JUSTICE WITH HEALING

JUSTICE WITH HEALING

A Book Review

By: Mariquit E. Soriano

That it would take Nelia Sancho to put together an anthology on the Lolas Kampanyera. Survivors of the World War II Japanese Military Sexual Slavery in the Philippines is a sublime manifestation of Nelia’s fourteen-year immersion into their flight for justice. Together with the Asian Women Human Rights Council (AWHRC), Nelia took on the battle and lent support to the Philippines as well as international campaign for justice for the so- called “comfort women.”

There are two books published by the AWHRC to record the stories of Lila Pilipina Lolas (i.e. War Crimes Against Asian Women – The Case of Filipino Comfort Women, Book 1 and 2). Another book was published by the non-government organization ASCENT on the second group of survivors called the Malaya Lolas. It is estimated that there are 350 – 400 Filipina survivors of sexual slavery documented since 1992 through the various organizations supporting the plight of the Filipino “comfort women” victims of Japanese military wartime sexual atrocities.

Justice with Healing is the first of two books culminating seven years of research and interviews focusing on this third group of Lolas Kampanyera para sa Kapayapaan at Kompensansyon whose stories have not been published until now. The book documents their wartime sexual ordeal in the Japanese garrisons during World War II which the Japanese government seems to omit as a historical fact.

Twenty-three Lolas Kampanyera in Justice with Healing record the gripping details of how they were forcibly taken from their hiding places, dragged, and thrown into rooms in garrisons. They were invariably battered until their bodies were sore and raped by Japanese soldiers one after another. Lola Pacita Alcarazen recounts that one day a Japanese soldier ordered her to give him a bath. After doing so, she was brought back inside a dark room in the garrison along with three soldiers. “My hands and feet were held by the soldiers who were waiting for their turn.”

Only twelve years old then, Lola Clara Dividina Dolor, tells of her own horror as a Japanese soldier would ball his fists to hit her in the abdomen and strike her with his rifle before thrusting himself on her. Then a second and third one would take their turns. Many times she would think of escaping until she witnessed a girl who attempted to flee. “They tossed and jabbed her in midair…”

While most Lolas Kamapanyera survived the stigma of sexual atrocities done them by the Japanese soldiers, a few still are brazenly ridiculed by their own relatives and townsfolk who brand them as “whores to the Japanese military men.” The Organization to which these third group of some 135 Lola “comfort women” belong, has made inroads by creating a community where the Lolas have constant bonding activities and fellowship as they deepen their support for one another. They’ve been transformed from a “victim” image to one who is empowered to articulate the call for unequivocal apology as well as legal compensation from the Japanese government.

Up in arms in a campaign for reparations, the Lolas cannot relent in their struggle to make the Japanese government accountable for its past war crimes. A loud and resounding statement Justice with Healing, depicts a solidarity cry of women in their late and failing age, who want their stories told and their cause heard. Their individual narrations and the historic pictorial documentation of places used by the Japanese military in World War II as garrison sites and “comfort stations” also serve to refute distortions of facts found in books absolving Japanese soldiers of any wrongdoing.

When reading Justice with Healing, feel each Lola’s pain and suffering in the hands of the Japanese perpetrators. Read from their narratives, that despite the passage of time and no matter how hard they try to forget and heal from the wartime atrocities, they open to you their lifelong scar and admit it has never been easy to elude the emotional and mental damage of the trauma. There always seems to be that insidious effect and an unanswered question, “how do they live with the recurring memories of a gruesome past – of the hideous experience of torment, anguish and indignation?”

As Lola Excelsa Delgado Apolinario puts it, “… make the Japanese government acknowledge their mistake and allow them to honorably make reparations with their victims for their army’s wrongful acts.” This sums up the objectives of movement work for justice and healing of the part Lolas Kampanyera Survivors Organization, of which Justice with Healing is a part. Not only that these stories are seen in the context of “retrieving memory” of the violence caused by wars on women but also inevitably when speaking of promoting world peace, in the context of a worldwide campaign to end violence against women in all its forms.

Justice with Healing purports to be a story of women’s resistance and survival. Beyond that, the book carries surviving Lolas Kampanyera to a path of hope in an alternative space in the horizon where their voices challenge us to think, to connect and dare a dream.