BANGALORE: Nelia Sancho, National Coordinator of Lolas Kampanyera — an organisation of WWII Filipino Comfort Women, Survivors of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery, was in the city to participate in an International Reflection/ Roundtable on the Courts of Women titled “Towards New Forms of Justice’’. She tells Jayadevan PK the tale of the fight for justice by women who were forced into prostitution as a form of sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II.
Maria Rosa Henson, or Lola Rosa, was the first Filipino Comfort Woman of WWII to come forward publicly on September 12, 1992. Because of Lola Rosa, many other Filipinos who had been living with this secret for over 50 years found the courage to come forward and speak their truth and ask for their apology.
Maria was 15 when she was gangraped and forced into slavery at a comfort station. Her ordeal of daily rape by Japanese soldiers lasted for about nine months.
There are women who have endured up to six years of such treatment.
Maria suffered permanent damage due to head injuries at the hands of angry soldiers. Her speech was slurred, and she sometimes drooled. She could not find a job. After a couple of years in recovery, she was married and gave birth to three children. However, the trauma of sexual assault had long lasting effect on her.
In her book, Comfort Woman: Slave of Destiny, Maria recounts: “I could not eat. I felt much pain and my vagina was swollen. I cried and cried, calling my mother. I could not resist the soldiers because they might kill me. So what else could I do? Every day, from two in the afternoon to ten in the evening, the soldiers lined up outside my room and the rooms of the six other women there. I did not have time to wash after each assault.
At the end of the day, I just closed my eyes and cried.” Winding up the story, Nelia says, “There are thousands of other women who have shared the same fate as Maria. We demand justice, an official apology has to be legislated and legal compensation must be paid to victims by the Japanese government.”
WW II “Comfort Women” are the 200,000 girls and women abducted by the Japanese Imperial Army during WWII and forced to experience a life of systematic rape and enslavement. They are now mostly in their 80’s. They were taken from Korea, China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan. Around 1,000 girls were abducted in the Philippines.