WWII peace statue in Canterbury-Bankstown divides
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It's the peace statue that is dividing Korean and Japanese community groups, with legal threats issued to a church minister and complaints escalated as high as the Minister for Multicultural Affairs.
At the centre of the dispute is a statue commemorating the "comfort women" of World War II - the women and girls who were forced into sexual servitude for Japanese troops - which has been imported from Korea by a local Korean community group.
WWII statue honours 'comfort women' A peace statue commemorating Korea's World War II 'comfort women' is to be kept at Ashfield's Uniting Church in Sydney.
The group - called the Peace Statue Establishing Committee - plans to unveil the statue, which they describe as a "peace monument", at a
traditional welcoming ceremony to be held at the Korean Community Hall in Croydon Park on Saturday.
The statue, which cost $35,000 and was donated by a Korean benefactor, is about 1.5 metres high and depicts a Korean comfort woman sitting beside an empty chair, as a symbol of the victims who have since died.
Embroiled in the feud is the Reverend Bill Crews, who has nominated the church grounds of his Uniting Church Parish in Ashfield as the
permanent home for the statue.
Mr Crews said he was "outraged" at the obstacles he had encountered since offering his support to the Korean community.
The issue escalated to the diplomatic sphere last week, when Mr Crews was requested to attend a meeting with Consul-General of Japan and the NSW Multiculturalism Minister John Ajaka.
"[They] have tried to talk me out of this by saying we'll create division. It seems to me the division was created anyway and the best way to deal with that division is to face it fully, apologise and move on."
Miniature version of statue for "Comfort women" to be unveiled at Korean community hall in
Croydon and kept at Uniting Church.
However, this characterisation of the meeting was disputed by Mr Ajaka's office, which said his role was solely as a facilitator so the parties "could discuss their issues directly".
Mr Crews said he had also received legal threats from the Japanese Community Network, which claimed the statue was a "hurtful historical symbol" and was racially discriminatory against Japanese people.
The president of the network, Tesshu Yamaoka, accused the church of aligning itself with an "anti-Japan activist group" who were "acting out of anger and hatred [and] trying to heal wounds by hurting somebody else."
The network said it would take legal action against Mr Crews and the Church under s18C of the Racial Discrimination Act and would seek an immediate injunction against the statue being erected on church grounds.
In a legal letter issued to the church in June, and obtained by Fairfax Media, the network's lawyers claimed their client believed the statute was "entirely unnecessarily, if not absolutely detrimental to the local community and will only result in generating offence and racial hatred".
Mr Crews dismissed the threats as an "attempt to rewrite history" and said he was "110 per cent" committed to ultimately housing the
statue within the front gardens of the church.
The dispute is underscored by a bitterly contested history war between the governments of Japan and South Korea over the Japanese
military's use of comfort women during World War II.
In December 2015, the two countries reached a landmark agreement, with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe issuing an apology which
acknowledged the role of the Japanese military and committed to establishing a new one-billion yen ($11.4m) compensation fund for the surviving comfort women.
However, the issue remains fiercely contested within Japan, particularly among powerful conservative forces, who maintain the women were not coerced into sexual slavery, and instead were prostitutes.
As many as 200,000 women across Japanese occupied territories, many of whom were from South Korea, are estimated to have been comfort women, although that figure is also contested within Japan.
But Mr Crews said the dispute over the statue transcended the longheld animosity between the two nations, and was more broadly symbolic of all female victims of war.
"It's more than just one country abusing women. It's about the way men abuse women and the way women get treated in war as well."
He said he reached out to the Korean community, and offered to host the statue in church grounds after a separate attempt to erect a memorial in Strathfield last year was rejected by Strathfield council amid an ambush of complaints, as well as legal threats from the Japanese Community Network.
Through its lawyers, the network also raised its concerns with the Canterbury-Bankstown Council earlier this year over the proposed use of the council-owned Community Hall for the statue's unveiling.
After weeks of planning and with more than 20 dignitaries arriving from Korea in the coming days, the unveiling ceremony was thrown into doubt last week after council expressed concern about the use of an adjacent netball court to hold a traditional "welcoming home" of the spirits performance.
The ceremony received last-minute approval from the council on Monday, providing a number of conditions were met, including the hiring of security guards and the assurance no banners would be displayed.
President of the Peace Statue committee Vivian Pak said about 200 invitations to Federal and State MPs, Korean dignitaries, community leaders and other guests, had been issued ahead of Saturday's ceremony.
The statue is expected to remain inside the Korean Community Hall for as long as 12 months before it is permanently relocated to the Uniting Church in Ashfield.
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