When you walk along Manila Bay in a beautiful afternoon, amidst the numerous statues of heroic figures that don the beachfront, one would encounter a disturbing sight– a statue of a veiled Filipino woman, gripping the hem of her veil in fear, with her eyes blindfolded. The statue, beautifully and hauntingly made, stands on a black marble pedestal where a historical marker of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines is installed. The marker inscribes:
MEMORARE:
Ang bantayog na ito ay alaala sa mga Pilipinang naging biktima ng pang-aabuso sa Pilipinas noong panahon ng pananakop ng Hapon (1942-1945). Mahabang panahon ang lumipas bago sila tumestigo at nagbigay pahayag hinggil sa kanilang karanasan.
(MEMORARE: This monument is in memory of the Filipinas who became victims of abuse in the Philippines during the Japanese Occupation (1942-1945). It took a long time for them to testify and tell of their struggles.)
The monument, built through the kind donations of selected Manileño citizens and groups such as the Lila Filipina, Tulay Foundation Inc. and Wai Ying Charitable Foundation Fund Company Ltd., may perhaps be the country’s first monument for the Comfort Women in our history–the women who were forced by the Japanese military to be their sex slaves during the Second World War in what the Japanese servicemen then would call “comfort stations.”
According to research findings, there were 17 comfort stations established by the Japanese during the occupation in Manila, 2 in Iloilo City, and an unconfirmed number in Laguna province, Tacloban, Butuan, Cagayan, Dansalan, other parts of Panay Island and Masbate.
*Painting entitled “Rape and Massacre in Ermita” (1947) by Diosdado M. Lorenzo, now displayed at the Art Gallery of the National Museum of the Philippines, depicting the rampage of the Japanese marines during the Battle for the Liberation of Manila in 1945.
After the war, some victims have come forward, especially in countries that were also invaded by Japan, like Korea. But only recently, decades after, did some Filipina women come forward to tell their sad story. It took great courage for them to even talk given the trauma they endured and kept secret, and the stigma in the Filipino patriarchal society that they would encounter. But talk they did, sacrificing even the comfort that their silence gave, for freedom, justice and truth. Some of them still surviving today are now in the ages 80-90. The wrinkles on their faces hide the broken and still mending spirits that still try to live their lives despite what they have lost.
Take for example the story of Rosa Henson, who was forcibly taken by the Japanese into a hospital converted into a garrison. There, in three whole months, she was raped. The other six women with her also had the same ordeal. From there she was transferred to a former rice mill made into a comfort station, where she and the women with her were made to wash clothes by day, and to service Japanese men by night.
Many of the women endured those harrowing days from a month to a year. Many were single women, but some were married when they were captured by the Japanese, forcibly taken from their homes. One Filipina was captured with her husband. Her husband was incarcerated in Fort Santiago, tied upside down and beaten to death, while the woman endured what the Japanese military men did to her. Some who resisted took a lot of beatings. One even had her face singed with a lighted cigarette, that for her, to face a mirror meant that she would be reminded of those horrendous nights.
As interviews were conducted to the surviving women, these women revealed that they feared nighttime as it makes them remember the things that were forcibly done to them. Imagine what it took for them to even forget what happened. They were scarred for life, tried coping by drowning themselves in work, in silence. They tried to move on, some of whom got married, with honorable men who knew their stories and still accepted them. Some had a hard life ahead, above and beyond the struggle to keep the secret that pained them. But some rose to great heights, mustered the courage to speak their truth. They founded groups such as Lila Filipina and Lola Compañera as support groups of the surviving victims.
That was what this monument that stands alone in Manila Bay, means. As the sun sets today, only a silhouette of the woman statue could be seen, as if to say to every passers-by, “Here I am. No matter what you say to me, or to others against me, here I am, and this is what happened to me.” It beckons Filipinos of every background and stature in life to look to the most painful and dark parts of our history… to feel something, and to be empowered to protect our dignity as a people.
Up to this day, Japan has refused to acknowledge this injustice. Many of the surviving women are now old, and as with other revisionist moves in history, it is a topic avoided and not even discussed in Japanese history textbooks.
The Philippine government, through the Department of Social Welfare and Development, has since acknowledge the existence of these lolas (old women) and had implemented a program from 1997-2002 called Assistance to Lolas in Crisis Situations (ALCS) to attend to the surviving comfort women’s psychosocial needs for their healing from trauma. When a society ignores the injustice done to victims, it only leads to their retraumatization. Our acknowledgement therefore matters. That is part of the justice that is due them.
Last December 2017, the installation of the Comfort Women Monument caused an uproar in our very own Department of Foreign Affairs when the Embassy of Japan filed a complaint for the installation of the said monument. The embassy seemed to imply that as the sisterhood city ties of San Francisco and Osaka was severed due to the same issue, Manila might suffer the same fate, as Manila is a sisterhood city of Yokohama, Japan. The DFA was quick to reprimand the agencies responsible, and the City Government of Manila denies responsibility, even implying that the groups that built the monument did not have a permit.
But history is clear. The evidences are here to stay. If Japan has to face their responsibility, we as a country should own this dark history of ours. These are our women. They are our grandmothers. If their countrymen, their leaders, won’t stand up for them, who else will stand up for them? We owe it to them, and to our collective dignity as a people.
In this occasion of the International Women’s Day, let us resolve to ourselves to never forget. We remember them, for their deepest of pain are ours too.
*All photos of the Comfort Women Monument are mine taken last 2 March 2018.
To learn more about the testimonies of Filipino comfort women, check out this link that includes an excerpt of their oral history interview transcripts, publicized with their permission.
