Philippines - Healing Southeast Asia's 'comfort women'

When I stand before thee at the day's end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing. - Rabindranath Tagore, Indian Writer, Nobel Prize for Literature Winner, 1913.

Those who doubt angels of mercy exist among us should heed the heart-warming career of Cristina Rosello, a Filipina therapist who helps former "comfort women" forced into sexual slavery during World War 2 to balm their inner wounds. In this exclusive interview with Asia Times contributor Victor Fic, Rosello describes her creative methods and how she is both healer - and healed.

A graduate of the University of the Philippines, Rosello campaigned for the inclusion of gender justice and victims' rights in the International Criminal Court (ICC) and for the ratification of the ICC treaty in Southeast Asia and the Pacific states. She is an international affiliate of the American Psychological Association and the author of Disconnect: The Filipino Comfort Women [2].

Victor Fic: Cristina, the former "comfort women" suffered immense trauma. What enables you to help them?

Cristina Rosello: I'm a clinical psychologist with Lolas Kampanyera, a survivors' group of Filpina ex-"comfort women". I was born in the Philippines 10 years after the war so my childhood was filled with war stories. In 1996, I started to counsel Filipino "comfort women" and brought their voices to the ears of government delegations drafting the International Criminal Court statute against sexual slavery.

VF: Update us on the most recent research into the Imperial Japan's policy on having "comfort women".

CR: So-called "comfort stations" first appeared in Shanghai and Manchuria in 1932, but after Japan earnestly expanded its territories in 1937, they increased. That year, countless Chinese women were raped in the Nanking massacre.

Embarrassed Japanese officials authorized military brothels to reduce the rapes because these really alienated the locals. These stations regularly examined the women to ensure the soldiers did not contract venereal disease. Anthropologist Sarah Soh has advanced the debate by contending that the comfort women system evolved in phases during Japan's 15 years of aggression.

She identified various types of stations corresponding to that pegged to key events such as Japan's takeover of Manchuria in 1931, the Nanking Massacre of 1937, bombing of Pearl Harbor and Japan's expansion southward in 1941. Soh finds mainly entertainment houses post-Manchuria but what emerged after Nanking were concessionary stations - private operators - and quasi-brothels. Following Pearl Harbor, criminal forms of stations proliferated in enemy territory. I concur with her deeper understanding of a policy that was not uniform for all times and places.

VF: Why do you categorize the Filipinas' experience as explicitly criminal?

CR: Fighting was fiercest in the war's final stages. Filipinas were abducted in the fields and villages where Japanese soldiers searched for guerillas. These girls witnessed the killings of their male relatives before they were hauled to military garrisons. These non-combatant captives were raped by soldiers, averaging six to 10 each evening. There were no medical checkups and food was scarce. Compared to earlier comfort stations, the soldiers' motive was sexual relief, avenging the death of their comrades and destroying the enemy.

VF: How did that policy come to the Philippines?

CR: The US Congress granted independence to its colony then called the Philippine Islands or PI in 1933 but scheduled to transpire after 10 years. From an anti-colonialist perspective, Japan's invasion was part of its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Plan to control the region. Hours after bombing the US fleet, Japanese war planes struck the American air base at Clark Field in the Philippines. US forces retreated. But to the invaders' chagrin, the Filipino guerilla resistance bravely disrupted Tokyo's timetable to aggress against countries down under. The sexual violence Japan inflicted upon Filipinas was also intended to raise its men's morale and to demoralize us, but it failed.

VF:How many comfort stations existed in the Philippines and for how many women?

CR: About 200,000 Asian women were victimized - an accurate estimate. In the Philippines, 300 to 400 women have surfaced but the actual number is unknown. It is likewise with the comfort stations.

VF:Your phenomenology-existentialism [PE] framework has deep philosophical roots - please explain these.

CR: To start, this is an ontological approach that centers on basic questions of being. Clients confront the deep existential issues central to their emotional and physical life rather than merely alleviating the concomitant anxiety. It is experiential because clients are prodded to know their bodies and to overcome any mind-body disconnect.

The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty underscored the body's role in our experience and perception of the world, meaning the person's experience is deeply embedded in his whole self. It also veers away from so-called "one-person" psychology as exemplified by Freudian preoccupation with intrapsychic explorations of an individual's past.

The thrust is relational or a "two-person" psychological dynamic where both therapist and client are "experiencing persons" who are fully attentive to each other. Their dialogue may tackle past experiences but only insofar as how the person relates to these events in the present.

VF:It sounds like it demands hard work with the client....

CR: Yes, PE therapy is fluid and tends to deviate from technique to prioritize the evolving therapist-client relationship. The psychologist balances spontaneity with focused attention. So while relating to the client extemporaneously, I also view the unfolding social interaction from a supra-ordinate perspective - I overview and channel it. Sometimes, I have a "body sense" or response that nudges me to put myself in the client's shoes to better appreciate the client's insights during his revelations.

VF:Apart from listening and empathizing, you promote the idea of change too. How?

CR: In therapy, insights are always pointed towards deeper self- awareness, particularly the potential for self-healing - through personal agency. While the person is embedded in social, historical and cultural contexts, referencing the German philosopher Martin Heidegger's concept of "being-in-the -world," he is still a change agent. In fact, personal agency is where the PE tradition markedly diverges from post-modern reductionism that views the individual as a mere entity determined by historical, cultural and linguistic forces.

VF:For emphasis, tell us what approaches you reject.

CR: Let's start with the 18th century French rationalist Rene Descartes' dictum "Cogito, ergo sum" meaning "I think, therefore I am." He was central to the age of Enlightenment that emphasized man's faculty for reason - very good. But that Cartesian epithet drew a chasm between an isolated mind separate from the world of objects. It echoed the ancient Greek Platonic disconnect between a subjective "internal" world referring to one's mind and an objective "external" world outside the mind.

VF:But many argued against that....

CR: True, profound critics at the time such as Blaise Pascal, Friedrich Nietzsche and Soren Kierkegaard decried this domination of pure rationalism, including its method of reducing knowledge to discrete parts over whole understanding. They insisted that under the natural scheme of life, the arts and emotions must twin with reason and science. For instance, in 1843, Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling addressed anxiety as a learning experience - not to be avoided, feared or repressed.

VF:And you assert that this branched off into a better framework?

CR: Their dissenting views spawned the philosophy of existentialism as a branch of ontology, both exploring the most fundamental questions of what it means for man to exist. Their preference for a holistic understanding of human experience thrust experience or phenomenology to the fore. So we must bridge existentialism and phenomenology for a therapeutic method that issues from the perspective of the lived and his or her - fully embodied - mental, emotional and bodily experience.

VF:The "comfort women" suffered horrors. How do you connect them to your theories?

CR: After the Japanese invaded the women's land - in a literal parallel - the former ravaged their minds and bodies. This crushed their sense of identity and obliterated their personal history when their loved ones were suddenly killed. For the women, finitude - the end of existence - was not a philosophical musing. It daily stared them in the face.

The value that phenomenology places on experience allows victims to unravel, to unfold their entire story, to ventilate emotions, without censure from observers or the therapist's intrusive analytic judgments. Existential therapy prompts sufferers to confront death, their recurring and painful remembrances of war, the meaninglessness of life, and the social stigma after rape without getting lost in psychic labyrinths. PE therapy reinstates wholeness in these inwardly fragmented survivors without belaboring the goal. It nudges them to live in the present, here-and-now - to become a fully realized person.

VF:Your clients are Filipinas. Is there a social values angle to this?

CR: Filipino culture is described as personalistic, family-oriented and clannish. Prior to the war's outbreak, these prepubescent women were nestled in villages where family ties were strong and dwellers knew each other. Traditional values included chastity. Young girls were generally cloistered and chaperoned. So, you can just imagine how their quiet, pristine lives were irreparably shattered. Also, the therapy leads me to bond with the women, to be relational, so it works with their values.

VF: Define the cardinal manifestations of trauma that the "comfort women" experienced.

CR: They are subsumed under the Diagnostic Criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV-revised) of the American Psychiatric Association. They are re-experiencing, avoidance and increased arousal. Re-experiencing includes recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections, recurrent distressing dream, acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring such as flashbacks and intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cures. Avoidance refers to efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, conversations, as well as activities, places or people associated with the trauma, feeling of detachment from others, sense of a foreshortened future.

Increased arousal is indicated by difficulty falling or staying asleep, irritability or outbursts of anger, difficulty concentrating, hyper vigilance, and exaggerated startle response. The victims often showed many of these symptoms.

VF:These terms come from a professional book, but you also use your own labels - please explain these.

CR: I coined phrases to summarize their symptoms so they and others can better understand. "Fighting Stance" means the victim was on auto-drive, her biological mechanism for detecting danger or threat went haywire. She always insisted someone had personally transgressed her - and fought back. As for "Social Stigma," many victims reeled from it. "Assumed Identities" does not mean that the victim had multiple personalities per se but instead used assumed identities in fantasy.

What is "Connectedness?" These survivors hankered for social connection, particularly the primary ones with dead parents and siblings. "De-individuation" indicates the victims' sense of disorientation after their trauma objectified them and stripped them of identity and history. I will tell the story of an 11-year old girl for "Toughness". She sensed danger during bombings, but her childlike playfulness spared her trauma. She attributed the rapes to the soldiers' rough play - and was not much mentally harmed.

VF:You note that sometimes the women actually cuddled up to you…

CR: Apropos to the principle of stressing the client-therapist relationship, they sidled up to hug or lean on me or lock arms - for a sense of relationship.

VF: How long did these traumatic reactions last?

CR:They persisted for 50 long years after the cessation of hostilities. Most "comfort women" suffered from re-experiencing. They had recurrent and intrusive recollections and nightmares and flashbacks. The victims were psychologically stuck in the past and their real time thoughts were frequently disrupted by their automatic recall of their war experiences, a temporal, historical disconnect where they could not fully live in the present.

Many also engaged in avoidance or efforts to suppress thoughts, feelings, conversations, activities, places or people they associate with their trauma, feeling detached from others, and had a disjointed sense of time. They had increased arousal and hyper vigilance; they had sleeping difficulties and often became irritable.

VF: Are these enduring traumatic experiences unique to the comfort women?

CR: Research on post traumatic stress disorder shows that male prisoners during WW II suffered from it for up to 45 years after release - or even their whole life. But let's underscore that they were combatants and expected incarceration and torture. The "comfort women" did not foresee the atrocities because they were not soldiers.

VF: Explain the founding principle of your face-to-face treatment methods.

CR: Generally, for the victims to become attuned to their lived - mentally and physically embodied - experience, their therapy must be primarily experiential, steering away from their or the therapists' verbosity and intellectualizing and enhance their kinesthetic awareness of the body in motion so basic to body-mind integration.

VF:It is almost athletic...

CR: Yes, in a manner of speaking. Centering and movement exercises cause the client to use the force of gravity to align or harmonize her body with the earth and foster kinesthetic awareness of body and its - harmonious relationship - to the world.

VF: It sounds ironic that inducing a trance promotes clear thinking - please explain it.

CR: "Regression" entails the therapist promoting a light trance or altered state to facilitate the victim's reflections of unresolved past conflicts. Relaxation is central to it. Physician Edmund Jacobson developed the Progressive Muscle Relaxation [PMR] in 1934 to relax group of muscles in sequence, starting with the head and moving to the feet.

VF:Why is breath control also part of your repertoire?

CR: Breath work is basic to experiential exercises. This is not new, though. Many ancient Eastern meditative disciplines such as Patanjali's Yoga Sutras - also called Raja Yoga - extol deep breathing for relaxation, and connecting mind and body.

VF:You draw upon Greek and Indian philosophy in sound therapy…how?

CR: Sound evokes feelings and permits emotional expression. Humming induces a meditative 'relaxed' state. This idea starts with Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher and mathematician who died in 500 BC. He called it musical medicine. In Hinduism, the Rig-Veda of 300 BC has over a thousand hymns. Of the Vedic texts, the Upanishads praises "Om" as the most powerful sound because mystics associate it with the sound of creation.

VF:What other great thinkers guide your methods?

CR: Creative visualization means the client turns experience into understandable symbols. The art's healing power traces to Asclepius in ancient Greece. Healing was holistic - scientific health care linked with spirituality. It entailed visualization and dream analysis. The Asclepiads' temples twinned worship and health.

VF:Are any influences more recent?

CR: In the years before he died in 1970, the German born psychiatrist Fritz Perls pioneered Gestalt Therapy which brings forth self awareness among people through its emphasis on the "here-and-now," to keep a person from intellectualizing. Perceptual clarifications between background-and-foreground are also a means to sort out their problems.

His "thought stopping" activities include instructing clients to suddenly shift from one topic to another, nudging them to become aware of their thoughts and ability to restrain the same. The ensuing jolt leads people to the present.

VF: Perl's "empty chair" resembles an absurdist play. Why do you insist it works?

CR: It has the client "talk" to someone she visualizes to be sitting in an empty seat for "discussion" with a "significant other" - to "finish an unfinished business" in Gestalt Therapy's terminology. It is a form of role-playing where a person assumes another's perspective. This unravels the internal logic and allows conflict resolution.

VF:You take credit for the garden drawing technique - explain it.

CR: The client draws a garden in art sessions after hypnotic imagery, meaning creative visualization under a mild trance for the 'alpha state' of relaxation. I - uniquely - developed it in 1983. The garden subverts the client's resistance to disclosing herself, fosters rapport and participation. Its rich symbolism shows the victim's psychological state. We decipher the drawing together.

VF: You humanize and demonstrate your methods with case studies. For example, Hilda realized she is not always a victim ... please explain.

CR: She appeared laid-back, but her stiff neck signified unarticulated emotions. "Breath work" and "humming" released her stuck energy. Also, Hilda lost touch with her body and felt violated again during her two post war marriages. I encouraged her to understand that sex is inherent in marriage and that her spouses did not attack her. She realized that she swung between demanding redress and acquiescing. She became more resolute in fighting for justice.

VF: Josefina could not trust people ... and you did what with her?

CR: In a mild trance, she readily imagined a garden. In normal consciousness, she drew it - but refused discussion. So we used a "paper-and-pencil exercise" where she listed her perceived traits and important things in her life in one column and then their opposite. She became aware of disowned "parts" of herself and became open to the therapist, then discussed her rape, really warmed up to the other victims and people.

VF: Estrella did the empty chair method, but not with her Japanese tormentors. Whom did she "talk" to?

CR: She "talked" to her husband because when she was about to go public, he opposed her - but she defied him. I had her enter his shoes. Feeling empathy, she knew how to approach him.

VF: Juana has a bitter claim to fame ...

CR: She was the sole woman survivor of the San Agustin Church massacre of 1945 in Intramuros, Manila. Facing defeat, the Japanese massacred about a thousand prisoners. Juana fainted and dead bodies piled on her. She crawled out and American saved her.

VF: Why didn't she feel lucky to be alive?

CR: Juana was embittered, on adrenaline overdrive - quick to fight. "Regression" failed to stop her chattering. We did "hypnotic imagery" for relaxation and she drew a room, the place she shared with her husband where the Japanese accosted them. Therapy made her understand why she was abrasive and alienated people. She became gentler, stopped ranting and listened - a breakthrough! Next, she befriended other victims.

VF: Florencia blossomed from incoherence to being a voice for truth. What led to this "Helen Keller" transformation?

CR: She would blabber about disjointed incidents, complain or snap out of the conversation - unable to return. Why? She witnessed the Japanese kill her grandmother. We did "regression" to relive her grandmother's demise, how a man then abducted her - and forced her - to marry him and her suffering as his wife. She realized that her husband's womanizing emanated from her aversion to sex linked to her trauma. Florencia then made peace with her spouse and spoke to foreign audiences about the "comfort women".

VF: Laura kept sensing her own death. How can you assist someone fatalistic?

CR: When Laura's father said he was not a guerilla, the soldiers slashed his stomach and struck her mother. Laura's older sister ran, but the Japanese cut off her nipples. Fear of imminent death hounded Laura. She felt guilt over her whole family's death. At first, Laura spoke in a high, girlish pitch. 'Humming' caused an adult voice - as if healing. Joining the campaign for redress from Japan diminished her guilt and added purpose to her life and she thought maybe that is why she was spared.

VF: With Demetria, she hit the floor, so to speak, but it led her to understand how her life intersected with history ... recall that.

CR: Her husband never accepted her wartime rape and abused her, aggravating her trauma. She looked calm, but her face projected torment. A "centering exercise" grounded her - she knelt down with her spine perpendicular to the ground. Demetria saw the commonality between her wartime rape and her post war husband's condemnation. The redress organization addressed the causes of neo-colonialism. Demetria understood domestic violence and military sexual slavery as forms of patriarchy. So she did not blame herself - or accept such condemnation.

VF: Rosalia divulged that she could not become human again. But overcome her hopelessness with “tough love” ….

CR: Her life was endless thoughts of being worthless and anxiety - her stiff body reflected it. The sound "ah" from the diaphragm synchronized to each exhalation caused "catharsis". As our rapport deepened, I bluntly asserted "the past will haunt you if you allow it" and "what good does being helpless and hopeless do?" Jolting her demoralization stopped her from lamenting.

VF: The most complicated case was Gina - or Ginas. Identify her several selves.

CR: She raised her sons to become successful professionals. But when she revealed that she was a "comfort woman", both disowned her. She clung to her mother role. So her pain buried bear. She verbalized her fantasy other "personalities" like being a rich, powerful businesswoman. It reflected her immense desire to cope with helplessness. Or she "became" a mediatrix - a saintly bearer of spiritual messages. This transcendent personality made her feel above suffering - including her own. My therapy did not aim for a single identity, but had her reflect that parental love means accepting children's choices. Our sessions did not channel pain to evoke insights.

VF: The most ironic tale is Mariam. How can "playfulness" shield someone from severe trauma?

CR: Even though old, she was still boyish. As a girl, when she played with the boys, she dismissed her scratches - part of the game. She carried the same attitude when young, seemingly Korean soldiers fighting for Japan lured her onto a barge. The 11-year-old Mariam thought that the repeated rapes were also a game. Although her reproductive capacity was damaged for life, she was never bitter.

VF: Your book complexly asserts that the "comfort women" were "spared humanity's curse of the illusory 'I'". What does that mean?

CR: To start, people survive chaos through socialization. Our families and cultures give us rules and values. Later as young adults or in mid life, we realize that these creeds form our "provisional self" or ego. We then enlarge and authenticate ourselves. This questioning and unlearning the socialization is painful and confusing, like a curse - but the only way to self growth. The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung labeled it "individuation".

The 'I' or ego is a very Western concept, an offshoot of Cartesian reductionism and the West's materialism. Eastern thought maintains man and nature's synergy. The 'Self' reflects the divinity. In India's Advaita spiritual tradition, for instance, this understanding is strong. It stresses a unified vision and experience of life. A Zen poem expresses this: "before enlightenment, mountains are mountains/during enlightenment, mountains are no longer mountains/afterward, mountains are mountains again."

The key idea is that our initial unitary perception becomes fragmented as we grow but it leads back to a unitary perception - once we acknowledge that everything is interconnected. Physicist David Bohme, a contemporary of Albert Einstein, said, "The true state of affairs in the material world is wholeness. If we are fragmented, we must blame it on ourselves."

VF: Again, let's connect theory with the victims' daily trials. Did they sidestep growth?

CR: No, the "comfort women" did not choose to avoid the questioning and growth toward a unitary vision. Their trauma disrupted their natural development, freezing them mentally before their trauma or at its time. Individuation was curtailed. They side stepped the attendant pain but their existence was fragmented and disjointed. They needed to first "process" their long hidden trauma. My therapy did not "cure" but did assist them.

VF: You helped them reconnect with their inner self and restart the growth?

CR: They found comfort in revisiting the time just before their world crumbled. Clearly they sought - as we do - to develop a self-concept, an"I' or an ego. 'Regression' methods allowed them to 'go back' and continue the interrupted growth and offered closure - crucial in healing inner wounds.

VF: You cite a complicated tale about one's suffering related to Jesus Christ...meaning?

CR: It is from Pope John Paul II's Salvific Dolores or On the Christian Meaning of Suffering. It is apt because the victims' country is predominantly Catholic. Often, only faith sustained them. Salvific Dolores teaches that Jesus Christ so loved humankind that He died for it - even though innocent. Once a suffering person understands this and bears his own cross, he 'spiritually unites' himself with Jesus Christ. Hardship is revealed as salvific. In therapy, the victims reflected on this and felt so liberated they groped for words. The quotation communicates their sentiments about transcendence.

VF: What is your motive in treating the victims?

CR: Altruism balances with a personal need to heal my inner wounds. Initially, I responded to women's rights advocates requesting counseling for the women. They observed the women, when speaking before an audience, became too emotional and digressed. When I came face-to-face with the survivors, an intense desire to help overwhelmed me. I discovered their predicament was linked to unresolved conflicts in my childhood.

VF: Cristina, you say that PE therapy also changes the therapist. How was that true for you?

CR: The therapy is a dialogical engagement of co-travelers in life. The client is not relegated to an inferior position whose life needs 'fixing.' Instead, she interacts uniquely and specially with the therapist. My childhood war memories became starker during therapy - a maid and I shared a room. At night, she wailed to her parents killed in the war. It was eerie. Growing up, I often felt mysteriously sad even when strangers were abused and fought for them. The "comfort women" made realize why I am morally fearless.

Victor Fic

Asia Times

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