It’s been 75 years since the end of World War II. And in the Philippines, victims are still haunted by an atrocity — the sexual enslavement of women by Japanese forces occupying the country. Some 40 of those women are still alive. NPR’s Julie McCarthy has our report on one of those survivors. And a warning — we do have to describe violence and sexual assault to tell this story.
MCCARTHY: «How many children do you have? Eight, he said.» But, Claveria recalled, «Only seven of us lined up. My father’d forgotten one daughter was in Manila.» The Japanese said he was lying and lashed him to a pillar of the house. There, Claveria said, soldiers began to skin her father alive.
CLAVERIA: (Through interpreter) I saw my mother lying down with her skirt up, and there was a Japanese soldier on top of her. I ran. My two youngest siblings took little sticks and started hitting the soldiers. The Japanese soldiers then snatched away the sticks and bayoneted both of them.
MCCARTHY: Claveria believes her other kidnapped sister was moved to a different garrison. She was never seen again. Historians have estimated that at least 200,000 women were forced into sexual servitude during World War II, mostly in areas occupied by Japan, prominently Korea. The women were euphemistically called comfort women, and the organized system of comfort stations to supply soldiers sexual gratification ran from Seoul to Singapore. Writer Evelina Galang has documented women captured in the Philippines.
MCCARTHY: The women are known affectionately by the Filipino term for grandmother, Lola. The Lolas we spoke to described seeing neighbors tortured and killed. They were held against their will and defiled by Japanese soldiers. Survivors suffered psychological disorders and sexually transmitted diseases. Claveria says she and her sister Meteria were among eight women and girls held in the garrison that occupied their town hall. By day, they were made to cook and clean. By night, they were roused from their sleep to service young soldiers who, poker Claveria said, numbered between 40 and 50.
MCCARTHY: The guerrillas freed them, and they found their way home. Home, the two sisters discovered, was a charred ruin. But they reunited with her two brothers, who Claveria said had suffered broken backs as forced laborers for the Japanese. The four shattered siblings slept on banana leaves and ate boiled tree bark. Such was postwar life. Meanwhile, two brothers sensitive to their sisters’ trauma try to allay what had become their deep-seated fear of men.
MCCARTHY: In Claveria’s family alone, four girls, their mother and an aunt were subjected to sexual violence. A succession of Japanese prime ministers have apologized for the affront to Asia’s so-called comfort women. But Carol Gluck, Columbia University Japan historian, says the country’s powerful right wing has minimized the need for remorse in what’s been called apology fatigue.
MCCARTHY: Claveria recalled a granddaughter who sat rapt, listening to details of her wartime suffering and said, «Thank you, grandma, that you lived.» The few dozen surviving Lolas will probably not live to see the recognition they seek. For Claveria, there is no forgetting. To the larger question…