Letters to the Editor | Sept. 20, 2022
Inquirer readers on a proposed statue honoring victims of sexual slavery during World War II.
Statue of Korean girl a fitting memorial
Despite sharp opposition, Philadelphia seems on the verge of honoring women and girls whom the Japanese military forced into sexual slavery before and during World War II. A small park in Queen Village could soon display a statue depicting a survivor of this barbarity.
The Cradle of Liberty should embrace this stirring work of art. Almost all these victims of relentless rape — most of them Korean or Chinese but some from other lands — are dead. still, there’s no expiration date on the remembrance and respect they deserve.
Opponents of putting this artwork in Philadelphia worry that it could spark anti-Asian violence. but is that risk a compelling reason to balk at honoring the girls and women so gravely abused decades ago? No. If the Philadelphia Art Commission does OK this memorial, it should count as just a bit of progress related to sexual slavery. Keep in mind the shameful news that two U.N. agencies and the Walk Free Foundation released this month: On any given day last year, an estimated five million women and girls were enslaved in commercial sexual activity. so when we gaze at this brave girl sitting next to an empty chair, we also must open our eyes to the victims of such brutality today.
Douglas Pike, Paoli, pikestuff10@gmail.com
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Over 400,000 Americans gave their lives fighting the Axis powers in World War II. Axis war crimes — whether Germany’s mass murder of Jews or Japan’s sexual enslavement of “comfort women” — deserve to be commemorated in the United states. The “comfort women” statue in Philadelphia will serve as a vivid reminder of what Americans were fighting against. The argument that the statue might incite anti-Japanese harassment and hostility wrongly gives violent bigots veto power over our historical memory.
If opponents of the “comfort women” statue want to demonstrate that not all Japanese were war criminals, they should support creating an additional monument — to the 120,000 Japanese Americans who were forcibly relocated to detention camps in 1942. An appropriate place for such a monument would be south Philadelphia’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, since it is named after the president who was responsible for that outrage.
Rafael Medoff, director, The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, Washington, D.C., rafaelmedoff@aol.com
Rubin’s Ukraine experience
I was deeply moved by Trudy Rubin’s lengthy report of her July trip to Ukraine. The details simultaneously point out the bravery of the people, their suffering, and their need to drive Russia out of the country, along with Rubin’s courage and determination to get the details to Inquirer readers and beyond. The takeaway message is clear: The United states and Western countries must increase their support and weapons to return the entire country to the peace and prosperity it had known before Russia and Vladimir Putin’s criminal assault.
Joel Chinitz, Philadelphia
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