Filipino Sex Slave Fought For Justice, Japanese Apology Henson, Who Gave Other Women The Courage To Come Forward, Dies At 69

The first Filipino woman to publicly admit that she was forced into sexual slavery by Japanese soldiers in World War II has died after a heart attack. She was 69.

Maria Rosa Henson complained of chest pains and was rushed Monday morning to a Manila hospital, where she died later that day.

“We are saddened,” said Malou Sabado, spokesperson of LILA-Filipina, a private group leading a campaign to demand an official Japanese apology and compensation for 169 Filipino sex slaves.

“She was the first to tell her story, and that paved the way for other Filipino women to also tell their horrible ordeal at the hands of Japanese troops,” she said.

Historians say about 200,000 Asian women were forced to work in military-run brothels for Japanese troops. Japan’s government denied any involvement with the brothels until several years ago.

An autobiography based on Henson’s handwritten notes in a diary about her ordeal was published in 1995. Her life also is also being made into a movie.

Henson, called Lola Rosa, surfaced in September 1992, saying she was 15 years old when a Japanese military officer raped her twice in a military camp in Manila in 1942.

Later, her family moved to Angeles City where she helped the anti-Japanese guerrillas as a courier, delivering messages and weapons.

The following year, she was seized by Japanese soldiers and taken to a hospital in Angeles where she was forced to provide sex to Japanese troops daily until she was freed by Filipino guerrillas nine months later.

She kept her ordeal from her husband, who was also a guerrilla, and they had two daughters and a son.

She heard about a campaign to organize former Filipino wartime sex slaves over DZXL radio in Manila and was the first to claim she was one of them.

After she surfaced, 168 other impoverished Filipino women in their late 60s and early 70s, most of them sick and dying, have followed.

Henson and 45 other Filipino women filed a class action suit against the Japanese government in a Tokyo District Court in 1993 to demand direct compensation and official Japanese apology.

Tokyo, however, has refused to provide government money to the women, euphemistically called “comfort women” in Japan, insisting that all war-related claims were settled by postwar treaties.

Instead, it established a private fund to provide financial aid to the victims. Most have refused to accept the payment, saying the fund is part of attempts by Japan to avoid taking full responsibility for its wartime actions.

Henson was among three women who decided to accept compensation from the fund last year, along with letters of apology from Japan’s prime minister.

“This is the happiest moment of my life,” Henson said then. “My impossible dream has become a reality.”