Rape, Japanese Style

THE celebrated case of Lola Rosa Henson, comfort woman from Angeles, eclipsed the revelation of more than 100 old women of Mapaniqui, Candaba, who were raped by Japanese soldiers in the Second World War.  Their story is perhaps the most shocking event in the country at that time, yet it has largely remained untold, mainly because the victims have, until recently, remained quiet and because the victimizers have long ago left the country and lived unpunished.

I stumbled upon the Mapaniqui story through Sonia Soto and her friend Gemma, two officers of the Pagkakaisa ng mga Kababaihan Para sa Inang Bayan (KAISA-KA), who took me to the village located on the Pampanga-Bulacan border.  We found some 50 women, mostly in their 70s, huddled inside a house, playing cards and chewing betel nut.  Since they came out with their story in the early 1990s, they have bonded and organized into the Malaya Lolas, one of several groups of comfort women in the Philippines and Southeast Asia that have formally organized, with some help from cause-oriented NGOs, to seek justice and reparation from the Japanese government. 

They have been featured on TV several times and have gone to various conferences here and abroad, the latest of which was the Tokyo Tribunal, which convicted the entire WWII-era Japanese government and military from Emperor Hirohito and Gen. Yamashita down to foot soldiers; the decision, of course, is ignored by the present Japanese government since the trial was sponsored by a Japanese NGO.  Che-Che Lazaro's Probe Team featured this trial months ago; it shows the Malaya Lolas, representing the comfort women of the Philippines, giving their tearful testimonies along with those of other comfort women from Indonesia, South Korea, China and even the Netherlands. 

Ironically, many other comfort women's groups in the Philippines, who never showed up at the Tokyo Tribunal, have received assistance from government and the private sector, but the Malaya Lolas of Candaba have hardly received anything.  Since they came out, some 20 of them have died, and many are ill and bedridden.   A group, ASCENT, has taken the cudgels for them, sponsoring their trips abroad and publishing their stories in a book.  But the old women feel that if help is indeed on its way, it should come soon. 

If you know what happened to them during the war, you would make sure these women should live the rest of their lives in absolute comfort and bliss.  On November 23, 1944, at early dawn, the Japanese bombed their village which was suspected of harboring Huks.  Everybody was herded to the schoolyard where the men and boys were mauled, mutilated and killed, their bodies piled inside the school building and then burned.  Women and their small daughters, more than a hundred of them, were made to carry looted property two kilometers to the "bahay na pula" (red-painted mansion) which served as the Japanese garrison, where they were repeatedly raped.  The following morning they scattered in all directions and did not return to Mapaniqui until years later. 

I met the man who collected the burnt corpses in the school yard and buried them in a common grave.  He said he was 26 at the time; he survived by running into a talahiban which the Japanese could not penetrate.  He said many more corpses of men and animals lay all over the village for months, eaten by dogs and pigs.  Even after the war had ended, the villagers did not return because of the fierce fighting between government troops and Huks.  They only did after President Magsaysay had promised them protection.

Many of the women had never married.  Those who tried to, experienced being rejected before or after the wedding when their men found out about their secret.  Those who had families kept their secret for the longest time; when they finally decided to come out, they had to grapple with husbands and children who could not understand why the whole world had to know their secret.

On November 13, the Center for Kapampangan Studies will present some 50 Mapaniqui women to the Kapampangan community in a forum to be held at Holy Angel University.  Hopefully, their kabalen, who have been oblivious of their terrible ordeal, will come to know their story, never let it be forgotten, and extend assistance.

Although it happened in the last world war, many countries that go to war even today still practice systematic mass rape as a military policy.  It's their way of demoralizing their enemy and subjugating entire populations prior to occupation.  As usual, it's the women and children--the sector of society that has the least to do with war--that suffer the worst part of it.         
 
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We would like to request those who will be using the information above, especially for publication, to properly cite the author and the Kapampangan Homepage.  The above column was published in The Voice.