By Jose Miguel Cabarrus
Man’s inhumanity to women is starkly depicted in the statue of the comfort women violated by Japanese troops in WWII. The women’s sense of having been shamed beyond belief, on top of the pain and anguish suffered, forced a good number of them to take their own lives, while others simply lost it to insanity. Some survived to tell their grim stories, all to no avail: Japan refused to listen, let alone acknowledge their existence.
There is no taking away from the fact that Japanese inhumanity, beyond the savagery inflicted on the comfort women, also led to the killings—some set to the torch, babies thrown in the air and impaled on bayonets, others shot or also bayoneted, slashed with swords, beheaded, all killed in unbelievable forms, while others died from stray shells.
From Feb. 3 to March 3,1945 alone, over 100,000 victims died in the Battle of Manila. Their shocked, grieving families formed Memorare-Manila 1945 Foundation and have lived with the pain of loss and grim memory for over 72 years. Similarly, the Japanese government refuses to acknowledge vicious atrocities committed by their soldiers in World War II.
We support the action taken by the National Historical Commission, the City of Manila, and Tulay, reminding viewers with the statue Comfort Women of the Japanese troops’ vicious war crimes.
We call on the nation’s youth to examine that period in depth, and ask the Department of Education to include lengthier expositions of that war and the hell and war crimes Japan inflicted on Filipinos through their three-and-a-half year occupation of the Philippines.
Jose Miguel Cabarrus is president of the Memorare-Manila 1945 Foundation