Justice for "Comfort Women": Upcoming Events

Dear friends and allies,

Founded in 2008, Eclipse Rising is one of (if not) the only US-based Zainichi Korean social justice organization with members and families in both Japan and the US. For the past three years, we have been closely worked with diverse organizations and individuals throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, and mobilized our communities throughout Japan, to help build the memorial, "Women's Column of Strength," in San Francisco.

We will continue to work with our allies to demand justice from the Japanese government and educate the public about the wartime sexual violence that still continue to this day.

So it is a real honor to be able to spread the word about a number of wonderful events taking place during the 3rd week of September to celebrate the first anniversary of the memorial, and amplify the voices of “Comfort Women” especially now, in the face of massive historical denialism. We hope to see many of you at these events!

1) The First Anniversary Ceremony of the SF Comfort Women Memorial
by "Comfort Women" Justice Coalition
Free and open to the public
Saturday, September 22, 11AM
St. Mary's Square (651 California St)
Followed by “The March for True Justice for ‘Comfort Women’” from the St Mary's Square to the City College of San Francisco Chinatown Campus (4 short blocks)
Info: http://remembercomfortwomen.org/

2) Community Celebration (Luncheon) followed by Thematic Workshops and the Screening of "Da Han”
Free and open to the public
Saturday, September 22, 1PM
City College Chinatown Campus (808 Kearny St)
Info: http://remembercomfortwomen.org/

3) San Francisco Photo Exhibition of the "Comfort Women"
Free and open to the public
September 4 through September 20 (Mondays through Fridays)
California State Building
350 McAllister Street, San Francisco

September 21 through October 19
City College of San Francisco Chinatown Campus
808 Kearney Street, San Francisco

4) Truth & Justice: Remembering “Comfort Women” Exhibit
by Education for Social Justice Foundation (ESJF) and the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (The Korean Council)
Monday, September 17 to Saturday, September 22
Monday, 9/17 & Tuesday, 9/18: Docent tours
Wednesday, 9/19, Thursday, 9/20 & Saturday, 9/22: 1 – 6 pm                         
Friday, 9/21: 4 – 9 pm

Manilatown Heritage Foundation
868 Kearny St, San Francisco
Free Admission
Inquiry: sungssohn@gmail.com

4) Fourth Conference on WWII in the Philippines - Resistance, Retaliation, Reconciliation & Rescission
By Bataan Legacy Historical Society, Memorare Manila 1945, the USF Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program and Kasaman at USF
Open to the public, $20 Registration fee (Lunchbox included)

Saturday, September 22, 10AM-4PM
University of San Francisco McLaren Conference Center
2130 Fulton St., San Francisco, CA
TO REGISTER: http://bataanlegacy.org/future-events.html
Inquiry: info@bataanlegacy.org

Statement of Endorsement: "Support Fukushima/Remember Hiroshima & Nagasaki" event in LA

Eclipse Rising endorses the event held in Los Angeles on August 8, 2018 called "Support Fukushima/Remember Hiroshima & Nagasaki."

This event was sponsored by the San Fernando Valley Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League and Fukushima Support Committee.

Below is our statement of endorsement that was read during the event, which focused on remembering the Korean victims and survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

***

Memories of the past are shaped as much by the present moment. As Zainichi Koreans, or the descendants of postcolonial Korean migrants and exiles in and from Japan, we rise  in solidarity with all the victims and survivors of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, regardless of their heritage. We also remember that not all the victims have received the equal attention in the stories of these atrocities. We remember our Korean ancestors who came to Japan during the colonization and struggled for survival in the face of harsh poverty and discrimination, only to perish in the atomic bombings. Those who survived have continued to suffer from the after effects of the radiation, as well as the lack of public recognition and support. After all, the atomic bombings also functioned as medical experimentation, and Korean survivors significantly lacked access to immediate and long-term medical care due to racism and poverty. Some of them have since returned to their homeland, which then became divided into North and South by imperialist powers. Hibakusha who resided in Japan received some survivor compensation from the Japanese government, but those Korean hibakusha who returned to South Korea have only received partial compensation, while nothing has been done to the hibakusha in North Korea. There are also Japanese American survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The dominant narrative goes that the Japanese are the only people who have been victimized by atomic bombings, but the victims actually include not only Koreans but also people in Marshall islands who have had 67 times of nuclear tests between 1946 And 1958. Native Americans like the Navajo people also suffer from uranium mining that supplied for these tests. We caution against such a nationalizing narrative of victimhood that erases, flattens, and reduces historical complexities and geopolitical nuances.

More than seven decades have passed since the end of the World War II. We must critically interrogate what we choose to forget or remember, and how we negotiate our collective memories. Relationships among people of East Asian descent remain contentious, and as diasporic folks we, too, are haunted by the trauma of colonialism, warfare, and unspeakable violence accentuated by displacement and migration. Without overriding Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and without nationalizing the suffering of the victims and survivors, we must also juxtapose the painful memories of the hundreds of thousands of women and girls who were systematically coerced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army. In the context of the competition and collusion between Japanese imperialism and US imperialism, we must also never forget the racist internment of Japanese Americans. We must also learn from the way in which Okinawa became a racialized battlefield on which the Japanese and US forces have fought against each other to the detriment of Okinawan people's sovereignty and cultural survival. The politics of scapegoating and the politics of victimhood are intertwined for the profit of those in power.

Less than 10 years ago, Fukushima became another focal point of a nuclear disaster and subsequent erasure of non-Japanese and immigrant survivors as well as workers involved in the cleanup process. The 3/11 disasters reminded us of the painful history of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquakes, in the aftermath of which many Koreans, Okinawans, and communists were massacred. Today, we face the resurgence of ultraconservative sentiments across the globe, exacerbated by neoliberal social structure that turns racialized bodies into even more disposable labor. It seems that fear and historical amnesia fuel each other, driving us further toward alienation. The Abe administration is propagating neoliberal rhetorics of sexism, queerphobia, racism, and xenophobia, tacitly endorsing the rise of hate speech in Japan. Mayor of Osaka, a city with a long history of Zainichi Korean livelihood, has been consistently demanding the city of San Francisco to reject the “Comfort Women" memorial, which Eclipse Rising helped establish last year in multi-ethnic solidarity with the victims and survivors. In the US, as we know, the Trump administration has been enbolding and enabling dangerous white supremacists, who threaten the safety of immigrants, women, people of color, indigenous peoples, disabled and sick people, Muslim communities, and queer and trans people. Now is the time to renew our commitment to remembrance and to educating the younger generation about the historical truths. Whether atrocious history of the 20th century would repeat itself relies entirely on our effort to confront the past and the ongoing legacies of colonialism and imperialism. Memories of the past are shaped as much by the present moment, and they can also shape our future. We are the sacred generation tasked with remembering who we are and reimagining what it means to be a human. We must cultivate the courage and patience to remember what we may want to forget, so that we can keep struggling for justice and collective healing.

August 8, 2018

Eclipse Rising

Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) Endorses the "Comfort Women" Resolution!

A Historic Win: AAAS has become the nation's first national academic association to officially take a stand in solidarity with Comfort Women for their demand for justice!

We are extremely proud to announce that the Association for Asian American Studies Board of Directors unanimously voted to endorse the "Comfort Women" Resolution! This is a win for women’s rights, human rights, and most especially a measure of justice for our grandmothers, both those who have passed on and those who are still here with us. This victory is an attribution to the decades-long movement, led by the brave women who came out to tell their stories over 20 years ago. Community members, activists, and academics have followed suit, telling and memorializing our grandmother’s stories and rightly pointing out the unimaginably twisted atrocity inflicted and institutionalized by the Japanese imperial army, and forcefully denied as "official position" by the current Japanese government. Politicization of the issue, away from the human rights issue that it is, and Tokyo's active whitewashing of its militaristic past have put tremendous pressure on the scholars working on the issue of wartime sexual slavery and threatened our academic freedom.

In light of the recent news that Japan is threatening to boycott the South Korean Olympics due to President Moon publically rejecting the so-called 2015 “agreement” between South Korea and Japan, which did nothing to “resolve” the “Comfort Women” issue and instead completely silenced the demands by surviving grandmothers, the AAAS endorsement of the “Comfort Women” resolution is an important step in acknowledging and denouncing institutionalized sex slavery and resisting historical denialism. 

We will follow up with another email with an exciting list of presentations, panels, and our annual “Comfort Women” section meeting at the 2018 gathering in San Francisco, but for now, please see the statement below. The original resolution submitted for endorsement included over 100 signatories.

AAAS Board of Directors Statement on Supporting the Comfort Women Resolution

2018 Association for Asian American Studies Conference
March 29-31, 2018
Westin St. Francis, San Francisco, California

Regarding the campaign to “Support Remembrance of ‘Comfort Women’ and Their Endangered History,” the Association for Asian American Studies Board of Directors supports the following statement:

That the call to stand with the survivors of Japanese Imperial Army’s heinous atrocity of sexual enslavement system euphemistically known as the “Comfort Women” system as resistance to the current administration of Japan to whitewash its militaristic past is an important point. Mainstream Japanese institutions are complicit with Japanese government’s active denial and denigration of the truths and truth-bearers of this mass human rights violation the world cannot afford to banish into oblivion, as the world grapples with contemporary threats of colonial sexual violence again.

There was a careful distinction made between the Japanese government and its complicit institutions, and individual academics of Japanese ancestry. It is the former – the government and complicit institutions – that are the target of concern, and not individual scholars per se. The similarity of the “Comfort Women” denialism to the Holocaust denialism is also a matter to think about.

Because the US government does not oppose or protest the reprehensible actions of the Japanese government with respect to our right to historical truths, justice, education and academic freedom, it falls to civil society organizations like the AAAS to take up the call by the former Comfort Women grandmothers and their supporters to stand in solidarity with them as they make a principled demand for unequivocal acceptance of WWII era Japanese military sexual slavery, and justice. Academics in Japan who speak out against the Japanese government’s policies are subject to intimidation and retribution, and so it is crucial that the AAAS stand in solidarity with Japanese academics who protest the denialist actions of the state of Japan.

Specifically, the Endorsement “Supporting Remembrance of ‘Comfort Women’ and their Endangered History calls upon members of AAAS to educate, through courses, forums, and other means, the students, faculty, and staff on their campuses of the realities and truths of arguably the largest-scale mass human trafficking system of the 21st century, and the survivors of this horrific system whose stories are systematically derided and discredited by the Japanese government; to encourage further integration of this often-hidden history into relevant teaching curricula; and to forge alliances with academics and students conducting research on this subject.

[Click here for the original resolution submitted]

[repost from the "Comfort Women" Justice Coalition website / 「慰安婦」正義連盟ウェブサイトより再掲]

Shame on Shinzo Abe, Taking the Olympics Hostage as Global Calls for Justice Pierce the 2015 “Comfort Women” Agreement

On January 9, 2018, the government of the Republic of Korea (ROK) announced its position, in alignment with the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, that the 2015 ROK-Japan Agreement fails to take a “victim-centered” approach and does not constitute a true resolution of the issue of the Japanese Military “Comfort Women” System. Subsequently the ROK urged Japan to make a sincere apology to the victims, whom, with hideous dehumanizing violence, the Japanese Imperial Army had sexually enslaved as “war ammunition” for Japan’s imperial wars of aggression in dozens of countries across the Asia-Pacific region. Signalling displeasure with the ROK’s demand, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will reportedly boycott the Winter Olympics in the ROK next month, while stubbornly insisting that the Agreement had already resolved the “Comfort Women” issue — “fully and irreversibly.”

This Agreement, however, not only lacks official documentation, but fulfills none of the principled demands that, during the two decades preceding it, victims had outlined, as follows:

1. Acknowledgement of Japan’s military sexual slavery
2. Comprehensive investigation into the crimes
3. Official and legally-bound apology
4. Government reparations to all victims
5. Prosecution of the criminals
6. Ongoing education in Japan’s history textbooks
7. Construction of Memorials and Museums to remember victims and to preserve history

The Government of Japan (GOJ) used the 2015 Agreement effectively as a vehicle for shielding itself from having to fulfill any of these demands rather than restoring the victims’ dignity by means of a genuine resolution. The true goal of the Agreement is to promote the illusion that Japan has indeed apologized while simultaneously insisting the crimes did not occur. In the Agreement, the GOJ even prohibits the ROK from using the term “sexual slavery” and disapproves of memorial statues, while spending half a billion dollars for allegedly “recovering the honor and dignity” of the victims.

A sense of irony is not lost on us, when Prime Minister Abe accuses the ROK of foul play by allegedly breaking “an international and universal principle” of diplomacy in demanding Japan’s sincere apology. Isn’t it Japan that is engaging in foul play, to deceive the victims and the conscientious people of the world about the true intent of the Agreement? In complicity with the GOJ, all major Japanese press outlets, including Asahi, Yomiuri, and Mainichi, normalize the GOJ’s deception. With hateful language against Korean and Chinese communities, they recently mischaracterized our “Comfort Women” Memorial in San Francisco as a symbol of Japan bashing, while attacking our multi-ethnic and transnational solidarity for upholding the fundamental principles of justice and human rights. Instead of showing any hint of remorse, the Japanese media escalates the GOJ’s hateful anti-ROK propaganda.

By taking the Winter Olympics hostage, in a desperate measure to punish the ROK, Mr. Abe has hit a new low. What Japan needs in a leader today is integrity and commitment to humanity for a peaceful tomorrow. We call on the peace-loving people in Japan to join the international “Comfort Women” justice movement in denouncing the GOJ’s deception, demanding a full investigation of the Abe administration’s faulty diplomacy in the name of the Agreement, and leading a nationwide act of atonement for Japan’s past crime. By refusing to confront its imperial aggression, Japan has not only failed to end its racism and nationalism but is already turning back onto a path of full-blown fascism under the Abe administration. While the GOJ and the United States consider the “Comfort Women” issue as a mere stumbling block in their re-militarization agenda, it is the victims’ principled demands to the GOJ that will guide us on an alternative path to a peaceful and prosperous world free from fear of sexual violence, where all women, girls, and all people can live a life with respect and dignity.

January 18th, 2018
“Comfort Women” Justice Coalition

日本軍「慰安婦」制度の犠牲者に公式謝罪を拒否し、オリンピックを盾に不当な韓国叩きを続ける安倍首相の欺瞞を、世界市民は決して許さない。

２０１８年１月９日、韓国政府は日本軍の「慰安婦」問題を巡る２０１５年の韓日「合意」は被害者中心のアプローチに欠け、「慰安婦」問題の根本的な解決にはあたらないと発表した。この結論は先の２０１６年２月に、国連の女性差別撤廃委員会が発表した内容と合致するものである。文大統領はさらに「日本が真実を認め、被害者の女性たちに心を尽くして謝罪し、それを教訓に再発しないよう国際社会と努力する」ことが、完全な解決への条件だと示唆した。「慰安婦」問題の犠牲者は、韓国のみならずアジア太平洋地域にある何十もの国々の出身者で、日本帝国による侵略戦争の為の「兵站」として、日本帝国陸軍、海軍により強制的に「性奴隷」とされ非人間的で卑劣な暴力の被害を受けた。韓国側の発表を受け、安倍首相は加害国の長として誠意と反省の念を持って答えるどころか、逆に不快感をあらわにし、「慰安婦」問題は「合意」により最終的かつ不可逆的に解決されたとの従来からの立場に固執した。マスコミによれば、首相は「慰安婦」問題を理由に来月韓国で開催される冬季五輪のボイコットをちらつかせ、直前まで出席の有無を発表しないとみられる。

このいわゆる「合意」には公式な書類もなく、犠牲者が長年に亘り求め続けてこられた要求事項を一つも満たしていない。犠牲者の要求とは次の７点である。

１、日本軍性奴隷制度を事実として認める
２、この犯罪の徹底した調査
３、公式で法に基づく謝罪
４、政府による全被害者に対する補償
５、犯罪者の処罰
６、継続的な歴史教育・歴史教科書への記載
７、犠牲者を記憶し歴史を保存する為の記念碑・記念館の建設

２０１５年の「合意」は初めから、当事者の意向を無視し、犠牲者の尊厳の回復と「慰安婦」問題の真の解決を目指しておらず、むしろ「合意」の主たる目的は日本政府がこれらの責任から逃れることにあった。「合意」の中で日本政府は被害者の「名誉と尊厳の回復」のために１０億円の拠出を約束する一方、韓国政府に「性奴隷」という名称そのものの使用を禁じ、世界的な「慰安婦」記念像建設阻止を図っている。つまり一方で日本軍「慰安婦」制度という犯罪そのものを否定しながら、同時に日本はすでに犠牲者に謝罪したという幻想を作り出そうとしたのだ。 韓国政府が日本の自主的な、心からの謝罪を示唆したのに対し、安倍首相は韓国は「合意」を履行せず日本の裏をかき「国際的で普遍的」な外交の基本を逸脱したとして、韓国政府を責めたてている。しかし法的にも外交的にも一切拘束力のない「合意」を盾にして、その真の目的を隠し、犠牲者と良心的な世界の市民を姑息にも騙そうとした安倍政権こそが責められるべきではないだろうか？国際人権法の違反者である日本政府が、韓国政府を国際的外交の原則の違反者として責めたてるのは、皮肉以外の何物でもない。しかし残念なことに、朝日、読売、毎日など、日本の大手マスコミ各社も日本政府の欺瞞を批判するどころか、日本政府に追従し日本政府の異常な主張をあたかも正常であるかのように報道している。我々が正義と人権の原則に則って、民族の枠を超え国際的な団結の象徴としてサンフランシスコに建てた「慰安婦」像に関しても、日本のマスコミはあたかも反日の日本叩きのシンボルであるかのように報道し、一部マスコミは韓国系・中国系のアメリカ市民に対する差別的なヘイトスピーチを 紙面上で繰り返している。今回の「合意」に関する報道でも、過去の罪に対する日本の国家としての責任に基づく後悔、反省の念のかけらも見られず、日本政府によるヘイトに満ちた反韓国のプロパガンダをただ繰り返すのみだ。

「慰安婦」問題を盾にオリンピック出席を渋らせ韓国政府を懲らしめようと躍起になる安倍氏は、国家の長としてこれまでにも増して醜態をさらしている。今日本が平和な未来を建設する上で必要としているのは、人間の尊厳に基づいた世界市民の共存を志す、誠実で清廉な指導者である。

我々は今後、これまでより一層多くの平和を愛する日本の市民の方々が、国際的な「慰安婦」正義運動に積極的に加わり、日本政府の欺瞞を暴き、「合意」の名の下に安倍政権が行った不正に満ちた外交の責任を正し、「合意」を無効とし、日本が過去に犯した犯罪を償うための全国民的な運動を繰り広げて行くことを望む。植民地・帝国主義の過去ときちんと向き合うことを避け続けることで、日本はその民族差別や偏狭なナショナリズムの深刻な問題を未だに抱え続けているばかりでなく、安倍政権のもと戦前のファシズムに逆戻りする道をひた走っている。日本政府もアメリカ政府も共に、「慰安婦」問題をアジアの（再）軍事化を妨げる厄介な外交問題としてしか捉えていない。日本の与党の指導者たちは安倍首相のオリンピック出席を求め、このまま慰安婦問題をうやむやにすることも企んでいるようだ。

しかし安倍政権のこのような政策は、世界の潮流に逆行している。例えば、アメリカの黒人女性活動家によって始められた#MeToo運動は海を越え、世界中の女性やトランスジェンダー・ジェンダークイアの人々を奮い立たせている。私たちはアメリカ社会の中の性暴力と対峙する中、日本の「詩織さん」の訴えについても読んだ。ここで忘れてならないのは、この世界的運動が始まる何十年も前に、日本軍「慰安婦」制度のサバイバーのおばあさんたちは声をあげ、特に性差別、民族差別、植民地主義が交差し増幅させた暴力の被害者として、果敢に日本政府に立ち向かい正義と女性の人権を求める運動を牽引してこられたことだ。その歴史の流れの中に現在の女性の人権と尊厳を求める運動がある。サバイバーのおばあさんたちが長年にわたって訴え続けてこられた要求を一つ一つ実現させていく道こそが、性暴力を恐れることなく、全ての少女、女性、そして全ての世界市民が尊厳を持って生きていくことのできる、平和で豊かな世界を実現させる唯一の道である。

世界の皆さんとの連帯を心から願いつつ。

２０１８年１月１８日
「慰安婦」正義連盟

CWJC 2017 Summer Lecture Series: "Justice for Comfort Women"

Dear friends,

As you may know, as cofounders of Comfort Women Justice Coalition (CWJC) in San Francisco, our member has been working hard to organize this very rare and special opportunity.

As Prime Minister Abe and the government of Japan has been employing various strategies to undermine the volumes of backbreaking research and documentation to support the undeniable facts of the Japanese Military Sexual Slavery as part of its militaristic past during WWII (for which we Zainichi Koreans in Japan continue to suffer its legacies of colonial racism in postwar Japan), we believe that it is of utmost importance to help reveal more new studies coming out to render the hidden voices of hudnreds of thousands of victims of this horrific system of colonial sexist violence visible, and validated, once and for all. Only then, will justice be won, to pave the way for a future where the fundamental human rights of all girls and women are protected in the world. 

Thanks for your interest, and we hope you can join us!

-----

Please join us for the CWJC 2017 Summer Lecture Series "Justice for Comfort Women" on July 7th (at SFSU) and July 19th (at Cathay House Restaurant, SF). 

We are delighted to sponsor two lectures by Prof Peipei Qiu (co-sponsored by SFSU Asian American Studies Department) and Prof Su Zhiliang (co-sponsored by Global Alliances), the esteemed authors of the critically acclaimed book, Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan's Sex Slaves (Oxford University Press, 2014). The book has been named Best Book of the Year by the Chinese American Librarians Association and received numerous raving reviews. Publishers Weekly, for example, stated that "This vital work, combining exemplary scholarship and humanitarian activism, should prove valuable to a wide audience and indispensable to specialists."

Professor Qiu's topic is "Comfort Women"-Imperial Japan's Sex Slaves During the Asian Pacific War.  Profesor Su's topic is Road to UNESCO Recognition of Nanjing Massacre and the "Comfort Women" in the Memory of World Register.  

This is a rare opportunity that allows us to learn directly from those scholars on their decades of scholarship that has significantly expanded and revised our understanding of the so-called Japanese Military "Comfort Women" system.  

Professor Peipei Qiu's talk

Fri, July 7, 2017

1:30pm - 3:00pm

San Francisco State University, Library 121

1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco

Professor Su Zhiliang's talk

Wed, July 19, 2017

4:30pm - 5:30pm

Cathay House Restaurant

718 California Street, San Francisco 

Banquet with Professor Su Zhilian

at Cathay House Restaurant (after the public lecture)

$25 per person.

Must RSVP at tkinukaw@sfsu.edu 

More information at: www.remembercomfortwomen.org

Upcoming Event: Zainichi-themed Film Screening in Berkeley

YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED...

Film screening of The Sky Blue Symphony, a documentary by the Zainichi filmmaker Yeongi Park from Japan about Zainichi Korean youths in "Chosen Gakko" (Korean Schools) in Japan. 

The Director will join us from Osaka in person to show and discuss the film, and share first-hand account of what's going on in our communities on the ground in Japan!

Date: Thursday, March 2, 2017  

Time: 6:00-8:30pm

Location: Room 141, Giannini Hall, UC Berkeley -- off Hearst Street (10 minutes from Downtown Berkeley BART); map link: https://goo.gl/maps/Rs3wovwbXjm)

*FREE! Light refreshments will be served

*Language: Japanese and Korean, with English subtitles

6:00pm Reception with the Director

6:30pm Film Screening

8:00pm Q&A, Discussion with the Director

Join us!! See you there!!

Sponsored by: Eclipse Rising, Zainichi Corean Social Justice Organization

EclipseRising [at] gmail.com

*******

About Yeong-I Park, DIRECTOR, CINEMATOGRAPHER/DP, EDITOR
Born in Japan in 1975, as a third generation Korean in Japan. Graduated from Kanagawa Korean Middle and High School, and from Korea University in Japan (majored in philosophy). Studied film and movie at the Vantan Academy. His short film “Wearing,” made for the graduation work was shown at film festivals in Japan, North and South Korea. He has participated in motion picture production of many genres since. “Sky Blue Symphony” is a master compilation of his diligent efforts capturing the Korean schools, their students and activities all over Japan for the past decade.

Director Statement

The Korean Schools in Japan, where Koreans born and raised in Japan attend, have a long history of discrimination and persecution. They have been exposed to violence because they have a relationship with North Korea. However, nobody has dealt with the relationship in detail. Though their roots are in South Korea, why do they call North Korea their homeland? Why do they look full of hope and tell their dreams with confidence in spite of so much hardship? I made this film to seek the answer to these questions.

Synopsis

This documentary mainly filmed the 2 week-long trip of the Zainichi Korean students who attend one of Japan's 60 Korean schools to North Korea (DPRK). As third and fourth generation Koreans born and raised in Japan, students' visit to their ancestral home country is profound, as captured in film through their talks, singings, and other interactions with their Korean brethren there. At Panmunjom, which is a symbolic place of the tragic division of our one Korea, looking over to the South, the land of their ancestors’ birthplaces, they are overcome by the realization of the tragedy of the war -- and the deep, indelible mark left upon their own lives and struggle with identity and belonging. What does "homeland" mean to these students, born as "alien" in the former colonial metropole, in a country that refuses to accept them as members of the only society they know to be home, and seek to reclaim their cultural and ancestral heritage through a most vilified country in the world?

Please endorse the 2017 AAAS Resolution Proposal to Support "Comfort Women"

Dear Eclipse Rising supporters,

We have an urgent, time-sensitive request, to endorse the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) resolution proposal, “Supporting Remembrance of ‘Comfort Women’ and their Endangered History” before the Feb 10 deadline.

Step 1, Sign up for 2017 membership: Sponsors must be current, 2017 AAAS members or lifetime members. Anyone can become a paid member! If you haven't already renewed your membership, see link below, as we push together to get this resolution approved by the board at the 2017 AAAS conference in Portland! Membership ($40-130): https://aaas.press.jhu.edu/membership/join

Step 2: To endorse, simply fill out this short endorsement form by Feb 10 or sooner: https://docs.google.com/…/1FAIpQLSd0UE_lePJQdfXRZ…/viewform…

In order for the resolution to qualify for a board vote in Portland this year, we need a total of 10 co-sponsors and 100 endorsers, all of whom must be AAAS members for 2017 by the time of the submission (Feb 10). 

So please endorse today, and please help us spread the word by forwarding this message widely to fellow AAAS members (and would-be members)! For your information, an updated letter and resolution proposal to the board are below.

Thank you and we’ll be in touch again soon. In the meantime, please contact us at: comfortwomenresolution@gmail.com.

Thank you,

“Comfort Women” Section Chairs,
Grace J. Yoo, San Francisco State University
Kay Fischer, Chabot College
And “Comfort Women” Section Members

ハンセン病隔離政策を生き延びる在日朝鮮人の金泰九さん：An Ode to Zainichi Heroes

Note to readers: We apologize that this post is only available in the original language (Japanese) of the author at the moment. The life of Mr. Tegu Kim, to whom the tribute below, offers a glimpse into other faceless, nameless Zainichi victims of Japan's legacy of forced permanent quarantine/isolation (akin to lifelong imprisonment without parole) of those affected by Hansen's Disease since early 1900s through as recently as the '90s (inspired by the Eugenics ideology that prevailed even following WWII and defeat of Imperial Japan). If you are interested to learn more, we are happy to share our resources on this matter or the life of Mr. Tegu Kim.

金泰九(きむ・てぐ）さんは、20代で発病した。その時彼は、大阪市立大学生。

結婚もし、大阪で餃子屋さんを経営して、とても繁盛した。
長身と、男前、頭脳明晰、経営力有りで、順風満帆の生活を送っていた。

栄養不足の状態も、発病の原因と言われているハンセン病は、生活苦に追い込まれた、在日朝鮮人、被差別部落民等に多く襲いかかったのではないかと考えた私は、ハンセン病療養所を尋ねた。

その中で出逢った一人が金泰九さんだった。

彼は、皇室が大きく後押しした、無ライ県運動場の中で強制的に岡山県の療養所に送られた。
大阪に残された妻は、自殺した。

施設は、当時でも粗末だった。現在撤去され、歴史が埋没される危機に直面している。

彼は、ハンセン病療養所の中で懸命に生きた。

ハンセン病隔離政策の第一人者、光田けんすけ医師が、園長を務めていた。

光田に対する、元患者の捉え方は、今も真っ二つに別れている。
光田のお蔭で、生きてこられたと、屋根付きの銅像に手を合わせる人々も少なくない。

金泰九さんは、入所当時から、光田の優勢思想を見抜いていた。

光田は、自分や、自分の妻にまで、ライ菌を注射し、ハンセン病は、移らない事を知りつつ、完全隔離を国会で提言し、反抗する患者に対する懲罰規定を設けさせ、全国の療養所に懲罰房を作らせた。

療養所とは、名ばかりで、強制的に入所させられた患者たちは、すぐさま、療養所の建築、整備作業、重傷者の看護等に駆り立てられた。食べ物も少なく、自分たちで魚を捕り、木を切って焼いた。枝を一本切っただけで、懲罰房、そして、罰則としての断種がされた。

金泰九さんは、光田をはじめとする療養所の不当な対応に抵抗する運動の先頭に立った。この闘争はハンセン病療養所の歴史に名を残す出来事だ。

 

金泰九さん

 

金泰九さんは、無知な私に、夜が更けるまでお話しして下さった。内緒の話しも沢山して下さった。
大田さんが出した写真集の中で、若き日の金泰九さんを見つけ、電話すると、「よく、わかったね」と、ゆっくりとやさしさと深さを感じる、いつもの声でおっしゃった。

私は、「金泰九さんは、もし、ハンセン病に、なってなければ、男前の長身で、エリートの金持ちやから、女たらしの、成金野郎になってたと思うわ」という、とんでもない失礼なことばにさえ、温かい笑い声をくれた。

ゴマの葉が大好きで、お刺身に朝鮮の酢味噌をつけて、食べるのも好きだ。

いつも時間に遅れる私を、心配しながら、待っていてくれ、いつもより遅めの昼食を食べる。

講演会に出掛ける事も多く、背筋のシャキッと伸びた彼のジャケット姿は、出逢った頃の７０代から今も変わらずカッコイイ。着替えを手伝っていた時、黒い靴下の下に白い靴下を見た。「皮膚の表面に感覚が無いという、ハンセン病の後遺症で、固いものを踏んでも分からなくて、そのままにしておくと壊死するから、血がわかるように白い靴下を履くんだ」と。

80歳を祈年に自叙伝を出された頃、火傷で手の指を何本も切断する手術をうけた。療養所の水道からは、熱湯は出ない。なぜ？と私は、思った。

私は泰九さんの所に行って聞くまで分からなかった。

お客さんにお茶を入れてくれるポットだった。
ポットのお湯を入れ換える時、熱湯をかぶった。

はぁー。ため息。

分からなかった私も私だが、そんな事、予想出来たはずだ。どうして療養所は、ポットのお湯の入れ換えは職員がすると決めていなかったのか！

あれから10年、10月18日(郷ひろみと同じ)、90歳になる前日に、金泰九さんは、重病者病棟に入られた。

お昼寝する金泰九さんと添い寝する著者

 

沖縄の高江では、リーダーの博じいが、不当逮捕された日。
私の中では、リンクする。

泰九さん、まだ逝かないで下さい。
近いうちに、また逢いに行くよ。ゴマの葉と、刺身と、酢味噌持って

 

 

岸本眞奈美 （きしもと・まなみ）

兵庫県生まれ育ち。被差別部落解放運動に鍛えられ、理不尽を糾弾し、正義と勝利を自ら勝ち取る戦いを実践を通してまなぶ。
草の根の当事者らによりそい、根付いた人権・反差別運動に幅広く携わる。エクリプス・ライジングの訪日や、日本での活動を定期的にサポートしている同志でもあり、日本での解放運動の大先輩でもある。今回は、金泰九さんが危ないという連絡を（2016年10月半ば）受け、ぜひとも彼の生きた存在、意義、そして我々在日の歴史を残そうと、寄稿をお願いした。

On becoming a Queer Zainichi Korean

Happy Pride!! Eclipse Rising member Haruki Eda reflects on his experience as a Queer Korean navigating boundaries of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and nationality as he relocated from Japan to the U.S. in search of knowledge and community. 


June 25, 2016
Oakland


When I arrived in the United States from Japan 10 years ago with a student visa, in San Francisco, on August 18, 2006, I was a 19-year-old gay Japanese. Or at least that’s who I thought I was at that time. Filled with hope and anxiety, I started my college at San Francisco State University, where I was determined to study the politics, history, and culture of LGBT social movements. I had no concrete plans but vaguely thought I’d go back to Japan after learning as much as I could, so that I could start contributing to the LGBT movements in Japan. By the time I graduated, however, I’d realized I had so much more to learn, about myself and my own history as a descendant of Korean postcolonial exiles in Japan, commonly known as Zainichi Koreans. It was the knowledge shared by radical queer and trans people of color (QTPoC) that inspired and challenged me to cultivate a sense of authentic self, however fleeting it may be, by uncovering hidden stories and building meaningful relationships. 

I always knew I was “half” Korean because my parents would tell me occasionally that my father is a zainichi kankoku-jin (South Korean resident of Japan). I remember telling my 1st-grade classmates that my dad is a kankoku-jin (South Korean) and bragging how I can say annyonhaseyo and kamusasamunida. My classmates in this half-rural, half-suburban town didn’t even know what Korea meant until much later. I didn’t really know either. You can’t reject or accept something you don’t understand, and young kids always know that. So my Korean heritage was neither rejected nor accepted by my peers or myself, though it was vaguely acknowledged. We just didn’t know why and how it was supposed to matter.

Inheriting from my mother all the privileges that come with a Japanese name and citizenship, however, I never really thought of myself as Zainichi; I was just “half” kankoku-jin and full Japanese. I would enjoy my grandmother’s Korean food at the family reunion on every New Year’s Day, and I would enjoy not having to even think about what it meant to be in this family for the rest of the year. It was just a family I was born into, a network that existed, and somehow I hesitated to inquire too much because I felt like I was supposed to know all about it already. It wasn’t community to me. My father uses his Korean name, so I didn’t have to think about how to hide, and because I only have a Japanese name, I didn’t have to think about how to disclose. My Koreanness was just a fact, a piece of information, with no real meanings or stories behind it. It wasn’t knowledge to me. 

Meanwhile, though, I had much bigger concerns as I realized I was sexually attracted to boys. The realization was timely, sudden, and swift, when I found a gay porn magazine at a local bookstore when I was eleven. I already knew the concept of homosexuality, but I didn’t know the word gei as a non-derogatory term to refer to it. It was fortunate that I encountered this magazine, this word, almost as soon as it became clear that I liked dicks better than boobs. I realized there’s a community out there, and I realized there’s knowledge out there. And I must get there. And there was San Francisco, the United States of America, the Western world, the real modernity, beyond the horizon of small gay enclaves of global Osaka or cosmopolitan Tokyo. At least I knew I was “half” Korean and fully gay, and I was not going to live like a normal straight Japanese people all around me. I might as well try something different. So I studied English and applied to SF State because it seemed like the best place for studying queer theory. (My favorite band Third Eye Blind was from the Bay Area, so that alone would have convinced me to move there.) 

With my freshly and so smoothly issued F-1 visa on my Japanese passport, with my parents’ full financial support, and with little trace of my Koreanness on any of my documents, I landed at SFO as a gay Japanese international student. I assumed I would fly out from the same airport four years later as a gay Japanese college graduate. That never happened. It never happened because I went to SF State, the home of Ethnic Studies and other legacies of the longest student strike in U.S. history. I met so many committed activists and dedicated scholars creating knowledge and community together, on and off campus, as students and as teachers to each other. I jumped right in as soon as I felt confident enough in my English: I founded an organization for Queer Asian students on campus; I volunteered at a local HIV service organization for Asian and Pacific Islander communities, and I worked as an RA in university housing to be in charge of the International Learning Community. I learned that a community is something I build. 

During these years, I made sense of my gender and sexuality through my connection to the local Queer Asian communities. I learned how my gender and sexuality impact the experiences I have in this world, in this country, always already mediated by my race, ethnicity, nationality, and citizenship. And much of it is actually that I am heavily protected by my male, cisgender, and able-bodied privileges. I tried to interrogate and challenge myself in order to learn what I am here to do. I came to recognize my queerness, rather than my “homosexuality,” as I navigate and negotiate various boundaries constructed around gender and race, within the bigger narrative of modernity and coloniality. Trying to understand how history and social structure intersect with desire, I conducted research and wrote papers on racial representation in gay porn. I learned that knowledge begins with a question. I was no longer a gay Japanese, but I was a proud Queer Asian, a radical queer of color. I graduated from college with this knowledge and community. But I had more work to do.

Even though I was starting to make sense of my racialized queerness, I didn’t really know what to make of my Koreanness, especially in relation to my queerness. Each time I met another Korean person from Korea, I would tell them that my father is Korean, “but I don’t really speak Korean.” I felt the need to clarify how inauthentic I am before they did so by asking me if I spoke Korean. It might have been a habit I developed as an openly queer person, since I usually made sure to somehow indicate my queerness when I met someone new. I didn’t want people making assumptions about me or asking me rude questions, so I would put everything out on the table first. In retrospect, though, while I was never ashamed of my Koreanness or queerness, I was unconsciously ashamed of my inability to explain what they mean for myself. It was my escape to let other people decide what those things mean to them on my behalf, rather than articulating my own sense of existence through my body. 

I never had Zainichi Korean friends while growing up in Japan, and my Korean friends from Korea didn’t have any answer to my inauthenticity. Only when I started meeting Korean Americans, many of whom queer or trans, I finally had a space to let out my confusions and questions and anxieties about my Koreanness. I was able to ask real questions about what Korea means and what it means to be Korean. And soon enough, through multiple personal connections, I was invited to a report-back event of a Korean American delegation to North Korea. The event was put together by Eclipse Rising, a Bay Area-based Zainichi Korean community organization, and two Zainichi women who went on this delegation were explaining why North Korea behaves the way it does, because of the historical and geopolitical contexts of U.S. imperialist involvement in East Asia since the World War II. They mapped out so clearly how Japanese colonialism, the national division, and the ongoing Korean War have everything to do with the stories of discrimination my father used to tell me about. My journey became deeper than ever on that day when I had my first Zainichi Korean friends, my first Zainichi Korean knowledge and community.

Koreans in Japan are subject to legal discrimination based on their nationality, whether South  Korean nationality or now defunct Chosen nationality of pre-division Korea. Until 2000, all special permanent residents in Japan, most of whom are Korean, were required by the law to be fingerprinted when they turned 16: all the fingers, not only the tips but the entirety of the fingers, as if their criminality is a given. They are still required to carry the alien registration card with them at all times, and if they were unable to produce the document upon inspection by the police, they could be prosecuted under the Criminal Law. According to Japan’s immigration policy, one must have a Japanese parent to obtain citizenship at birth. Being born in Japan does not result in full legal rights, although taxation is the same as for citizens. Many Zainichi Koreans reject the option of naturalization, because nationality and ethnicity are very closely conceptualized together by Zainichi Koreans, and the legal process is just slow and long and uncertain enough to discourage them from applying. Without citizenship, they face enormous difficulties obtaining employment or legal protection, or getting approved for marriage by their Japanese partners’ families. Meanwhile, they are policed and punished for practicing or exhibiting any hint of Koreanness through language, culture, name usage, or political expression. 

The attacks on Korean schools in Japan are emblematic of these oppressive systems. Immediately after the end of colonization, Koreans who decided to remain in Japan, at least temporarily because of the political uncertainties in the Peninsula, grasped the opportunity to educate their younger generation about their history and culture in their own language, with their own Korean names--all denied under the colonial rule. The schools they built, however, became a target of repression by the Japanese police, which was desperate to regain their authority after Japan’s loss in the war. The Allied Forces, led by the U.S. military, viewed the Korean schools as a breeding ground for communist insurgencies, so it authorized violent raids of some schools as well as the community organization that established them. Korean schools have survived and thrived despite such heavy repression since then, but their curriculum is still not considered to be an equivalent to the standard Japanese education, and graduating from a Korean school does not lead to a legally meaningful diploma. 

When I started learning about Zainichi Korean history, I immediately saw the similarities between Zainichi Koreans and people of color in the U.S., particularly how both communities have valued culturally relevant education and defiantly challenged the reproduction of mainstream knowledge that only maintains the system of oppression. There is a reason why I was kept from my own history and why I did not fully identify as Korean, and it wasn’t me. Thus I came to a definition of Zainichi Korean identity that is not based on legal documents or even a set of certain cultural experiences that supposedly make someone an authentic Zainichi Korean. It is an incoherent, indeterminate identity category that is articulated most clearly when we mumble that we don’t speak Korean, that we don’t know what Koreanness means, that we’re not so sure if we’re really Korean, but we’re questioning it, we’re trying to understand it, and we’re creating knowledge about it through our bodies. 

Zainichi Koreans are connected to people of color in more ways. The U.S. military is an institution that violently exploits us all, by constructing a scapegoat figure of the Muslim terrorist, by recruiting working-class youths of color, by stealing, occupying, polluting, and radiating the land and water all across the world but especially displacing Indigenous peoples of North America and the Pacific, by raping and sexually exploiting women and children around the bases, by propagating oppressive and mediocre views of racialized masculinity and femininity among young Americans, and by murdering us, over and over again. In fact, all the violence and oppression that the Japanese nation-state has inflicted on Zainichi Koreans were encouraged by the U.S. empire in its attempt to establish economic and military control over the Asia-Pacific region. The division that Zainichi Koreans have internalized, between the pro-North Chongryun and the pro-South Mindan, wasn’t entirely their fault but deeply embedded within the competitions and collusions among Japan, the United States, North and South Koreas, China, and Russia over the past hundred years. Yet the mainstream discourse of the Korean division does not have a solid grasp of the workings of gender and sexuality in the geopolitics of the Trans-Pacific. 

Radical QTPoC community organizers have taught me how geopolitics operates on multiple scales. They have challenged me to interrogate how our everyday experiences of power and violence at the hands of the nation-state directly reflect what's going on at the planetary level of border-making, displacement, capitalist exploitation, military-police-prison-medical industrial complex, and neoliberal education. They have inspired me to think and imagine beyond what I see, and to reach deeper into myself and farther out to distant shores of history waiting to be remembered. They have taught me my duty to uncover connections I wasn’t meant to recognize I have. 

And this is why I care about the dignity and rights of the former Comfort Women, whose unspeakable trauma remains under the threat of collective amnesia. This is why I care about the lives and deaths of my Black brothers and trans sisters and Muslim friends and refugee families, who continue to be targets of state terrorism. This is why I care about La Mission as not just a figure of nostalgia but as a real community that's crumbling apart precisely because of gentrification triggered and trivialized by wealthy IT companies and their uneducated employees. This is why I care about Ferguson as much as Fukushima, Oakland as much as Okinawa, and Hawai’i as much as Hiroshima. This is what it means for me to be a Queer Zainichi Korean, to tell our stories and create community and knowledge, to care for one another and heal together, to commit to the highest standards of critical thinking and solidarity and love. 

Suppressed Ethnic Diversity, and Multicultural Education as Resistance in Osaka, Japan

A Community Roundtable, featuring Special Presenter: Kwangmin Kim  Executive Director, Korea NGO Center, Osaka; Founder, Award-winning 'Minami Children's Classroom’ Program for Minority Kids

Wednesday, March 02, 2016  6-7:30pm
Chinatown Meeting Rm, SF Public Library Chinatown Branch
1135 Powell St, San Francisco, CA  
15 min. walk from Powell Street BART, OR  Bus Line #30 & 45 (Stop: Stockton & Pacific Ave)

“Kwangmin’s perspective from the often-hidden part of Japan will surely enliven our conversation to understand what's going on now and what’s at stake for genuine peace and security in Japan and the region.” 
– Miho Kim Lee, Comfort Women Justice Coalition, Japan Multicultural Relief Fund
 

Japan is long known as a "homogeneous" country, but in reality, it's always been ethnically diverse. Osaka is home to the largest convergence of various ethnic minorities, including the Ainu, Ryukyuans, Buraku-min (Japan's ‘Untouchable Caste’ people) and Zainichi Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese residents.

In recent years, Prime Minister Abe's ultraconservative, nationalist ideologies have fueled large-scale intensification of, and moral support for xenophobia, racial profiling and hate crimes against Koreans and Chinese in particular. The Abe Administration has also been re-militarizing Japan while denying Japan's atrocities during WWII, and actively demonizing North Korea and China -- the same 'enemy' against which the U.S. is creating a bulwark, with Japan and South Korea, against China's rising influence.

In the context of this harsh reality, Kwangmin and other community advocates are employing innovative intervention approaches through public education, among other venues. Kwangmin will share the stories of the growing population of Asian migrants of Japan, and their families and particularly children, as they adapt and embark on their journey to find their rightful place in the community and society at large.

 

Cosponsored by: Asian Americans for Peace & Justice | Comfort Women Justice Coalition | Eclipse Rising | Japan Multicultural Relief Fund | Japan Pacific Resource Network | SF Nabi Fund | NoNukes Action | SeSaMo | Veterans for Peace, SF Chapter | Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom/SF