Der Regierende Bürgermeister von Berlin
– Senatskanzlei –
Mr. Kai Wegner
Jüdenstraße 1
10178 Berlin
Germany
Bezirksbürgermeisterin von Bezirk-Mitte
Ms. Stefanie Remlinger
Mathilde-Jacob-Platz 1
10551 Berlin
Germany
Dear Mr. Kai Wegner and Ms. Stefanie Remlinger,
You, Mr. Kai Wegner, Mayor of Berlin, visited Japan in May this year and met with the Japanese Foreign Minister, Yoko Kamikawa, in Tokyo. According to media reports, during this meeting you stated that you were “in favor of monuments against violence against women, but they should not be one-sided expressions” and that “it is important to make a change.” There were reports of speculation that you made this statement with the intention of removing the “Statue of Peace” (the so-called “Statue of a Girl”) in the Mitte District.
Shortly after Mayor Wegner’s return to Germany, it was reported that you, Ms. Remlinger, the District Mayor of Mitte, had informed the Education and Culture Committee of the Mitte District Council that you planned to remove the Statue of Peace in September. This was exactly what many citizens of Berlin who have worked hard to install and maintain the Statue of Peace were speculating and worrying about, and many other citizens of Korea, Japan and the rest of the world who support the activities of German fellow citizens in Berlin were also afraid. On 19 July, you, Ms. Remlinger, met with the Korean-German citizens’ group, the Korea Verband, which had erected the statue, and told them that if they did not remove the statue by 28 September, the date on which the statue’s installation permit expires, you would continue to fine them until they did so. According to media reports, Mr. Wegner and you also said that you had a plan to install a symbol of remembrance for all victims of wartime sexual violence in Mitte by April next year.
We assume that behind this sudden change by the City of Berlin and the Mitte District, you both have finally succumbed to political pressure from the Japanese government, which has repeatedly demanded that the German government and the Mitte District remove the Statue of Peace, claiming that it is “not based on historical facts.”
We will not go into detail about the historical facts of Japanese military sex slavery, as it is a long story. However, one important point should be made. This is that, on 4 August 1993, the then Japanese government (Kiichi Miyazawa’s cabinet) published the results of a comprehensive investigation into the issue, in which it clearly acknowledged that the Japanese military and government were directly involved in the establishment of the sex slave station, the so-called “comfort stations,” and at the same time, the then Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yohei Kono, in his statement (the so-called Kono Report), clearly acknowledged the responsibility of the Japanese government. The investigation referred to a total of more than 260 documents confirming the fact of the forced sexual enslavement of women, including the records of the Batavia Tribunal, a war crimes trial conducted by the Netherlands in 1948, and other relevant reports prepared by the US military during the war, as well as interviews with 16 actual female victims and some 15 people involved in running the “military comfort station.”
However, from the beginning of 2014, then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had LDP lawmakers who were supporters of Abe make strong demands for a review of the Kono Statement, and on 20 June that year a report on the findings of the Review Committee, History of the exchange between Japan and South Korea over the comfort women issue: from the Kono Statement creation to the Asian Women’s Fund, was released. However, the Review Committee did not investigate or examine the key documents used to draft the Kono Statement. Instead, the Review Committee’s report was drafted with the malicious political intention of creating the impression both at home and abroad that the Kono Statement was created in response to a strong, unilateral demand from South Korea, reluctantly acknowledging the existence of forced sexual slavery after being forced to accept the South Koreans’ strong unilateral demand.
This distortion of history has since been inherited by the Japanese government and is now being continued by the current Kishida administration. In short, the Japanese government has been blatantly lying to the world about the “historical facts” of Japanese military sexual slavery for the past decade, and has shamelessly pressured foreign governments to accept these lies.
There are around 30 “Statues of Peace” – with different names such as “girl statues,” “comfort women memorials” and “peace monuments” – all linked to Japanese military sexual slavery, which have been erected around the world. The Statues of Peace began to be erected abroad, starting with the installation of one in front of the public library in Glendale City Park in California, USA, in 2013. However, systematic obstruction by the Japanese government and embassies based on false claims has led to the removal of the Statues of Peace erected in countries around the world. The Girl Statue installed at the Women’s House in San Pedro City, Philippines, on 28 December 2018 was removed in just two days due to Japanese diplomatic pressure.
Despite this continued obstruction by the Japanese government, a Statue of Peace symbolizing the victims of Japanese military sexual slavery was installed on the seafront in the town of Stintino on the picturesque Italian island of Sardinia on 22 June this year. The inscription on the statue reads in Korean, Italian and English: “It is very unfortunate that the Japanese government continues to deny the existence of ‘comfort women’ and is pursuing attempts to remove the Statue of Peace in many countries, including Germany and the Philippines.” Ms. Rita Vallebella, the Mayor of Stintino reportedly told a local newspaper that she was “proud to accept the statue of the girl as a universal symbol of the fight against crimes against women, both in times of peace and war.”
In other words, the mayor of Stintino, the members of the city council who approved the installation of the statue, and the State Agency for Cultural Heritage, which officially registered the statue as a cultural asset, clearly see the Statue of Peace in a chimachogori (Korean traditional dress) not only as a representative of Korean victims, but as a “universal symbol of the fight against crimes against women.” Why do they have such an understanding, unlike you two, the Mayor of Berlin and the District Mayor of Mitte?
In considering the reasons for this, it is necessary to understand the very specific nature of Japanese military sex slavery, although the violent sexual exploitation of women by the military is indeed a universal problem found in many parts of the world and throughout history. However, in the case of Japanese military sex slavery, there are the following five special features compared to military-controlled prostitution or sex slavery in other countries:
Geographical extent (throughout Asia and the Pacific, very specific in terms of the length of distances women were moved. It is comparable to the distance black slaves were moved from different parts of Africa to the Americas).
The sheer number of women who were sexually exploited (estimated at between 80,000 and 100,000).
The multi-ethnicity of the sexually exploited women (Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese, Filipinas, Indonesians, Dutch, Melanesians from the Southwest Pacific Islands, and Japanese).
The intensity and duration of sexual violence against women (years of sex-slave-like treatment, often violent, in conditions similar to prison).
Control by the military leadership and the government (direct involvement of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
In other words, as a form of military sex slavery, it is one of the most serious and large-scale human rights violations in history, and there is no other example of such a horrific form of sexual violence and sexual exploitation by a national government and its military forces, even if there are similar, smaller examples (such as the long-term imprisonment and rape during the Bosnian War). In this sense, keeping this Japanese military sex slavery in people’s minds on a global scale is very useful for thinking about and remembering many other military sexual violence and sexual crimes in this context. Therefore, the Mayor of Stintino is truly right when she says that she is “proud to accept the statue of a young girl as a universal symbol of the fight against crimes against women, both in times of peace and war.”
By comparison, the very abstract “Monument against all wartime violence against women” proposed by you, the Mayor of Berlin and the Mayor of Mitte, without any reference to concrete examples of brutal cases of military sexual violence, does not have the power to speak strongly and deeply to the hearts and minds of those who see it. In the end, such monuments end up with the idea that “wartime sexual violence is not unusual because it is often seen everywhere and at all times, and we do not feel personally responsible for such atrocities,” and so in the end no one takes responsibility.
On the other hand, in the case of Japanese military sexual slavery, continuing to hold the Japanese government accountable for its refusal to take responsibility for the massive and long-standing perpetration of such severe sexual violence in the form of such monuments should also teach us the importance of holding other forms of sexual violence accountable in order to prevent future sexual violence. Already, the Statue of Peace in the Mitte district is fulfilling such a role well.
We, the citizens of Hiroshima, urge the Mayor of Berlin and the District Mayor of Mitte to reconsider the above, to reflect on the historical significance of the current Peace Statue in Mitte and the many possibilities for its future use, and to reverse its removal and make it a permanent memorial.
Yours sincerely,
August 2, 2024
Shuichi Adachi, Yuki Tanaka, and Keiko Doi
Co-Chairs of Hiroshima Network for the Solution of Japan’s Military “Comfort Women” Issues
Mail Box 132, Hiroshima City Citizens’ Plaza, Fukuro-Machi 6-36, Naka-Ku, Hiroshima City, Japan 730-0036
