Comfort Woman : a Filipina's Story of Prostitution and Slavery Under ...

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Comfort Woman
with them. I wondered whether my father was also evacuating like
we were. Was he with his wife and children? My father was very old,
seventy-two when the war broke out.
Like me, my mother was very scared. But she told me not to bother
myself with worries about my father. We spent the next month in the
barrio of Bigte in Norzagaray, Bulacan. We lived in a cave which was
so huge it was like a church. It was made of white rock which shone
like marble.
We stayed there about a month with several families, including
my uncles Juan, Emil, Felino and Ando, who brought his wife and
children; my aunts Consing, who was single, and Laria, whose husband
drove the truck. Several of our neighbors were there with us, too.
We survived by helping the village folk nearby plant rice and harvest
vegetables. The men went to the dam to fi sh. We washed our clothes
in the river and cooked our meals out in the sun.
After a while, two of my uncles, Juan and Ando, decided to go
to my father’s house not only to see how he was doing, but also to
fi nd out about another uncle, Pedro, who was then eighteen years old.
Pedro had been instructed to work in the big house so that my father
and I could remain in touch after my grandmother’s death.
My two uncles walked all of fi fty kilometers from Norzagaray
to Angeles. It took them four days to reach my father’s house. Don
Pepe gave my uncle Juan some money. He said that my mother and
I should be careful because the Japanese Imperial Army might land
in Lingayen, Pangasinan, and would be in our area soon.
My uncles walked back to where we were and reached our evacuation
site just before Christmas of 1941. They gave us the money my
father sent and told us that my uncle Pedro was alright. I felt I was
very lucky to have a thoughtful father who knew I needed his support
in such diffi cult times. I thought it was better to have a supportive
father, even though I was an illegitimate child, than a father who
abandoned his family and ran away when they needed him. That is
why I loved my father very much.
We spent Christmas and New Year in the cave. It was very cold.
The place was swarming with mosquitoes, and we lit small fi res so