Japan’s Consul General Uyama has been doing overtime lobbying SF supervisors to take down the SF “Comfort Women” Memorial. In February 2019, he was busy visiting the new Supervisors of SF to complain about the language of the Memorial plaque that states “hundreds of thousands” of women were coerced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during WWII. He denies the accuracy of those figures and other facts inscribed on the plaque.

Supervisor Shamann Walton of district 10 is one of the new supervisors Consul General Uyama visited. Supervisor Walton, according to his staff, told Mr. Uyama that he stands by the “Comfort Women” memorial and reminded Mr Uyama that as President of the San Francisco Unified School District Board, he and the Board resolved in 2015 that the “comfort women” curriculum would be taught in SF public schools, making SF the first school district in California to adopt the “comfort women” curriculum.

After this success, CWJC doubled down and helped lobby the California State Board of Education to approve the “comfort women” curriculum framework for all California public high schools in 2016. “My support for the San Francisco “Comfort Comen” Memorial was not changed,” said Supervisor Walton, “by Mr. Uyama’s visit.”

The current right-wing government of Japan and its embassy and consular officials continue to attack the SF Memorial, and to deny the history of “comfort women”. At the same time, the Japanese government continues to respond with the futile and fictitious statement that Japan has already apologized and made reparations.

We, members of the “Comfort Women” Justice Coalition, urge all San Francisco public officials, also the peace and religious communities, to join with us to protect the Memorial: a beacon of truth against Japan’s lies about the “comfort women” military sexual-slavery institution that is without parallel in modern history. The few heroic “comfort women” victims who are still alive continue to wait for a real apology and real reparations from the Japanese government.