The City of Burnaby is stepping back from the cultural quagmire surrounding a proposed “comfort women” statue in Central Park.
The proposal was put forward by a group of community members calling themselves the Korean-Canadian Organization in Metro Vancouver, with funding for the sculpture, podium and plaque to be provided by Burnaby’s sister city, Hwasung, Korea.
Many members of Burnaby’s Japanese Canadian community, however, contacted the Burnaby NOW and the city protesting the statue, saying it would be divisive.
Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan is proposing local Korean and Japanese community members meet to find a “collaborative and unifying solution” to the issue.
“Currently, the Japanese Canadian and Korean Canadian communities have indicated a willingness to come together for dialogue aimed at promoting reconciliation and cooperation. The City of Burnaby is supportive of this approach and believes this is most reflective of Burnaby’s values as an inclusive and multicultural community bringing people from around the world together in peace and harmony,” a release from the mayor’s office states. “Through a community-based, collaborative process based on mutual respect and understanding, it is Burnaby’s hope that this potentially divisive issue can be turned into an opportunity to engage and demonstrate to other cities a positive way forward. If a mutually agreed-upon proposal for a monument is put forward in the future, Burnaby will consider the application at that time.”
The timeline in the proposal for the statue indicated the Mayor of Hwasung, In-Suk Chae, intended to be on hand for an unveiling ceremony for the statue in February.
But Dave Ellenwood, Burnaby’s director of parks, recreation and cultural services, reiterated that the project has not been approved, either at the department or council level.
“We have not approved anything of the sort,” he said. “And we will not until we’ve gathered all of the relevant information.”
The city is asking the two communities to come up with a compromise, he added.
There are no other memorials for victims of specific conflicts located in the city, according to Ellenwood.
"Comfort women" is a euphemism for women in wartime brothels at Imperial Japanese army outposts during the 1930s and '40s.
Many of the women were from Korea, which has led to decades of back-and-forth between Japan and Korea regarding whether or not the women were coerced and forced into being sex slaves for the Japanese military.
There is also debate about how many women were taken from Korea, China and other countries where Japan had outposts; and what sort of apology and compensation is appropriate.
The proposal for the statue included text for a plaque, which states: “To commemorate those who were forcefully taken by the Japanese military to be their sexual slavery (sic) and to restore their human dignity and honor, with hope that the criminal act in violating human rights by warfare or any forms of violence would never recur on this land.”
There are currently five comfort women memorials in the United States (the Burnaby NOW previously reported there was only one known U.S. memorial), according to the proposal. The statue proposed for Burnaby would be the first in Canada.
