A monument was unveiled in Virginia on Friday to commemorate the thousands of women who were forced to provide sex for Imperial Japanese soldiers in military brothels during the war.
Japan euphemistically refers to the women as the "ianfu," or "comfort women."
Similar memorials have been established in California and New York. The stone monument erected on the premises of Fairfax County's government office is the first one to grace a suburb near the U.S. capital. It was set up in the Comfort Women Memorial Peace Garden to help raise public awareness of the women, many of whom were Korean.