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The year 2018 marks the tenth year since a monument for Japanese military "comfort women" became installed on Miyako island, a small but well-known tourist destination with a beautiful beach located 300 kilometers south of Okinawa's main island in Japan.

Keeping Memories of a Space Alive

After Kim Hak-sun went public about her past as a comfort woman in the 1990s, a group researching women's history in Okinawa reflected on their past of having done nothing despite being aware since the 1970s of a Korean comfort women victim named Bae Bong-gi in Okinawa. The group thereafter began investigating comfort stations that used to operate in Okinawa. The reason the group focused on investigating comfort stations instead of comfort women victims was because it wished to respect the victims' privacy wherever they may be in Okinawa. As local residents tried to recall what their village each used to look like during the war, they gradually remembered the name of each comfort station and created a map identifying nearly 150 stations in Okinawa.

The reason Miyako island was relatively neglected from the investigation at the time was because it was far away from Okinawa's main island and due to the fact that American soldiers never landed on the island during the war. However, the island home to 52,000 residents once turned into a Japanese military fortress with the arrival of 30,000 Japanese soldiers. And seventeen comfort stations were set up around the army base on Miyako island.

The island's residents were not allowed to go near the comfort stations, but they would often run into comfort women in their daily lives. They witnessed from afar soldiers waiting in line in front of comfort stations. When there were no soldiers around, they would cut the grass nearby comfort stations or chat with comfort women as they looked after their children. Fresh water was precious on Miyako island where there were no streams, so residents meeting comfort women at the well and sharing details of their daily lives with them as they drew water was a common sight.

As a boy living on Miyako island, Yonaha Hirotoshi (与那覇博敏) often saw Korean girls near a large rock not far from home. Comfort women who had to travel between the comfort stations and the well to do their laundry would stop and rest against the large rock that provided shade. People on the island were well aware that traveling to the well was about the only moment of freedom comfort women could enjoy at the time. Decades later in 2006, Mr. Yonaha was watering flowers that had bloomed from the cracks of a rock that reminded him of the "apparagi" (アッパラギー) women. "Apparagi" means beautiful according to the Miyako island dialect and people on the island would refer to comfort women as "apparagi women." When Mr. Yonaha was watering the flowers growing from a rock, a Korean student named Hong Yun-shin happened to pass by and stopped to chat with Mr. Yonaha. Hong had come to Miyako island to survey comfort stations in the Okinawa area and happened to learn what the rock personally meant to Mr. Yonaha. Hong later shared the story with activists and scholars in Korea and Tokyo, which led to the launching of an investigation team of members from Korea, Okinawa, and Miyako island for the purpose of surveying comfort stations. The team also made plans to install a monument on the island and their efforts bore fruit on September 7, 2008.

The Arirang Monument and the Monument "To Women"

The rock bearing memories of Mr. Yonaha became a monument. Those who helped turn the rock into a monument named it the "Arirang Monument." Three other monuments were installed behind the Arirang Monument, titled "To Women" in Japanese and sub-titled "To Those Who Love Peace" in Korean. The monuments feature words dedicated to victims of sexual violence during war as well as translations of those words in twelve different languages: eleven based on the dialects of the eleven areas where comfort women victims were discovered and in Vietnamese in memory of women who suffered sexual violence in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Since then, on the second weekend of September every year, the island's residents as well as activists and people from abroad gather around the monuments to remember what happened to the victims.

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of installing the monuments, an international symposium was held at Miyako island on the 8th and 9th of September under the theme "Rethinking the Japanese Military Comfort Women Issue on the Tenth Anniversary of the Arirang Monument on Miyako Island." The eleventh anniversary will be celebrated in 2019 on the second weekend of September.