FAST BACKWARD – Rape of women

There are no exact figures how many children were killed during the Japanese occupation. What is known, albeit privately, is that there were women who were raped and turned into “comfort women” (sex slaves) in Davao region during this period. The crime of violating womanhood was not exclusive to the invaders, though; in fact, several cases of rape committed by Filipino soldiers and civilians against Japanese women could also be found in wartime annals.
A report cited in Digital Museum: The Comfort Women Issue and the Asian Women’s Fund noted that in Manila alone the Japanese maintained 12 “houses of relaxation” or comfort stations and five brothels for privates and non-commissioned officers. In northern North Luzon comfort stations existed at Bayombong, Nueva Ecija; central Visayas; and a “military club” in Masbate. Comfort stations were established in Iloilo, Panay, Cebu (which was operated by a Japanese proprietor), Tacloban (managed by a Filipino), and Burauen, Leyte. Sex dens were also found in Butuan, Cagayan, Dansalan (Marawi City), and in Davao, the report added, “where Koreans, Taiwanese and Filipinos were brought and forced into service.”
Raping did not have any convention. The crime was committed wherever the Japanese soldiers fit. There was no appointed site to consummate the lust. Accounts of women violated in garrisons, churches, training schools, residences and nunneries are given life in records. A report cited in War Victimisation and Japan (1993) tells of the rape of nuns at the Carmelite monastery in Davao City. Even daughters of some prominent families were not spared, but their excruciatingly ugly plight has been deemed a shame and has remained a family secret until now.
A.M. Dubinski, in The Far East in Second World War, wrote about young women being taken to a hotel where they were raped by Japanese men and officers before they were killed and the building set aflame. In the 2000 report titled ‘UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and the McDougall Report on Systematic Rape, Sexual Slavery, and Slavery-like Practices,’ the government of Japan was blamed for the plight of “comfort women” during World War II for the sole purpose of sexual servitude, adding the crimes, including gang rape, forced abortions, sexual violence, human trafficking, and other crimes against humanity, were officially commissioned and orchestrated.
Archival records reveal that the first “comfort station” was established in Java Island, Indonesia, and the invading Japanese army proportionally allocated women. The files, which were from the military police corps of Japan’s Kwantung Army and the national bank of the puppet Manchurian regime stored in Jilin Provincial Archives in northeast China were revealing. For instance, from Feb. 1-10, 1938, six “comfort women” were assigned to 1,200 soldiers, in Xiaguan district of east China’s Nanjing. Thereafter, eleven more women were added to the station. Over a five-month period since November 1944, the Japanese army paid 532,000 Japanese yen in setting up the stations, an appropriation that was approved by the Kwantung Army.
One poignant, unedited story of war was that of Felipa, a 81-year-old grandmother (2011) from Sulop, Davao del Sur. Speaking through her granddaughter, she told her family’s plight and reechoed the other abused women’s ordeals in the hands of invaders.
The Japanese also targeted young women who were unlikely infected with venereal diseases, some as young as eleven years old and were at times removed from elementary schools. To ensure the victims could not seek help, they were often brought to and isolated and far-flung places where they had no linguistic or cultural ties.