“AT NANG magsawa na, kami’y pinawalan. Halos ang hininga’y ibig nang pumanaw. Sa laki ng hirap na pinagdaanan, sira na ang isip pati na katawan.”
The 89-year-old Lola Maria Quilantang led in singing the 18 stanzas of the song of Malaya Lolas in the style of pangangaluluwa, hymn-offerings to the dead.
The Malaya Lolas is associated with the “Bahay na Pula” located in San Ildefonso, Bulacan, which I first saw on July 2019 after our Flowers for Lolas group visited them in Mapaniqui, Candaba, Pampanga. My second visit was this month or six years later.
The “Bahay na Pula”, with its red walls almost gone, still stands as a house with a dark and painful history.
Built in 1929, it is a big, ancient two-floor house owned by the Ilusorio family standing solitary on a hacienda with tall, huge tamarind, camachile and duhat trees that grew around it. It was made largely out of wood and painted red on the outside, giving it its name.
In November 23, 1944, the Imperial Japanese Army attacked Mapaniqui in Candaba, Pampanga a suspected bailiwick of Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon (HukBaLaHap).
Communities were bombed, houses were looted and burned.
Women were forced to watch under the sun as men and boys were being publicly tortured, mutilated, and slaughtered by the Japanese army. Their sexual organs were severed and forced into the mouths of the victims. When the massacre was over, the corpses were thrown into a large pit and set ablaze.
The women were then ordered to walk to the “Bahay na Pula” which became a Japanese barracks where they became victims of military sexual violence and slavery.
Upon reaching the mansion, the soldiers dragged the women, ranging from 13 to early 20s, into dark rooms and took turns raping them.
Japanese soldiers systematically raped the women as part of the destruction of the village.
Some of the women were taken to San Miguel, Bulacan where they were imprisoned for at least three months at “comfort stations.”
As a result of the actions of their Japanese tormentors, the victims spent their lives in misery, having endured physical injuries, pain and disability, and mental and emotional suffering.
The Malaya Lolas was established in August 1996, four years after Maria Rosa Luna Henson made public her ordeal as a “comfort woman.”
Death has thinned the ranks of the members of Malaya Lola in the last 30 years. Only 18 now survive from their original number of 96.
With seven other members of Lila Filipina, there are only 25 surviving comfort women and victims of sexual abuse during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines.
About 200,000 women from Korea, China, Burma, New Guinea, and the Philippines were held in captivity and raped as part of one of the largest operations of sexual violence in modern history.
After the recent visit of Flowers for Lolas in Mapaniqui, I saw again “Bahay na Pula” which is now a tattered structure, decaying with collapsing roofs. stripped of its narra floors and walls, as well as its wrought-iron windows and doors.
On March 8, 2023, the United Nations’ Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) released on International Women’s Day a decision which found that the “Philippines violated the rights of victims of sexual slavery perpetrated by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second World War by failing to provide reparation, social support and recognition commensurate with the harm suffered.”
The CEDAW Committee pointed out that the Philippine government had failed to adopt appropriate legislative and other measures to prohibit all discrimination against women and protect women’s rights on an equal basis with men.
It noted that while Philippine war veterans, who are mostly men, are entitled to special and esteemed treatment from the government, such as health care benefits, old age, disability and death pensions, there was no such action with the comfort women.
The Committee recommended that the victims must be provided with “full reparation, including recognition and redress, an official apology, and material and moral damages” proportionate to the physical, psychological, and material damage suffered by them and the gravity of the violation of their rights experienced.
Comfort women advocates Flowers for Lolas, Lila Filipina, and Malaya Lolas supported the CEDAW recommendation on the preservation of “Bahay na Pula”, or the establishment of another space to commemorate the suffering of the victims and honor their struggle for justice.
The dwindling number of survivors highlights the urgency of achieving a formal, unequivocal apology and appropriate compensation from Japan and ensuring accurate historical inclusion while the survivors’ voices can still be heard.
Until then, the Malaya Lolas will continue singing their song: “Kay lungkot aming kasaysayan. Panahon ng Hapon aming karanasan. Aming katarungan inyong panagutan. Bigyan lunas dinanas na buhay.”
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Atty. Dennis R. Gorecho heads the Seafarers’ Division of the Sapalo Velez Bundang Bulilan Law Offices. For comments, e-mail info@sapalovelez.com, or call 09175025808./PN
