Curriculum and Resources Handbook Now Available
Comfort Women Education is proud to announce the distribution of a resource handbook on the “comfort women” issue, available in PDF form here. NBC News has published an article on the start of circulation of the handbook, noting that:
” The guide contains primary documents about Japan’s comfort women system, information about comfort women memorials in the United States, brief lesson plans with discussion questions and group exercises, comfort women testimonies, and the text of a congressional resolution asking the Japanese government to acknowledge, apologize for, and accept responsibility for its comfort women system. “
About This Site
In 2015 and 2016, residents throughout the State of California campaigned to urge the California Board of Education to include the issue of Japanese military sexual slavery, euphemistically known as “Comfort Women” in the California public high school curriculum. The California Board of Education approved the revision of the 10th Grade History/Social Science Framework that includes the “Comfort Women” atrocity in the summer of 2016.
Click Here to see the full text of the California History/Social Science Framework for K-12 as revised in 2016.
Here is the section about ‘Comfort Women’ in the Grade 10 History/Social Science Framework.
“Comfort Women” is a euphemism that describes women who were forced into sexual service by the Japanese Army in occupied territories before and during the war. Comfort Women can be taught as an example of institutionalized sexual slavery; estimates on the total number of Comfort Women vary, but most argue that hundreds of thousands of women were forced into these situations during Japanese occupation. On December 28, 2015, the governments of Japan and the Republic of Korea entered into an agreement regarding the issues of Comfort Women. Two translations of this document can be found at http://www.mofa.go. jp/a_o/na/kr/page4e_000364.html (accessed June 29, 2017) and http://www.mofa. go.kr/ENG/press/ministrynews/20151228/1_71575.jsp?menu=m_10_10 (accessed June 29, 2017).
This online resource center has been created by Comfort Women Action for Redress and Education, CARE (formerly known as Korean American Forum of California, KAFC), a Los Angeles-based community organization that promotes the hidden “Comfort Women” history in the US) to provide teachers in California and beyond with the necessary educational resources to teach the “Comfort Women” history, such as lesson plans, primary documents, & video clips that can be used in the classrooms.
The development of the lesson plan for the California 10th Grade World History was co-sponsored by CARE and the “Comfort Women” Justice Coalition (CWJC, a San Francisco-based community organization that is responsible for installing the “Comfort Women” Memorial in San Francisco). CARE and CWJC jointly own the copyright for the California 10th Grade lesson plan provided in this website.
We thank the three scholars who have put enormous amount of time and efforts into developing this lesson plan.
About the authors:
Beverly Milner (Lee) Bisland, Ed.D, Associate Professor
Elementary and Early Childhood Education Department
Queens College of the City University of New York
Dr. Bisland has been an active presenter at conferences including the College and University Faculty Assembly, International Assembly, the National Council for the Social Studies, and the American Educational Research Association. She has published scholarly articles in, amongst others: The Urban Review, Education and Urban Society, Journal of Social Studies Research, Teachers College Record, Theory and Research in Social Education, Social Studies Research and Practice and the Social Studies. She is the founding editor of the Journal of International Social Studies: the Official Journal of the International Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies.
Sunghee Shin, PhD, Associate Professor
Elementary and Early Childhood Education Department
Queens College of the City University of New York
Dr. Shin’s research is focused on collaborative learning in web-based learning communities and the impact of technology in global education, and her publications explore the ways in which online discussion construct knowledge in various instructional settings. As an immigrant herself, she has also researched about different kinds of families we meet in and out of our schools today and the issues around those families. To extend her knowledge in the field, she occasionally is involved in projects on the campus and elementary schools that require instructional strategies to enhance students’ learning.
Jimin Kim, Ph.D
Independent Scholar
Dr. Kim has actively researched and taught on issues of modern Korean history, especially Comfort Women issue. She was the Program Director of the Asian Social Justice Program at the Kupferberg Holocaust Center, Queensborough Community College. She has developed curriculum of the special internship program for college students on the Comfort Women issue as the main part of the Asian Social Justice Program, while conducting research on impacts of Comfort Women movement in the U.S. She received her B.A. and M.A. in history from Yonsei University (Seoul, Korea) and Ph.D. in Korean history from Columbia University. She specializes in modern Korean history and history of U.S.-Korean-Japanese relations. She is currently conducting research on Korean representation in American popular culture during WWII and the Korean War and postwar discourses on war crimes between Japan, Korea, and the United States.
We also thank the reviewers who have provided valuable input for this lesson plan: Robert Roth and Lisa Shek from San Francisco Unified School District.
About the reviewers:
Robert Roth is an educator and community activist. He has been a teacher in the San Francisco Unified School District for the past 30 years.
Lisa Shek is a veteran educator who has dedicated 31 years in education in the San Francisco Unified School District as a classroom teacher, resource teacher, and a school principal. She currently hosts a monthly community service radio program in a local Chinese radio station on family and school.
Ms. Shek’s review of the lesson plan is as follows;
In addition, the best instructional practices, such as formative and summative tasks and cooperative group works, are utilized to help students understand the dark history of Comfort Women during WWII and engage them in meaningful discussions and reflective thinking of their social responsibility in stopping sexual violence against women in present days.
This unit study is a pioneer of its kind and I am excited that it has found a place in the social studies curriculum of our schools.
Julie Tang, retired judge and co-chair of CWJC said;
The KAFC and CWJC’s digital curriculum provides the substantive aspect of the “Comfort Women” history with a strong emphasis on its effects on modern-day sex trafficking. The comprehensive curriculum materials present a compelling case of the use of sexual slavery by the Japanese military as a war strategy and why this phenomenon is still relevant today as we witness wide scale sex trafficking and enslavement of women and girls in different parts of the world.
The unique aspect of this curriculum guide is that it presents the academic necessity of a curriculum, and stays true to objective learning by providing a clear path, without editorializing or politicization, for the student to understand and appreciate the hidden history of the “Comfort Women”.
B.C. ALPHA has graciously provided the lesson plan they have developed a few years ago in collaboration with the Canadian Education Department.
The materials on this website can be downloaded and used for free of charge if used in accordance with the purpose of educating the public the correct history of the Japanese military sexual slavery.
All rights are reserved.
Any questions or concerns should be directed to kafcinfo@gmail.com.