CONTEXTUALIZATION

1. When did the events discussed in the document take place?

Maria Rosa Henson was only 15 years old when she got abducted in April 1943
and was sexually enslaved for nine months by the Japanese soldiers, until she escape
in January because of a Filipino anti-Japanese guerrilla attack on the camp. This
happened during World War II when the Japanese colonized the Philippines between
the years 1942 and 1945. 

The invasion of the Philippines started on December 8, 1941, ten hours after
the attack on Pearl Harbor wherein a declaration of war was announced on Japan by
President Franklin D. Roosevelt. While Pearl Harbor was being attacked, the Japanese
Imperial Forces invaded the Philippines, which was a U.S. territory at the time. They
created garrisons for comfort women where soldiers can give off their sexual
pleasures. 

After 4 months of Henson’s abduction, she was transferred to a bigger

headquarters in Angeles Pampanga together with other comfort women and continued
their routine. She wasn't freed until January 1944 when Hukbalahap guerillas attacked
the Japanese headquarters. 

2. What relevant or significant events came before or after?

Japanese military forces landed on the island of Luzon in the Philippines on

December 8, 1941.  A military government was established on 3 January 1942.  Rosa
was just 14 years old when the war was declared on December 5, 1941. Her mother’s
family all fled to Bulacan to escape the Japanese troops who landed in Manila. She
was first raped by Japanese soldiers while she was gathering firewood. Her mother
brought her to a village in Pampanga as she was fearful for her daughter’s safety. 
Rosa Henson soon became a member of Hukbalahap guerillas, gathering food and
medicine for them. One day, she was transporting a cartload of guns when she got
captured by the Japanese. They took her to a hospital in Angeles City which had
turned out to be a garrison. It was then that her life as a comfort woman began for
nine months until her rescue by Hukbalahap guerillas.

It wasn't until two months after her rescue that she was able to regain
consciousness. She had suffered from trauma and was always haunted by nightmares
of the Japanese soldiers. She suffered from malaria attacks, wasn’t able to speak, and
could neither walk nor stand. She also refused to show herself to anybody except her
mother. 

She may have been rescued from the garrison but the war was not over yet.
With Japanese still in the Philippines, an air fight happened on September 21, 1944.
Rosa and her mother had to return on foot to Angeles in October that year. Later that
month, the US and Allied forces landed in Leyte where General McArthur was finally
able to fulfill his promise to return. 

Rosa Henson married a soldier of the Philippines army. She had two girls, but
her spouse joined the communist armed force and passed on. She worked as a
charwoman or a plant specialist. It wasn't until the year 1992 that she decided to come
out after hearing a radio program. She was the first woman in the Philippine who
spoke out about her own experience. In 1996, she was one of the three women who
became the first recipients of the AWF project. Maria Rosa Henson passed away due
to a heart attack on 18 August 1997. The Japanese government, however, denied legal
responsibility and refused to pay the victims. 

3. Why did the author write this? For what occasion?

Rosa Henson heard about a campaign to organize former Filipino wartime sex
slaves over DZXL radio in Manila, “Don't be ashamed, being a sex slave is not your
fault. It is the responsibility of the Japanese Imperial Army. Stand up and fight for
your rights.”. She wanted to write her story and was the first to claim that she was one
of them. Rosa Henson was the first Filipina comfort woman to speak publicly about
her experiences as a sex slave during World War II. She wanted other people to know
what they have been through under the hands of the Japanese soldiers. After she
surfaced, 168 other impoverished Filipino women in their late 60s and early 70s, most
of them sick and dying, followed.

4. Who was the audience? How did the audience regard the author?

This autobiography was a first-hand account into the life of Maria Rosa
Henson, who was the first Filipina woman to speak out about her experiences in
World War 2 and her sufferings as a comfort woman. She wanted to inspire other
women to come out with their own stories and experiences, belying earlier claims that
the Japanese forces did not set up "comfort stations" in the Philippines as they did in
Korea, Indonesia, and Taiwan. She wanted to seek justice and reparations from the
Japanese government.

Lola Rosa was a candid, brilliantly, and bold lady who overcame awesome
chances to ended up a winner of equity for the foremost mystery and noiseless
casualties of World War II. She broadly perused personal history, Consolation Lady:
Slave of Fate, distributed by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism in
1996, maybe a touchingly legitimate account of her life and times and is the as it were
personal history ever composed by any of the over 200,000 sex slaves kept by the
Japanese in Asia. 

5. What was the climate of opinion at the time of this writing?

At that time, the sex slaves or the comfort women were afraid to speak up
because they were ashamed of themselves. Those victims who survived and returned
home did not share their stories of horror for decades because they were afraid of
being stigmatized.

It was a difficult decision for Maria Henson to make. She had kept it a secret
for 50 long years. “It was not an easy decision to make. I often heard people in our
neighborhood and elsewhere sneering at me behind my back. ‘You just want to be a
superstar or to make money,’ they said.”- Maria Henson

6. What was going on when this document appeared?

 Maria Henson’s bravery gave WWII comfort women a voice when she
decided to speak out about her experience in 1992 and write her autobiography. Her
example encouraged other women to come out with their own stories, belying earlier
claims that the Japanese forces did not set up "comfort stations" in the Philippines as
they did in Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia. Lola Rosa was relieved that she was finally
able to break her silence after the years. She became an activist whose example
inspired other women to come forward and tell their stories. These women found they
shared the same fate, and working together with the Task Force on Filipino Comfort
Women, they could support each other to overcome their shame. Henson said that she
was able to handle all the pain because she had the support of her family and the task
force members. Those who still seek to deny or ignore Japanese military atrocities are
now apparently hoping all the witnesses will just die of old age.

7. How did those events affect their creation?

Other casualties, counting those from Korea and China, joined the Filipino ladies
to record a class-action claim against the Japanese government in December 1993.
Together, they requested equity within the shape of a formal expression of remorse
from the Japanese government; the incorporation of all the war-time outrages
committed by the Japanese into Japan's school history books; and financial
reparations to compensate for all the mishandle and viciousness committed against the
women.

During the visit of the Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Muyarama to the
Philippines in 1994, he brought out the idea of a Women’s Centre as a form of
compensation. Even today, the Japanese government insists that compensation was
already given in the form of reparations to the Philippines government after WWII.
The victims are still seeking justice, full reparations, and a genuine apology from the
Japanese Government. 

References:
http://cpcabrisbane.org/Kasama/1996/V10n4/Henson.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Henson
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/1999/10/19/books/book-reviews/simple-
testimony-to-tragedy/#.Xrpkr2gzaUk
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/japanese-occupation-of-the-
philippines/m04y5fzp?hl=en
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992