** Screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring historian Dr. Chong Eun Ahn of Central Washington University, and anthropologist Dr. Tomomi Yamaguchi of Montana State University, as well as local activists **

Join us at Northwest Film Forum for a screening of the award-winning documentary film The Apology, directed by Tiffany Hsiung, followed by a panel discussion. The event is free and open to the public!

The film, which aired on PBS in October, follows the lives of three survivors – from Korea, China, and the Philippines – of the WWII-era Japanese military sexual slavery/enforced prostitution known as the “comfort women” system.

An estimated 50,000 to 200,000 “comfort women” were forced to provide sexual service for members of the Imperial Japanese armed forces between 1932 and 1945. Women from Japan, Korea, China, and across the rest of Asia-Pacific were recruited through various means – from debt bondage, to deception, to outright conscription or kidnapping – but almost all of them are considered victims of human trafficking by today’s standards.