The recent removal of the ‘comfort woman’ statue in Manila, which raised an uproar, brings us back to the atrocities committed during World War II in many parts of the country.
The statue, moreover, symbolizes the abuses the Japanese soldiers committed during the war when they forcibly enslaved women in military-backed prostitution houses where they were raped. The victims are known popularly in present literature as ‘comfort women.’
But in Davao City, the raping of women was worst because religious sisters in a nunnery were herded inside their convents and violated. Even married, beautiful women were not spared from the brutality. Oral traditions say some of them were raped in front of their husbands.
In Manila alone, zacording to Digital Museum: The Comfort Women Issue and the Asian Women’s Fund (2007), the Japanese maintained 12 “houses of relaxation” or comfort stations and five brothels for privates and non-commissioned officers.
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 women has no convention. The crime was done wherever the Japanese soldiers were. 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 prominent families were not spared, but their painfully ugly plight, being a shame, has remained a family secret until now.
Brutal war executions also produced instances of treason on the part of Filipinos who were supportive of the enemies. In many instances, ordinary folks squealed and betrayed their neighbors. A tragic case that reached the Supreme Court after thw war was that of Teodoro Cantos, alias Teodoro Tatishi, a Filipino member of the Japanese Civilian Army who “willfully, unlawfully, feloniously and treasonably” facilitated the deaths by firing squad of members of prominent Tibungco families. The court narrative vividly recounts the grisly murders:
“Three shots were fired, killing Dalmacio Babao, Martin Marquez and Francisco Cabling. As Sixto Babao continued still standing, three other shots were fired by Teodoro, Vicente and Masahiro Tatishi, felling him down. Okabe, another Japanese, chopped off Sixto’s head and, thereafter, the corpses of the four victims were thrown into the sea. The news of the killing itself were confirmed by appellant on January 7, 1942, when he personally told about it to the widow of Sixto, adding that the reason for Sixto’s killing was because he was a parashooter of the volunteer guards, while the three others were shot so they could not reveal the death of Sixto.”
When war was over, Davao residents, chiefly guerrillas who survived, started hunting for Imperial Army stragglers, brutally punishing them for the horrors the Filipinos had undergone in the hands of the Japanese soldiers.
Davao City-born Lt. Col. James S. Oliver, USAF (Ret.) in his book ‘My Wars and In Between: A Memoir’ (2016) repeated a first-hand story of brutality committed by irate Filipinos as related to him by the household handyman:
“When the tables were turned so Filipino guerrillas were hunting Japanese soldiers, a soldier had been captured by the gurrillas. They had unceremoniously dropped him off a a common community gathering location for Davao City’s population. His hands were tied behind his back with rattan strips, and his mouh was soon bulging with bodies of dead rats that the people had stuffed in. Then the Japanese soldiers was buried alive. A few people sharpened rattan strips and pierced his lips with the bamboo-like skewers after tails and bodied of dead rats had been shoed into his mouth. His eyes showed fear and just plain despair as the men shoveled dirt, mostly sand, on top of his head.”
Lt. Col. Oliver, the son of Reece Augustus Oliver and Flora Carbonell, also recounted another incident during the war when the enemy forces had their heyday committing all forms of abuse in the city and adjacent areas:
“When the Japanese military ws in control of the situation, some relative [of ours] had been killed either by shooting (which wa actually quite a merciful way to go) bayoneting (a bad way to go if the point of the bayonet entered the gut or higher on the thorax [through the rib cage, to pierce the lungs, or to initiate suffocation if the bayonet point entered the neck area]), or striking with a sword (whcih caused the victim to bleed to death before he began to feel the excruciating pain, unless the sword was used to decapitate him, in which case the head simply fell off and the entire body leapt forward, usually into a predug grave.)”
In the 2000 report, ‘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.
