to be a Sanctuary State, and since it does not even believe in protecting its residents from illegals with multiple criminal records (e.g., Kathryn Steinle’s murder and aftermath), who in the right mind would think that foreign tourists could be safe? And this city pretends to take an honorable stance on women’s rights..... Cities across the globe should sever ties with SF, not just Japan.
Nowhere is it noted that this statue is composed of three girls representing three of the dozens of ethnicities of women,girls, and boys forced into Imperial Japan's state-sponsored provision of sex for its military, its colonial officials, and for Japanese businessmen overseas. The statue has a Korean girl, a Filipino girl, and a Chinese girl. Missing are the Pacific Islanders, Chamorros, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Taiwanese Aboriginals, East Timorese, Indonesians, Burmese, Dutch, British, Australians, French, Russians, Americans, and many others. These unfortunate souls were acquired in a number of ways from the direct purchase of brothels to deception to abduction.
Nowhere has there been any credible reports of bullying of Japanese students. The reports that exist are written by well-known Japanese deniers and followers of the Happy Science.
San Francisco has nothing in common with an Osaka that denies history, demeans its citizens, and more interested in cheap rightwing politics than friendship. Osaka has already abrogated its sister city relationship.
Good for Osaka. Now the Japanese city to the east of Osaka, called Higashiosaka needs to do the same with their sister city Glendale, California. Glendale has a Comfort Women statue which is causing students with a Japanese heritage to be bullied.