A memorial dedicated to comfort women who say they were enslaved for the sexual gratification of the imperial Japanese army in World War II will go up Tuesday in Glendale, CA, reports NPR.
The sculpture, the first of its kind on the West Coast, has deeply divided many in the small Southern California city and has drawn protests from Japan which insists the women were prostitutes.
“These girls were allowed to refuse customers if they want to,” Yoshi Miyake says. “You call this sex slave?”
But Ok-Seon Lee tells a different story. She says she was taken at age 15 and abused for three years until the end of the war.
“The comfort station where we were taken was not a place for human beings to live,” Ok-seon Lee, says through an interpreter. “It was a slaughterhouse. I’m telling you, it was killing people.”
LATEST STORIES
The memorial in Glendale is a replica of one in Seoul.
You can read a lot more on both sides of this issue on NPR.
