Calls for Justice Ring Out on Women’s Day

Joining their counterparts across the nation and 60 countries, thousands of Los Angeles area women on Wednesday observed the 25th International Women’s Day by demanding justice--justice in the workplace, in the home, in social services and for past crimes committed against them in faraway places.

In Westwood, hundreds of janitors and their supporters blocked traffic for an hour at a noon rally that culminated in the arrests of 34 women, including Assemblywoman Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles).

The protest, which drew about 1,500 to Wilshire and Westwood boulevards, was part street theater, with giant papier-mache puppets that rose above the crowd.

“Half of the janitors are women,” said Blanca Gallegos, spokeswoman for the Service Employees International Union. “Many are single mothers, they work nights, and they may have to take on additional jobs because of the low wages.”

In South-Central Los Angeles, scores of women and girls, ranging from grade school pupils to long-retired grandmothers, chanted, “Don’t Iron While the Strike Is Hot! Stop the World and Change It Instead” to tout that they were part of the first Global Women’s Strike. The strike effort was initiated by the National Women’s Council of Ireland, where a woman served as president of the country from 1990 to 1997.

In West Hollywood to kick off Women’s History Month, Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women, and Katherine Spillar of the Feminist Majority Foundation cheered the victories of women candidates in Tuesday’s California primary.

In downtown Los Angeles, protesters, many in white, the color of mourning in many Asian cultures, looked back half a century to World War II and to the 200,000 Asian women who were drafted to work as sex slaves for the Japanese imperial army.

“We feel that the Japanese government must be accountable--past and present--for issues concerning militarization and justice,” said Suyapa Portillo of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

In the mid-Wilshire district, at a transitional home for women, men did the cooking, cleaning and baby-sitting while the women partook of an “Evening of Celebration” to give “Woman Warrior” awards and feasted and danced to live music.

Margaret Prescod, a spokeswoman for the Global Women’s Strike in Los Angeles, lamented that women are still undervalued in this society.

“It’s the caring work [of women] that makes the world go around,” she said. Yet, she said, women who remain in the home and take care of their children don’t seem to count.

“Any kind of job has more value than being a mother,” Prescod said, stressing that such a viewpoint must change, beginning with welfare reform.

Among the demands of the strike organizers is welfare reform that does not require mothers to work, along with paid maternity leave, breast-feeding breaks on company time and protection against violence--at home, in the workplace, on the street.

In San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors on Monday passed a resolution supporting the Global Women’s Strike and urging President Clinton and Congress to declare March 8 a paid national holiday.

Though the United Nations officially recognized the date as International Women’s Day in 1975, women must continue the battle to right the wrongs of the past as well as prevent what could happen in the future, participants in Wednesday’s activities said.

Some of the most horrific crimes against women in the 20th century, they said, involved the “comfort women,” ages 14 to 30, from Korea, China, Philippines and other parts of Asia, who were drafted by the Japanese military to serve their soldiers during that nation’s expansion across Asia. Though many took their torments to the grave, some survivors in recent years have gone public to recount the horrors of rape and torture they endured at the hands of their captors.

“For decades, these stories were stifled by cultural shame and fear,” Melanie Micael told a rally in front of the building housing the Japanese Consulate downtown. But today, some of the comfort women--in their 70s and 80s--are talking because they want the world to know the “horrors of war and militarization.”

Within this broad context the American public needs to know the adverse impact of U.S. military installations abroad, protesters said.

Representatives of the Women’s Forum, a new network of Southern California-based groups, submitted more than 300 petitions--demanding an official apology and reparations for surviving comfort women and their families--to Consul General Tsuneo Nishida, accompanied by a letter. The letter also called on the Japanese government to stop the militarization of Okinawa by halting the proposed construction of a U.S. military base in Henoko. Consul Toshihisa Ono, who accepted the petitions, said they “will be handled in a way we think is appropriate.”

Okinawa, the southernmost island prefecture occupying less than 1% of Japan’s land, is home to 75% of all U.S. military installations in the country.

“Our demands on behalf of the comfort women and for justice in Okinawa are an extension of our successful struggle to gain redress and reparations for Japanese Americans incarcerated in the United States during World War II,” said Janice Yen of Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress. “We believe all governments must be held accountable for military acts that violate the human rights of women and others.”

Since the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by three U.S. servicemen in 1995, women’s groups in Japan have been networking with their U.S. counterparts to make Americans aware of the impact of our military installations abroad.

Since 1972, when the United States returned Okinawa to Japan, there have been 130 aircraft accidents and 154 brush fires caused by military exercises there, according to Okinawan government statistics.

Harumi Miyagi, in charge of the Naha City women’s history project, has said that more than 200 Okinawan women and girls have reported being raped by U.S. servicemen since 1972. The true figure could be much higher, she said, because many women are too ashamed to report an attack.

In 1952, the U.S. occupation ended but military control continued until the island reverted to Japan in 1972. While some U.S. bases on Japan’s mainland have closed, those on Okinawa remain unchanged.

In Santa Monica, Peruvian human rights lawyer Giulia Tamayo Leon spoke about the abuses women in her country have suffered. Through her work with the Latin American Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights, Leon documented the forced sterilization of indigent women in Peruvian health clinics. She called on Americans to voice their opposition to this and other abusive practices.

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Times staff writer Ann L. Kim contributed to this story.