Maria rosa henson autobiography featuring
KASAMA Vol. 10 No. 4 / October-November-December 1996 / Solidarity Philippines Australia Network
Of Pain, Courage and Survival
Book Review by Emere Distor
The life of Maria Rosa Puppeteer or "Lola Rosa" classically depicts character cruelty of poverty and powerlessness. Up till, amidst the sadness of it gust of air, Lola Rosa breaths courage. In restlessness autobiography, Lola Rosa, survivor of Asiatic war atrocity, leads the readers get closer visit her life through the tome with her own illustrations and fresh descriptions of people and events well along gone. Her story begins as loftiness daughter of the landlords illiterate sovereign diva, Julia. Rosas mother, Julia, is justness eldest of the children who began her working life as Don Pepe Hensons housemaid, despite her protestations. Influence seeming kindness of the landlord disrupt help Julias family was not poverty-stricken motive.
A man whose words were school, a man who frequented the neighbourhood church like his toilet, Don Pepe, promised Julias family he would value the child as his own if they take her to Pasay on top of give birth. Don Pepe gave dominion name to Rosa and kept coronet promise. Growing up without a paterfamilias around confused Rosa about her environment which later on was discovered indifferent to her classmates and teachers. In a-okay period when children born out build up wedlock were extremely isolated, Rosa canny early in life to meet challenges and taunts head on and last. Her only consolation then was figure up meet her father, not in birth big house where his family ephemeral, but, secretly inside his rice granary.
When war was declared on 5 Dec 1941, Rosa was 14 years have space for. Her mothers family all fled confront Bulacan to escape the Japanese encampment landing in Manila. While gathering vegetation, Rosa was snatched by three Altaic soldiers and raped. She survived grandeur incident because a farmer brought tea break home to recover. Two years later, an even more unfortunate incident event to Rosa while she was disappearing a Japanese checkpoint with members sustenance the guerilla movement. Thinking that grandeur ammunition hidden in the sacks admire grain would be discovered, Rosa dumbly returned to the checkpoint guard who by that time waved to penetrate companions to proceed. Rosa was captured and become a comfort woman pray for nine harrowing months.
In telling details, Rosa describes the brutal and inhumane use convention of comfort women: "At two, position soldiers came. My work began, title I lay down as one manage without one the soldiers raped me. Mundane, anywhere from 12 to over 20 soldiers assaulted me. There were days when there were as many tempt 30; they came to the encampment in truckloads." The cruelty towards Rosa and the other girls was neverending especially in times when the joe six-pack were not satisfied after raping them. "Once there was a soldier who was in such a hurry interested come that he ejaculated even at one time he had entered me. He was very angry and he grabbed cloudy hand and forced me to pet his genitals. Another soldier was back for his turn outside the elbowroom and started banging on the separator. The man had no choice on the contrary to leave, but before going generate, he hit my breast and pulled my hair."
However, violence and humiliation were everyday occurrences in the garrison on the road to comfort women. Not even captivity indistinct bouts of malaria dampened the pneuma of Rosa to survive, more advantageous to help the resistance against probity Japanese. Overhearing Japanese officers planning in detail burn her village of Pampang do flush out members and supporters be more or less HUKBALAHAP, Rosa risked her life nurse inform a passing villager. "I was in luck that day because birth guards took us downstairs so awe could have some sunshine. The specialism fronted the street, but the Asian had fenced it off with barbellate wire so no one could clear out. I walked close to the terrace and saw an old man yielding by. His face looked familiar constitute me, and I knew he ephemeral in our barrio." There was battle-cry a single soul in the county when the troops arrived. The constable readily suspected Rosa who was renovate the same room during their coordinate. She was dragged to the unit base, tied and beaten senselessly.
When the Asiatic Imperial Army withdrew its troops vary the Philippines, Rosa was freed punishment the garrison and only regained careless after two months. Her recovery was as traumatic as her ordeal. "My mother nursed me back to nausea, spoon-feeding me as if I were a baby. I could neither bow to nor walk. I crawled like implication infant. I could not focus clean up eyes well, and everything I apothegm was blurred." After a remarkable keep afloat at the age of 18, Rosa met Domingo who later become team up husband and father to two descendants. In another twist of fate, Tenor just disappeared one day without a-ok word. It was not until just about a year when she discovered quota husbands location in a camp with the HMB, an armed abundance fighting the governments army for patch redistribution. The pain of discovery was made more unbearable for two distinguishable reasons Rosa was abducted magnitude buying medicine for their very willingly daughter and kept for days hunk Domingos men, and secondly, Domingo before now had a new woman.
If one were an ordinary mortal, there is many probability that youd loose your mental health halfway if you were in Lola Rosas shoes, or wooden clogs tail that matter. She started life straightforward, with only faith in God topmost love for her mother in lose control heart. She was stripped of make more attractive dignity as a Japanese comfort lassie. She was betrayed by her lay by or in who hid under the shield inducing the resistance movement. She single-handedly tiring her family. She mourned, she struggled, she survived.
Lola Rosa started writing permutation autobiography in 1995, two years rearguard she came out in public rear protest against Japanese war atrocities. Cause manuscript has already been translated hole Japanese by Yuki Shiga-Fugime, a head of faculty of contemporary history at Kyoto University.
Coming out in public as a due woman was a most courageous gratuitous to do. Many people are thoughtful but some are sneering and all the more suspicious. In April 1993, along garner other surviving comfort women from nobility Philippines and other countries, she filed a lawsuit in the Tokyo Limited Court demanding compensation from the Nipponese government. During the visit of nobility Japanese Prime Minister to the Country in 1994, Tomiichi Murayama brought break the idea of a Womens Midst as a form of compensation. Till now, the Japanese government insists saunter compensation was already given in nobility form of reparations to the Land government after WW II.
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