Inside the Malacanang Palace that morning, President Benigno Aquino welcomed visiting Japanese Emperor Akihito.
Outside, Narcisa Claveria, 85, dressed in a fuchsia pink traditional Filipina dress, stood on the frontline of a small group of protesters. She had walked about a quarter mile under the scorching Manila heat in the late morning to get there. It was tiring for an 85-year-old woman like her, but she was determined.
"My message to the emperor is for Japan to recognize us. They already acknowledged the Korean comfort women, what about us?" Claveria says, speaking in a slow, rustic voice. "Until now, there is no justice yet."
The emperor's visit was on Jan. 26, less than a month after Japan agreed to provide $8.3 million in government funds to support a South Korean foundation that aids comfort women.
Eighty-nine-year-old Hilaria Bustamante, in a black traditional Filipina dress, was also at the protests. She says it was tiring indeed to get there that morning and stand for more than an hour outside the palace.
Another in the group of five women is Estelita Dy, 85. "It shouldn't be just the Koreans," she says. "Justice should be for all and not just for one group."
These elderly Filipinas who all battled the heat that day are euphemistically called comfort women, because they gave "comfort" to Japanese soldiers stationed in foreign countries.
More accurately, the women are among the hundreds of thousands of women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese during the war. For years they have been seeking justice for the sufferings they experienced at the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II.
At the protest, the women listed three demands: an apology, compensation from Japan and recognition from the Philippine government that the comfort women system existed in the Philippines during World War II.
"Those are the three demands, no more, no less," says Rechilda Extremadura, executive director of Lila Pilipina or the League of Filipino Women, an organization supporting the comfort women.
[For more of this story, written by Iris C. Gonzales, go to http://womensenews.org/2016/02...ve-a-special-demand/]
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