‘Comfort women’ statue continues to provoke ire

tors to see the artwork.

“I was shocked and hurt,” Sing said. “It’s a deliberate act of vandalism that represents some kind of hate for our message.”

There is plenty of hate for their message, though whether the vandalism is related is anybody’s guess.

The statue is one of dozens around the world that are part of a growing movement to honor comfort women. But some Japanese Americans and government officials in Japan want the statues pulled down, saying it’s unfair to target Japan for wartime atrocities when so many other countries engaged in terrible acts of war. Some have also disputed the numbers of comfort women and the severity of their treatment.

Hirofumi Yoshimura, the mayor of Osaka, Japan, told Mayor Ed Lee in November he would sever the sister-city relationship with San Francisco by the end of the year, saying the 60-year-old tie between the cities had been “completely destroyed” by Lee’s acceptance of the statue on public land.

Apparently, Yoshimura backed off after Lee’s death in mid-December. But he waited less than two weeks after Mayor London Breed’s inauguration July 11 to write to her, again saying he will terminate the relationship if the statue isn’t removed from public land. He gave her until the end of September to respond.

He wrote that there’s disagreement over the number of comfort women, “the degree to which the Japanese military was involved” and the extent of harm to the women.

“Yet uncertain and onesided claims are inscribed onto the Comfort Women Memorial plaque as historical facts,” he wrote.

Breed’s team forwarded the letter to the local leaders of the San Francisco-Osaka Sister City Association, who responded to Yoshimura that the sister city is not a partnership between two governments, but is instead a relationship between both cities’ nonprofits, businesses and civic organizations.

“We will continue to pursue people-to-people exchanges with the citizens of Osaka,” their letter states.

As for Breed, she supports leaving the statue in St. Mary’s Square, said her spokesman, Jeff Cretan.

In the meantime, Sing and Tang are doubling down on their backing of the statue and the women it represents. They’re behind a new display of portraits of real-life comfort women that will be on view Sept. 4-20 at the California State Building, 350 McAllister St. It will then be displayed at City College’s Chinatown campus at 808 Kearny St.

They’ve also planned a first anniversary celebration of the statue’s installation called “Standing Tall” for 11 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 22, at 651 California St. It will be immediately followed by a procession to City College’s Chinatown campus for lunch and a screening of “Da Han,” a documentary on the life of a Chinese comfort woman.

Don’t read this item if you’re eating breakfast. It’s about a disturbing video showing a man wearing a bright yellow Public Works vest cleaning a street and then stopping to defecate on that same street. He then removes his plastic gloves, uses them to wipe, drops them on the pile and leaves.

The video was captured by a security camera outside a lighting design company in South of Market. Marco Heithaus, founder of the company, turned it over to a local news station, which then showed it to Public Works.

This being San Francisco, which has so much feces on its sidewalks it’s launching the Poop Patrol, that same camera has captured lots of public defecation. Usually, it’s people who appear homeless, but not always. It also captured a driver pulling over, defecating on the sidewalk and driving away.

“No one has the political will to really figure out a solution here,” Heithaus said. “It seems like no one is taking responsibility for the problems that we’re having.”

If a picture’s worth a thousand words, a video’s worth even more, and it did get city officials’ attention.

Rachel Gordon, spokeswoman for Public Works, said the worker in the yellow vest was not a city employee. Instead, he was employed by Hunters Point Family, a nonprofit workforce development program that helps patrol the city’s Pit Stop public toilets and clean its sidewalks.

“It’s unacceptable behavior in San Francisco, and it was extremely unfortunate,” Gordon said.

Lena Miller, executive director of Hunters Point Family, said the man was a new hire and was let go after the video surfaced.

“It was a shock to the entire agency, and all of us felt really, really let down,” she said. “It’s an embarrassment to the agency.”

To be fair, workers with Hunters Point Family have done a lot of great work, too — two were recorded the other day on a different video administering the life-saving drug Narcan to a person who had overdosed.

Really, all the public pooping points yet again to the need for far more public bathrooms in San Francisco. While the city’s Pit Stop bathrooms are helping, they’re closed overnight because it’s so expensive to pay monitors. And without monitors, the bathrooms sometimes become homeless shelters or drug dens.

“Any human knows that when you need to go to the bathroom, you need to go to the bathroom,” Gordon said. “We’re working to expand access.”

Why is dealing with the most basic human function proving such a challenge to this innovative city? What about offering grants or tax incentives to businesses to open their bathrooms to anybody who needs to use them rather than just paying customers?

You’re a smart bunch. Got any other ideas for expanding bathroom access? Know of any cities that have solved this oh-so-human dilemma? Let me know, and I’ll print the best answers in a future column. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf