SINGAPORE and MANILA: As Pilar Galang limps with her walking stick into a room full of fellow octogenarian women in a sleepy Philippine town, she suddenly struggles to flash back why she’s wearing her favourite floral dress.
The 88- year-old looks at her sister-in-law, Maria Quilantang. It’s a cue to refresh her memory. The two women are in yet another get-together of former World War-II sex slaves, once called “comfort women” who were forced into military brothels in Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and China by the Japanese Imperial Army.
These around 20 women in the farming village of Mapaniqui are among the last ‘sex slave’ survivors in the country, BBC reported.
As youthful teens, they were picked from their homes, dragged on dusty roads and locked in a blood-red house where they were raped repeatedly. Now in their late 80s to early 90s, these women continue to fight for a public apology and compensation from Japan, both of which have eluded them for decades. They tell their trauma to those willing to listen, hoping that they won’t be forgotten by the world even as their own memories fade.
There were around 200,000 of them, mostly Koreans. In South Korea, their numbers have now declined to nine. The last known survivor in Taiwan died in May 2023. It is to mention here that Japan’s refusal to confront its wartime past and pay compensation to these women has been a source of friction with its neighbours.
The Philippines, under 1951 peace treaty with Japan, agreed to waive claims for wartime compensations. Although the former sex slaves say they will not endorse this, the Philippines has been reluctant to push Tokyo. It merits mention here that the top source of development of the Philippines aid is Japan.
“We hope to get justice before we die,” says Ms Quilantang, the group leader and the most outspoken among these women known as former sex slaves. “There’s only a few of us left and we are all in our twilight years.”
On a scorching afternoon, the group, which calls themselves Malaya Lolas or ‘Free Grandmothers’ in Filipino, gathered as they have for decades to sing their story in slow a cappella verses.
“We cried. We pleaded for a little compassion. Their bestial hearts only craved satisfaction. At the age of 14, I was poisoned,” the Malaya Lolas sing.
Ms Quilantang cracks jokes to ease her fellow women: singing before an audience is no different from karaoke, she tells them. There’s no anxiety that chewing on a betel nut cannot soothe.
Then, Ms Quilantang turns serious. She was only eight when she was first raped in that red house in the middle of a rice field. Up to this day, she gets memories when she sees that house from across the highway. Dilapidated, it still stands, now attracting ghost hunters and historians.
So many crumbling World War-II structures remain in the grandmothers’ village, located in Candaba town, a two-hour drive north of the capital, Manila – although it’s now known for duck eggs and tilapia farms rather than its dark wartime history. According to BBC, decayed reminders of the past still stand, including the very ‘red house’ where these women were raped.
Ms Quilantang says when she sees soil drenched in rain, she recalls the time during her captivity when her only source of drinking water was the deep footprints of water buffaloes that ploughed the rice fields.
“What we carry is quite a burden,” she says. “I had so many dreams when I was a kid.”
Ms Quilantang says the ordeal deprived her of her childhood, a good education and a happy family life as her father died during the war. “I could have worn nice clothes as a little girl. Instead, we were constantly moving from place-to-place, constantly fearing the Japanese.”
Yet she considers herself lucky because she got married to a farmer and raised a family. Many other Filipina comfort women suffered discrimination in their communities and within their own families.
Maxima dela Cruz spends most of her twilight years in her bedroom. As much as she wanted to attend that afternoon gathering, she couldn’t because she is bedridden being at 94 and among the oldest in the group.
She watches the slow days in Mapaniqui town pass by from the window of her home. When she was much younger, she was among the Malaya Lolas’ most active campaigners.
“I’ve been to so many protests. I’ve been to Japan, Hong Kong, even Europe,” she says. “The lawyers who help us bring us to all these places. Everything is still clear to me, ingrained in my mind even if my body is now weak.”
Japan has insisted that any attempt by the Philippine women to seek compensation must be backed by their government. The Malaya Lolas’ appeal to force the government to do so went as high up as the Supreme Court, but failed. Mapaniqui is now known more for duck eggs and fish farms than its wartime past.
