“A Maryland state Senate joint resolution honoring the “comfort women” in Asia and Pacific Islands during World War II was adopted on Tuesday. The Senate Joint Resolution 3 stated that “the government of Japan, during its colonial and wartime occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War II, commissioned the acquisition of young women, estimated to number more than 200,000, for the sole purpose of sexual slavery to the Imperial Armed Forces, who became known to the world as ‘ianfu’ or ‘comfort women’.”