By: Yong B. Chavez
http://www.filipinonline.com/LOS ANGELES - In the same week that an unprecedented number of Filipino Americans expressed unity in contesting a controversial line in "Desperate Housewives," and on the same day that thousands of Filipinos once again cheered as one for Manny Pacquiao in his latest boxing match, without fanfare and with only a handful of supporters, Adela Reyes Barroquillo, 78, related to a small group of book launching attendees in Historic Filipinotown why she is fighting to tell her story.
"I have to tell my story. I kept it to myself for a long, long time because I was ashamed. Sila ang dapat mahiya sa amin, I should not be the one who should be ashamed," she said. "I want justice."
Lola Adela is a survivor of Japanese military sexual slavery during World War II. The victims, their families, and supporters have been asking the Japanese government to issue an official, unequivocal apology for the crimes, as well as demanding that restitution should be made to the survivors and their families.
Adela's testimony was one of the highlights in a historic world conference recently held in Los Angeles on the sexual enslavement of women and girls by the Japanese military. U.S. House Resolution 121, authored by Rep. Mike Honda (D-San Jose), was passed in July. It urged the Japanese government to apologize for its wartime sexual enslavement of at least 200,000 Asian women. H.R. 121's passage has strengthened a global alliance that seeks justice for surviving sex slaves.
In the new book called "Justice with Healing," an anthology of 23 Filipina survivors, Adela, a former schoolteacher and auditor bares her pain.
She was born in a small town in Capiz province to a simple family. Her father was a farmer and her mother kept the house for her and 6 siblings. Adela was the youngest.
When the war broke out, she was only 12. Two years after hiding in the mountains with her family, she received information that it was already safe to go back to her hometown. She encountered two friends, Pestang and Nita, whom she hasn't seen in years. Together they went to the public market.
There, they were accosted by Japanese soldiers and later delivered to a garrison where her and her friends' nightmare began. At 14, she was raped repeatedly by Japanese soldiers.
"I remember being forced to enter a room. I hesitated because it was very dark inside. One soldier shoved and kicked me in until I tumbled face-down on the floor. Then the soldier slapped me hard in the face until I fainted," she said.
When Adela got to this part as she was recounting her story in the book launching, she stopped abruptly. Her eyes watered while she stared ahead, looking at no one and nothing in particular. Sixty-four years after, it is as plain as day that the horror of her experience still lives and breathes within her.
For more than three months, she and the other victims suffered physical and sexual abuse. At one point, out of extreme despair, she wished that a bomb would hit the garrison and kill them all.
But it wasn't a deadly bomb that liberated them. When a group of Filipino guerillas attacked the garrison in May, 1943, Adela and her friends escaped and walked on bare feet for many miles to get home. Many other kidnapped victims of Japanese military sexual slavery died in captivity.
Except for her mother, Adela kept the horrors she experienced a secret. When her mother told her not to tell anybody else to avoid a scandal, she readily obeyed.
"I was sick for a long time after we escaped. There were days when I didn't even speak at all. I fainted sometimes. I was so afraid of people. I couldn't eat nor sleep," she said.
When the war ended, she went back to school. Eventually, she met and married her former schoolmate, Servando Barroquillo. They had six children.
Servando died in 1995 not knowing that the woman with whom he shared a life harbored a painful secret. Four years after his death and after hearing from fellow former sex slaves who have gone public with their stories, Adela felt it was time to share hers. Shortly thereafter, she joined Lolas Kampanyeras, a survivor group coordinated by Filipina human rights activist Nelia Sancho of Asian Women Human Rights Council.
"They were very young. Most of them have never even experienced having a boyfriend before they were attacked," Sancho said. "Their traumas were multiplied. They had low self-esteem and their families and the society imposed silence on them."
"Most of them kept what happened to them a secret. Many of those who shared their stories with their husbands had to endure being called "just remnants of Japanese soldiers" whenever they fight," Sancho added. Some never even recovered enough to have healthy relationships.
Unfortunately, even up to now, the survivors – euphemistically called "comfort women" – suffer from triple discrimination due to their gender, race and class.
While there are many supporters of Filipino World War veterans who are fighting for equity, Filipina "comfort women" still struggle to find champions to aid their cause. While the veterans have medals and the unstinting admiration of the community for their wartime bravery, WW II sex slave survivors, to this day, have to endure unkind words and a lack of support even from their own family and community in the Philippines.
"My children don't like that I talk about what happened to me. Some of my neighbors told me that I should just have just kept this "shame" a secret. Some tell me I'm just doing it for the money," Adela said. "But I have to fight for me."
Before Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo won the election, she was a supporter but "she has changed her tune," Sancho said, adding that despite overwhelming evidence attesting to the veracity of their stories, up to now, they are also still fighting to include in Philippine history textbooks the fate the women suffered during World War II.
Their harrowing ordeal first came into light when Lola Rosa Henson came out in public in 1992 after she heard the story of a Korean sex slave survivor. There are about 400 documented Filipina survivors of sexual slavery. There were three batches of victims who came forward – one group consisted of more than a hundred survivors of mass rape in just one village in Pampanga. Around 94 have passed away without seeing justice.
In the last 15 years, Japanese soldiers have come forward to admit their wrongdoing. Recovered documents showed that the military was involved or knew about the "comfort stations," according to news reports. Many, including Japanese human rights activists, have criticized the Japanese government for admitting only moral but not legal responsibility for wartime atrocities against the women.
In 1996, Asian Women's Fund, a private fund collected by the Japanese government from its citizens, was set up to compensate the former "comfort women." Japanese officials wrote letters of apology to women who received the payments. Not all of the victims received the compensation.
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[Miller's photo from latimes.com; Sinco's photo from milkeninstitute.org]
