BAHAY NA PULA (RED HOUSE)

Aptly named because of its red exterior, “Bahay na Pula” was a mansion owned by the Ilusorio family, who continues to fight to this day over the estate left by patriarch and Marcos crony Potenciano after he died in 2001.

The pre-war structure located in the town of San Ildefonso in Bulacan became a symbol of savagery during World War II since a number of “comfort women” from Bulacan and Pampanga provinces were abused inside it by members of the Japanese imperial forces.

The house was less than two kilometers south of the village of Mapaniqui in Pampanga, where war atrocities began in 1944.

On Nov. 23, 1944, the Geki Group of the 14th District Army under Japanese Imperial Army Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita attacked Mapaniqui, a suspected bailiwick of Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon, the armed wing of the old Communist Party of the Philippines.

According to accounts of one of the comfort women, Japanese soldiers pillaged and burned the entire village. They then rounded up men and boys, severed their sexual organs, and forced these into the mouths of the victims. When the massacre was over, the corpses were thrown into a large pit and set ablaze. Around 200 girls and women were forced to carry the Japanese loot to Bahay na Pula, where the sexual abuse commenced. Girls who had not yet begun menstruating saw no respite from sexual abuse, according to the Asian Center for Women’s Human Rights, which documented the cases and brought them to the attention of an international war tribunal. Last year, the red mansion was demolished and will reportedly be reconstructed in the seaside “heritage resort” of Las Casas Filipinas de Acuzar in Bagac, Bataan province. The mansion had been be a subject of a number of paranormal shows and programs of various media outlets and film outfits.