The Comfort Women during the Japanese Regime

by Pearl L. Balanay

One of the most horrific times in the history of the Philippines is when the Japanese occupied the country for three years. The biggest and deadliest conflicts in human history arose, the World War II, claiming the lives of millions and shattering havoc on countries’ economies throughout the world.

It was indeed a “world war” in scope; virtually every country participated directly or indirectly in the war. For the Philippines, its own involvement came when the Japanese overthrew the Americans and became the new masters of the archipelago. Their reign is marked by various accounts of atrocities and violence.

There are prominent pieces of information on such ghastly act of terror done by the Japanese to our nation. The Bataan Death March, dreadful bombardments on our homeland which destroyed numerous constructions and killed our countrymen, decimated population, destroyed economy and wrecked infrastructure. When the Japanese left; the Philippines was crippled.

But there is one significant notion that has been forgotten; the Filipina women who had been enslaved in Japan’s wartime rape camps, the “comfort women.”

            A Filipina-American novelist, essayist, and educator, M. Evelina Galang is writing a book entitled “Lolas’ House: Survivors of Wartime Rape Camps.” Galang tells the often overlooked story of the hundreds of Filipina women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II. 

“These ‘comfort women’ were mostly 13, 14, 15 years old. They weren’t really women, they were girls,” Galang said of the victims, who are now so old they are respectfully referred to as “Lolas,” the Tagalog word for grandmothers. “They were forced to do labor and raped up to 20, 30 times a day, every single day. The tragedy is colossal.”

These stories poured out of the grandmothers are like water from a dam, full of horrific testimonies of habitual rape and torture:

Prescilla Bartonico was 17 when she was captured by the Japanese.

The year was 1943. Bartonico and a younger cousin were cowering in an air raid shelter on the Filipino island of Leyte with family members and neighbors; the sounds of gunfire and bomb blasts punctured the still air. The door banged open and soldiers from the Imperial Japanese Army were suddenly upon them. They grabbed Bartonico’s cousin and dragged her across the floor. The girl screamed and kicked and scratched the soldiers’ faces. Three soldiers took turns raping her before they killed her. Witnessing her cousin’s assault and murder, Bartonico wept as another soldier tied her up and raped her in front of her family and friends. “I wanted to resist, but I was too afraid,” she said. “[So began] my suffering ... at the hands of the Japanese soldiers.” For the next three months, Bartonico was imprisoned in a military garrison in the town of Burauen in the Philippines. She said she was raped multiple times daily, “by five to eight” men.

“[It was] mostly during nighttime because we were forced to work in the landing field during the day,” she said of those dark days. “Sometimes, they even brought us to the guard posts where they kept their machine guns in trenches made up of sacks filled with soil.”

In 1993, Rosa Maria Henson became the first Lola to come forward publicly about her experience. Henson had been 15 when Japanese soldiers abducted her. They incarcerated her for 9 months, and up to 30 men raped her every day.

“I lay on the bed with my knees up and my feet on the mat, as if I were giving birth. Whenever the soldiers did not feel satisfied, they vented their anger on me. When the soldiers raped me, I felt like a pig,” Henson, who died in 1997, described in her memoir. “I was angry all the time.”

For decades, no one except Henson’s mother knew about those days of abuse. Even Henson’s husband and her children had been kept in the dark.

“I am telling my story so that they will feel humiliated,” Henson said of the soldiers who raped her, according to a New York Times obituary. “It is true: I am an avenger of the dead.

Rosa Maria Henson (second from left), from the Philippines, joins Korean “comfort women” Kim Soon Duk (left) and Yoong Sue Ree (second from right) during a protest rally staged in front of the Japanese embassy in Manila in 1996. Henson died a year later.

 Inspired by Henson, 174 other Filipina women eventually came forward to share their stories.

“The culture of shame and gossip is strong in Filipino society. When word got out that a woman was a ‘comfort woman,’ she might have been called ‘Japanese leftovers.’ “Some women were not taken back by their families after the war. Some grandmothers who came forward had to deal with their sons and daughters and even husbands who got mad at them for speaking their truth.” 

An estimated 400,000 women and girls across Asia were abducted and forced to serve in so-called “comfort stations” by the Japanese military during World War II. A majority of these victims were taken hostage in South Korea and China, but women were captured in virtually every territory occupied by the Japanese, including Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Indonesia.

In the Philippines, researchers estimate that more than 1,000 girls and women were sexually enslaved by the Japanese during World War II. Today, only 70 of them are still living, and their disheartening history is forgotten. It took 50 years before the Lolas’ stories came to light.

When an individual is used as 'comfort' for other people, for soldiers, who may have been forced to fight, is the cruelest, most revolting display of brutality and inhuman behavior. They were mere objects to keep the troops from deserting. I could not fathom the idea of getting sexually assaulted 20 to 30 times a day. I may have never been in such a situation nor know anyone who has, but as a woman, I am deeply terrified of how inhuman people could get. I urge Japan to correct and acknowledge the shame they have brought to our Filipina women in the past, otherwise; they are not a self-respecting nation.

We can recognize survivors of abuse by their courage. When silence is very inviting, they step forward and share their truth so others know they aren't alone because the true test of a warrior is how her 'stance' holds up after any 'circumstance'. It is how she handles herself even after the stormiest weather. A true warrior will still reflect the brilliant rays of the magnificent sun through her eyes. She may get hit by sudden lightning or take severe beatings from the cruel wind, but she will always get back up and stand strong on her feet again, soak in the sunlight, and be prepared to get hit by even the most merciless hail - time and time again.”

To the One I Love the Most

Double Standard: My Thoughts on this Endless Issue

       

         Our generation nowadays has become well modernized and restructured in terms of our culture, philosophies and even our custom of living. It has been evolving and changing as we strive for a more developed lifestyle. However, these developments have affected us in a depraved manner as it has limited our freedom, liberty and our equality. The problem is that the society has imposed standards and expectations that are unfitting to our values. Between men and women, conflicts arise from time to time as a result of appalling standards of character the public has mistakenly demanded.

Double standard is a set of principles applied differently and usually more rigorously to one group of people or circumstances than to another. This is a code of morals that commonly applies more severe standards of behavior to women than to men. More likely, women continue to get the short end of the stick and have to deal with an unfair double standard. When a woman dares go down that path, she’d better be ready for some backlash as it is expected of women to value themselves more highly than what we expect of men; a common outlook, yet wrong and absolutely sickening. Why is it believed to be mischievous, fun, and normal if a guy has a string of lovers that he has cast aside, loved, and left? Yet, if the same situation applies to a woman, she is referred to as a “slut” and a “whore”? It shouldn’t be okay for men while women get chastised and disrespected. Apparently, today’s generation has a twisted mindset creating standards of character as a basis of what’s right from wrong.

Every day, we seek to attain bliss, success, freedom and equality for our homes and in our lives. But where is equality when men and women continue to devalue each other? Where is freedom when there are ridiculous limitations set for the capabilities of an individual? The society should start viewing men and women as equal rational creatures. Double standard only creates factions and frictions in mankind and the only solution to this is when we instill within ourselves to give proper recognition, worth, and respect to each other, as a person, not by gender. 

Mental Attitude: The Finest Chauffeur of my Future

by Pearl L. Balanay

Each one of us is driven by our sense of belonging. As a matter of fact, the whole essence of life lies in it. Belonging; it is not about owning the best of things, but it is about giving our best way to show importance to the tiniest things that we own. It is about recognizing our little possessions in life, possessions that become very essential, because not only they matter to us, but because these belongings, define our character for they serve as the carpenter of our future.

          At this point in time, my most valuable belonging would be my mental attitude. I consider my mental attitude to be the finest chauffeur of my life. It decides which path I should take, a path that could either bend or straighten my way to get to the finish line. I think that mental attitude is far more important than any possessions in the world, because attitude is our outlook in life, and our outlook or perspective affects our behavior towards every little thing we do. It is powerful than any source of motivation that we are always in search of, for attitude, in its own complex way, can dishearten or inspire us to pursue on the dreams that we have. Our mental attitude is how we view the world. It is our way of responding and handling each challenge that life presents us. Because once we hold a good attitude and capacity to deal with our problems the right way, every dark portion of our lives would light up. The bumpy roads that we are ought to take may become smooth; drought turns out to be shorter than anticipated, filling our whole lives with an abundance of happiness and contentment. Because where there is good mentality; there is good faith, and where there is good faith; there is true happiness.

I believe that once we possess a decent mental attitude towards everything, the size of the problem becomes irrelevant. The hardest problem becomes easy to unravel, and the dreams which we believed to be merely impossible to get could bring themselves together, in such a perspective that is now within our reach. For this reason, I consider my mental attitude to be the greatest belonging in my life.

Growing Up, Its Price, and My Life

Growing Up, Its Price, and My Life

by Pearl L. Balanay

As I face life’s frustrations and obstacles, I felt the little girl with a hopeful mind inside me to be drifting away. I wouldn’t call it changing because I never knew I was capable of that. But whether I changed or not, wasn’t my choice. It was my world who did. I thought, maybe this is what they meant when they say growing up has its price. But, as a girl with only a little hint of optimism left, I wanted it to stop; I wanted to stop growing up.

       When I was a kid, I always thought that when I grew up, I’d do everything I’ve always wanted to do. I’d finally fulfill my dreams. But growing up, I only realized one horrible truth, that my dreams were just that, dreams. Maybe reality has its own way of welcoming us into its arms. It breaks our shell of rainbows and love, and expresses our core, our hearts and souls to the cold, bitter truth of life itself. Gone are the early winters when we built snowmen and made snow angels. Now, we welcome the mornings of frost and depression, and for good reason. Because although we know that the sun still shines, we likewise know it will not be enough to cull our frozen demons, much like our dreams. We realize, regretfully, that although our dreams still give us hope, they will never be enough to melt the frozen fortress that holds our innocent hearts captive. We despise our cage, yet love it all the same. For though it keeps our hearts from the happiness we so seek, it also keeps us safe from the cold, harsh reality from piercing any deeper into our wayward hearts.

       Years have gone by and I became me. The optimistic little girl inside me was completely gone, only an icy and bitter teenage girl filled with cynicism that’s left. I became a machine with calculated movements to perform. It suddenly felt safer to suppress my feelings, my thoughts, and even my own happiness. I have stopped believing for something good to happen, instead, I just prepare and embrace myself for the worst. I guess I must have witnessed too much human flaws that my mere optimism in life got crippled. I guess in my life, winter came, but it never left.