October 22, 2021
Hello ,
Wednesday of this week, October 20th, marked 79 years to the day that US military forces returned to the Philippines after leaving the islands to the Japanese in 1942.
Few people remain alive who remember General Douglas MacArthur making good on his promise to return. And many other Americans have forgotten, or never learned the significance of the day our men landed on Leyte.
My book Pure Grit tells the story of how 79 American military nurses held POW by the Japanese waited three long desperate years hoping and praying US soldiers would come back and liberate them.
The book has been out for years now, and still I continue to discover stories, so many worthy stories, of women surviving that atrocious time in Philippine history. Please share today's story with friends and family who might be interested in how the events of the past remain relevant today.
I promised you a photo. I didn't realize how much I'd need to write to set it up properly.
My research into the battles of Bataan and Corregidor turned up so many detail about how unprepared the US military was for the attack on the Philippines. For instance, how the army unpacked guns from boxes for the fight that were left over from WWI.
When I first laid eyes on this photo of the landing on Leyte, the contrast blew me away.
These incredible ships were a product of how Americans came together during those three years the POW nurses were waiting for liberation, how they sacrificed for the common good to defeat the fascist governments threatening democracies around the world.
US forces come ashore in the Philippines October 20, 1944, after defeating the Japanese Navy in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle of World War II and, by some criteria, possibly the largest naval battle in history.
After three months of fighting their way to Manila, the forces landing here freed the nurses and from POW camps.
This week I discovered the ramifications of this day on one Filipina, one girl who survived years of brutality and was rescued five days after this photo was taken.
Remedios Felios was 14-years-old when the Japanese Imperial Army invaded Leyte. She and her family were captured as they fled their home in Esperanza Village. Decades later she described her ordeal through sketches.
Euphemistically called a "comfort woman" by the Japanese military, Remedios was held captive with other women from the island at a Japanese airbase. For more than two years, they were continually beaten and raped by occupying soldiers.
More than a thousand Filipinas are known to have been kidnapped by the Japanese Army during WWII and forced into sexual slavery. Many did not survive.
Edward A. Odrowski was an officer in the US Army’s 44th General Hospital, which arrived on Leyte with the liberation forces. His son James Odrowski relays the story of how Remedios hid in a bomb shelter when the American's arrived,
going without food for five days. When her captors had either fled or died in fighting, the girl ventured out of the bunker.
"Thought to be a Japanese soldier, an American GI almost shot her. Fortunately, a Filipino guide recognized that she was a young girl. Then, an Army jeep took Remedios to the 44th General Hospital for treatment. After rehabilitating, she reunited with her family, [though] she dealt with the effects of the abuse for the rest of her life."
Decades later, Remedios connected with other women who had suffered as she had during the war. They shared their stories and drew colored pencil sketches of their experiences. In 1999, Remedios' story was published.
There is little reliable data on how many girls and women the Japanese army kidnapped and forced to work as sex slaves in the military brothels they established in the countries they occupied during WWII. Chinese experts estimate at least 200,000 women were captured and coerced into sex before and during the war, mainly from Korea and China.
Japanese leaders denied these atrocities outright until the early 1990's when documents like the one below came to light.
In 1993, the Japanese government issued a public admission and formal apology to South Korean women who suffered sexual conscription. It offered $8.3 million to a foundation offering medical, nursing and other services to the women.
However, in 2007 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe publicly denied there was evidence the Japanese military had coerced women into sex. Then in 2015, right wing allies pressured Abe to scrap the 1993 apology, and he agreed to review the evidence again.
Just last month Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology agreed to allow a number of Japanese textbooks publishers to change the term for wartime sex slaves and remove the term "forced conscription."
Tokyo agreed victims of its wartime sexual slavery could be called "comfort women", instead of "military comfort women," and the term "forced conscription", will be deleted from textbooks, thus covering up the fact the women had no choice, that armed men held them captive and forced them to provide sex.
As time passes and more survivors die, groups representing the women continue to press for official apologies and most of all, the truth.
Philippine women who survived kidnapping and rape by the Japanese in WWII find support at Lola's House, a community center in Manila. The book Lolas’ House: Filipino Women Living With War by M. Evelina
Galang tells their stories.
From the publisher:
M. Evelina Galang enters into the lives of the women at Lolas' House. She accompanies them to the sites of their abduction and protests with them at the gates of the Japanese embassy. Each woman gives her testimony, and even though the women relive their horror at each telling, they offer their stories so that no woman anywhere should suffer wartime rape and torture.
Lolas' House is a book of testimony, but it is also a book of witness, of survival, and of the female body. Intensely personal and globally political, it is the legacy of Lolas' House to the world.
From reviewers:
"Lolas’ House is the last stand of women who survived the kidnapping and rape that was Japanese army strategy in World War II. Courageous, aged grandmothers tell their stories and show their wounded bodies to M. Evelina Galang as evidence that these crimes occurred.” —Maxine Hong Kingston, author of The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts
Lolas’ House: Filipino Women Living With War unwaveringly records the full-bodied lives, the heartbreaks, and the resilience of sixteen comfort women from the Philippines during World War II.
The stories of the lolas’ survival and their love of living and others bring about the commanding power of who the women are. Their stories are huwes de kutsilyo—justice by knife. Remember their stories. Let them knife, split, open you up—and with mercy, let them enter your bodies, so that we may never forget." —Melissa Sipin, Hyphen magazine
Sources
https://buffalowallow.com/the-japanese-occupation-of-the-philippines/
https://www2.ljworld.com/news/2016/jan/17/document-proving-wwii-comfort-women-now-home-ku-li/
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202109/23/WS614bbbaca310cdd39bc6ad55.html
I was blown away by this book and what I learned from it," Cathy wrote. "Larson did a great job with this book... tremendous research including diaries of the Churchill’s and other big players, the [characters] really come alive."
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Actress Jennifer Morrison for Book of the Month:
"I lean toward fiction in my reading taste, but The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson’s captivating and inspiring story about the twists and turns of Winston Churchill’s first year as Prime Minister in 1940, grabbed me from page one.
The tactics that Churchill employed truly changed the course of history. He spoke with total authority of “the essential human freedoms: speech, worship, and freedoms from want and fear.” The leadership and courage that Churchill displayed in this year of his life was inspiring.
His diplomatic and eloquent letters to President Roosevelt encouraging American support were incredibly insightful and proved to be the right course of action to protect the world from Hitler. He was bold enough to counterattack Berlin and not wait for the war to ravage his home. He invited the English to find their courage with one awe-inspiring speech after another."
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