For decades, Koreans have been pushing to preserve the legacy of women forced to provide sex to Japanese army soldiers during World War II. Glendale, Calif., will dedicate a statue memorializing the victims, known as "comfort women," on Tuesday. But the statue has spurred controversy in this Southern California city, where some area residents say it is a divisive reminder of the horrors of war.
The sculpture is a bronze statue of a young girl. She looks about 14 — around the same age as many comfort women when they were forced into military brothels run by Japan's imperial army.
Ok-seon Lee, 86, was one of them. She's in California, visiting with Korean-American activists. These activists don't say "comfort women" when she's around. Instead, they call her halmoni, Korean for "grandmother."
As she tells her story, Lee stares out at no one through her red-tinted glasses. She's back inside her darkest days, decades ago. Lee says she was taken to a facility in Yanji, China, at age 15, where she was 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," Lee says through an interpreter. "It was a slaughterhouse. I'm telling you, it was killing people."
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Comfort Women: Untold Stories Of Wartime Abuse