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Court dismisses lawsuit to take down Glendale comfort women statue

August 5, 2014

A federal court dismissed a lawsuit Monday filed against the city of Glendale, Calif., by a Japanese American organization to take down a statue of a young Korean comfort woman.

The lawsuit was filed by the Global Alliance for Historical Truth on Feb. 20.

Addressing the issues with the statue raised in the lawsuit, the court determined the lawsuit invalid and said its installation did not violate the constitution or the government’s diplomatic jurisdiction.

Last month, two visiting former comfort women, Lee Ok-seon, 87, and Kang Il-chool, 86, threw their support behind the statue by submitting witness declarations to the Los Angeles federal court.

During the lawsuit, the alliance said they were concerned the statue would negatively influence relations between the United States and Japan.

The alliance also said the Glendale city council never voted to allow the inscription on the statue, which requests a formal apology from the Japanese government concerning sex slaves taken by its soldiers during World War II.

Sidley Austin LLP took up the case pro bono to represent the city of Glendale.

On Monday, the Korean American Forum of California thanked city council members and residents of Glendale, as well as the Korean community, for handling the lawsuit with dignity.

3 Comments

  1. Lisa

    August 5, 2014 at 7:12 PM

    So, no one cares about the comfort women who served KOREAN soldiers, UN soldiers and US soldiers and many of the comfort women were forced by S. Korean Government (especially by father of the current S. Korean President Part) to become sex slaves before, during and after the KOREAN War! These ex-comfort women were threatened by S. Korean Gov’t to be quiet about S. Korean Government’s forcing them to become sex slaves in order to earn money for S. Korean Gov’t!

    Reply

  2. konohazuku001

    August 6, 2014 at 7:36 AM

    Based on these following facts,there was no Korean comfort-woman unwillingly kidnapped by Japanese army or officials.
    1.No one knows the names of the villages or towns where the comfort-women were actually kidnapped.
    2.So far as the comfort-women kidnapping issue is concerned, there is no obvious record which had been written before 1990s.
    3.It is quite strange that so many as 200,000 victims had kept silence from 1945 to the 1990s.
    4.A large amount of money were paid to the Comfort-women in reward for their jobs. Back in those days,it was not a rare case that poor parents necessarily sold their daughters to get money.
    5.There have been no witnesses who can testify the kidnapping incidents. If there had been many comfort-women who were kidnapped, there must have been many witnesses. But nobody saw the incident.
    6.There was no real testimony by the kidnappers. It was already proved that Seiji Yoshida’s testimony was absolutely false statements. At that time in Korea, most of policemen and officials were Koreans, not Japanese.
    7.There was no protest opposing to the kidnapped comfort-women.If there had been kidnapped comfort-women as real events, riots must have been raised.
    8.In Korea, from time immemorial to now ,there always have been many prostitutes. In the period of the World WarII,it is quite natural that there must have been prostitution markets there.
    9.Most of Korean comfort-women say “I was sold.” or “I was deceived.” A small number of women say “I was kidnapped.” The credibility of their testimonies are in question. The contentions are rather suspect evidences.
    10.Although The Japan-Korea Basic Relations Treaty was concluded in 1965, South Korea currently lodges various reasons in order to draw out as much money as possible from Japan.
    However,at the time of the conclusion of the treaty, they never argued about the comfort-women issue at all.

    Reply

  3. humanrightsTiananmen64

    August 7, 2014 at 11:47 AM

    I am very confused because I found the following news.
    http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/08/05/national/politics-diplomacy/asahi-shimbun-admits-errors-in-past-comfort-women-stories/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=asahi-shimbun-admits-errors-in-past-comfort-women-stories
    It says that on August 6, 2014, the Asahi Shimbun, pro-Korean and liberal news paper in Japan, like New York Times, admitted to serious errors in many articles on the “comfort women” issue, retracting all stories going back decades that quoted a Japanese man who claimed he kidnapped about 200 Korean women and forced them to work at wartime Japanese military brothels. It means that as far as the present-day Korean Peninsula is concerned, no hard evidence had been found to show the Japanese military was directly involved in recruiting women to the brothel system against their will.
    Is this memorials based NOT on historical facts, but on political propaganda to bully Japan and the Japanese?

    Reply