Last woman of sexual servitude standing

Their portraits are not only the tale of their horrendous bodily ordeal but a tableau of life in a world war. Yet justice to the survivors of the largest sexual violence in modern history has remained a cry in the wilderness.

Of the approximately 2,00,000 survivors of a system of sexual servitude run by the Japanese troops during World War II hardly a few thousand are believed to be alive today. 

Most of them breathed their last as victims of callous injustice though they unwillingly took part in one of the brutal sexual violence in history.

The Japanese called them "comfort women" and the camps where they were forced to share bed with soldiers were called "comfort stations."

An imperial Japan, which had occupied many parts of Southeast and East Asia, rationalized comfort stations to curb the rape of local women by its troops following the Rape of Nanking in 1937, when soldiers sexually assaulted tens of thousands of women in China.

Women from Korea, China, Burma, New Guinea, Singapore, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan and the Philippines became victims of sexual servitude during World War II. They were sent to sex-slave camps to provide sexual gratification to military personnel after they fell victim to abduction, coercion and deception.

When the curtain fell on the war in 1945, these women were left with post-traumatic stress disorders and sexually transmitted diseases and had to live the rest of their lives with damaged reproductive organs. 

Many became outcasts, shunned by their own close relatives and families and spent their lives in misery, pain and disability.

Many Japanese prime ministers have apologized to the women who were sexually enslaved and a few of them even wrote personal apology letters. But Japan has refused to recognize its official accountability for the sex slavery and wartime sexual exploitation and is maintaining that all postwar claims had been settled by the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty. 

To some extent, Japan has doled out atonement money to women and the payments in the Philippines were wrapped up in the early 2000s. 

From more than 200 victims in the 1990s, less than 40 Filipina sexual servitude victims are alive today.

The Philippine foreign ministry has said all war-related claims with Japan have been settled by a 1956 reparations pact.

Since the World War II, Japan and the Southeast Asian nation of the Philippines have become close allies and Japan, the third largest economy in Asia, is the Philippines' top investor and aid donor currently. 

A bronze of a "comfort woman" was installed on December 8, 2017, on Roxas Boulevard in Manila Bay. Its inscription read: "This monument is a memorial to Filipinas who have been victims of abuse during the Japanese occupation (1942-1945)." 

However, on April 27, 2018, the statue was cleared away to make way for "improvements" to the road as then President Rodrigo Duterte said Japan expressed "regret" over the statue. 

Lawyers representing the Philippine victims on March 10 sought compensation after a United Nations committee a few days ago urged the Philippine government to provide them with "reparations."

The UN's Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women stated that Philippine survivors had faced "continuous discrimination" and found that women did not get the same benefits as male war veterans.

The UN report came after 24 women from the Malaya Lolas (Free Grandmothers) moved the committee in 2019, alleging that the Philippines is not backing their claims against Japan for compensation.

Only 20 of the 24 complainants are still alive.

Many Catholic institutions and the Church in South Korea have been repeatedly asking Japan to apologize and pay compensation to “comfort women.” But unlike Germany, Japan has never committed to making amends for alleged war crimes against its Asian neighbors.