Rape of women in war is a grievous given

AND talking about it myself is extremely vexatious. Women my list of taboos, like cannibalism and bestiality. For this reason, while I may sincerely sympathize with a group of Chinese Filipinos who compose the Tulay Foundation in erecting the statue symbolizing the pathetic plight of hundreds of Filipino women turned sex slaves for servicing Japanese troops during World War 2, I nonetheless seek a clari the undertaking.

Not just Japanese but American

To begin with, more than victims of Japanese atrocities, those comfort women so- called were all sufferers of war, and that war was not Japanese alone but American, too. The issue of comfort women cannot be touched upon comprehensively without tackling it, too, in the context of the American colonization of the Philippines during the period of war.

As wartime Philippine President Jose P. Laurel repeatedly stressed, the country came under Japanese occupation mainly because of American unpreparedness. In other words, the United States had been derelict in protecting the Philippines from an aggressor, such protection, under accepted norms of international law, being its duty as the current occupying power over all the archipelago. By so failing in this duty, wasn’t America herself guilty of the atrocity of sexual servitude imposed by Japanese troops upon Filipino women in the course of their occupation of the country?

For an analogy, here you are a mother, sworn to protect to the death your daughter against an assailant, but instead of protecting her you run away, allowing her to be raped. Aren’t you as guilty as the assailant in the rape of your daughter?

In fact, it was America’s policy of deliberate abandonment of the Philippines as contained in its war plan in the Asia Pacific region ( War Plan Orange, later modified to War Plan Rainbow) which threw the country into open season for Japanese aggression. If Japanese troops feasted at will on the chastity of Filipino women, half of the responsibility perforce reposes on America. But this concern is not touched at all in the current controversy over the statue of a comfort woman on Roxas Boulevard.

Who dunnit?

also Whether deliberate or not, the placement of the statue in an area proximate to the Japanese embassy necessarily raises Japanese eyebrows, prompting concerned government agencies to take a second look.

The City of Manila denies having issued a permit for the construction of the statue, pointing to the National His- torical Commission of the Philippines ( NHCP) as the government agency that did it. Meantime, the Japanese embassy, evidently taking offense at the memorial to Japanese war atrocity, has lodged a complaint or some such at the Department of Foreign Affairs, raising alarm in the ranks of Tulay Foundation over the potential of an adverse action by the government, for instance, the dismantling of the statue.

It is understandable that Japanese sentiments are hurt. Although Premier Shinzo Abe is on record as having affirmed past government apologies for Japanese actions during the war, he has asserted at the same time that “future generations should not have to apologize for the actions of their forebears.” This can only mean, in the issue at hand, that the present generation of Japanese is not to blame, much less to be made to apologize, for turning Filipino women into sex slaves for Japanese troops during the war.

But then this Japanese position cannot be made to justify Japanese meddling in Philippine internal affairs. It is totally unconscionable.

Lucio Pitlo III, a lecturer at the School of Social Sciences of Ateneo de Manila University and a contributing editor ( reviews) for the

Ateneo University, amplifies this concern in an article, “Japan’s discomfort with history and the PH dilemma,” published in Rappler. com: “Manila is now under pressure after the Japanese embassy expressed concern over a statue to commemorate ‘ comfort women’ put up along Roxas Boulevard on December 8. Wartime atrocities, including comfort women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II, continue to mire Japan’s relations with its neighbors, notably China, Korea, and the Philippines. But over time, Japan’s soft power, investments, and overseas aid softened the position of most Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines. While surviving comfort women became national figures in Korea, their Filipina counterparts have become marginalized and Philippine authorities have become largely indifferent to their legitimate demands for an official apology and compensation from Japan.

“As Japan actively seeks to become a normal power and play greater formal roles in the international system, it has to sincerely own up to its past mistakes and refrain from applying pressure on countries simply commemorating part of their history. On the part of the Philippines, good relations with Japan should not come at the expense of forgetting history and disregarding those who have suffered under Japanese occupation. Government, alongside academe, media, and civil society, has a moral responsibility to narrate correct historical facts to its people and establish and preserve monuments that honor those historical episodes.”

According to the writer, Japan is the country’s second largest trade partner, key investor, tourist market, destination for Filipino overseas workers, and emerging security partner, and this multi- faceted image of Japan, obviously quite beneficial to the Philippines, would not change in the eyes of Filipinos all because of one statue. On the contrary, he fears that “applying pressure ( for the removal of the comfort women statue) on the City of Manila or the Department of Foreign Affairs will only draw more interest to an otherwise low- key historical marker and pushing further may only generate contempt.”

The issue is war, not atrocity

And then the writer struck the nail where it should be hit when he stresses that the statue “commemorates an undeniable part of Philippine history and reminds mankind of the cruelty of war.”

This is the central issue in this controversy. We are here talking about war, and yet the way we look at the matter, it is as if war is such a fine and orderly schema which works according to civilized rules such that a violation of any of them is a crime. No, war is itself the very embodiment of all violations of all known norms of civilized relations among men and nations. All acts committed by all sides in a conflict are acts for pushing the mother of all crimes that is war: the Nanking Massacre, the Holocaust, the firebombing of Tokyo, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Death March, what else…

There is no such things as war crime. There is only war.

When you try Yamashita for the destruction of Manila in 1945, you neglect to point out that what mainly killed those 100,000 innocent civilians in the so- called battle for the liberation of the city were not Japanese bayonets but American bombardment ordered by MacArthur. Moments prior to his execution in 1946 for similar alleged atrocities, including the infamous so- called Bataan Death March, Homma is said to have asked: “Why aren’t Hiroshima and Nagasaki war crimes?” His own provided answer was, because in war only the victors determine what crime is and what isn’t.

On pure jurisprudential con- sideration, I am constrained to view the issue of comfort women as having been adjudicated already in the trials of Yamashita and Homma, rape of Filipinas being among the charges filed against the two. Having been both executed for the crimes charged against them, isn’t the issue of comfort women to be deemed having been atoned for much already. Why the continuing demand for apologies on the matter?

No apologies

During the visit to Japan of President Barack Obama in 2016, much media attention was given to his announced decision not to make apologies on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as on the firebombing of Tokyo.

Critics observed that by not apologizing, Obama would allow Japan to stick to the narrative that paints it as the victim. On the case of Filipino comfort women, I would take it as a narrow view that by not apologizing, Japan will allow the Philippines to stick to the narrative that paints those women as victims. I would rather find wisdom in what Obama said in the visit, “It’s important to recognize that in the midst of war, leaders make all kinds of decisions, it’s a job of historians to ask questions and examine them,” Obama said.

War is war is war is war

It is not the atrocities committed in war that are bad but the very war itself that breeds those atrocities. But by focusing our protestations on the cruelties committed in war, we assign to the concept of war an identity independent of all its awful horrors and by so doing we necessarily proclaim the validity of the concept of war as a means for settling disputes.

Nothing about war is to be weighed on the scale of such humanist ideals as justice, love, respect and protection of innocent civilians, all the more so, elders, children and women. The entire concept of war along with all the horrors, deaths and destructions it brings is to be abhorred and rejected once and for all.

For once and forever, peace a chance.

That comfort women were military necessities in the Japanese occupation of the country is an idea that’s difficult to take. But it happened and there just is nothing more we can do about it. The rape of Filipinas – in fact of Chinese, Korean and other Asian women, too – by Japanese troops in World War 2 is just one of war’s grievous givens.

We all don’t want that to happen again. And the best way to keep it from happening again is to stay out of things that foment war, like battering a “low- key historical marker” that’s better left untouched – or not putting it there at all in the first place. give