More than 200,000 Asian and Dutch women were removed from their homes in Korea, China, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, East Timor, and Indonesia and were coerced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Armed Forces of Japan between 1932 and 1945. On July 30, 2012, the City of Glendale proclaimed Comfort Women Day, and on July 30, 2007, the United States Congress passed House Resolution 121 urging the Japanese Government to accept historical responsibility for these crimes. The hope expressed is that these unconscionable violations of human rights shall never recur. The words “I was a sex slave of Japanese military” accompany symbols in which torn hair represents a girl being snatched from her home by the Imperial Japanese Army, tight fists her firm resolve for the deliverance of justice, bare and unsettled feet abandonment by a cold and unsympathetic world, a bird on her shoulder a bond with deceased victims, an empty chair survivors dying of old age without yet witnessing justice, the shadow of the girl as an old grandma the passage of time spent in silence, and a butterfly in the shadow hope that victims may resurrect one day to receive their apology.
