Professor Ward invited as speaker to Columbia Law School Program “The Legacy of WWII Asian-Pacific Comfort Women.”

Professor Ward invited as speaker to Columbia Law School Program “The Legacy of WWII
Asian-Pacific Comfort Women.”

Thomas Ward, HJI Provost and Professor of Peace & Development, was one of several subject
specialists invited to join a panel at Columbia University Law School on February 27 on the
topic “Legacy of the WW II Asian-Pacific Comfort Women.” Sponsored by the Columbia
International Law Society, the session reviewed the still unsettled “Comfort Women”
controversy. Created and implemented by Japan’s Imperial Military during the World War II
period, the Comfort Women system led to the confinement of tens of thousands of women and girls in a dehumanizing system of abuse and coercion, forced to engage in sexual relations with twenty to thirty members of the Japanese Military on a day to day basis, leaving devastating long-term after effects on the victims.

Dr. Ward, who spoke on Taiwanese “Comfort Women” had been invited in 2016 by Taiwan’s
Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a Visiting Research Scholar at Academia Sinica’s Institute of
Modern History in Taipei, His research there concentrated on the “Comfort Women” system that was established in Taiwan. In his presentation of February 27, Ward focused on the conditions of the system’s victims in Taiwan and on the unique political landscape and the challenges that proponents for the victims have had to navigate in Taiwan. Dr. Ward and Professor William D. Lay, who teaches Government, Law, and Human Rights at HJI, co-authored Park Statue Politics: World War II Statues in the United States (e-internationalrelations, London 2019), which examines the background and messaging of the Comfort Women statue network in America and related topics.

The program was opened by Columbia Law School Dean Gillian Lester and Ms. Linny Ng, a
current LL.M. student who organized and coordinated the program, dedicated her work and the program to her grandmother who had suffered as one of the victims of the Asian-Pacific
“Comfort Women” system. A recording of the entire program is available here for viewing.