Lola Rosa

Maria Rosa Henson of Pasay City was gathering firewood when she was raped by Japanese soldiers at the beginning of the war. Fleeing to Pampanga, she joined the HUKBALAHAP, finding food and medicine for the guerrillas and acting as a messenger. During one of her missions, she was captured by the enemy and brought to a military garrison in Angeles City. As a 14-year-old comfort woman, she was raped by 12 to 20 and sometimes, 30 Japanese soldiers every day for nine months until she was rescued by Huk guerrillas.

After the war, Henson raised three children as a single mother, working as a laundrywoman and then in a cigarette factory. Since she went public with her story in 1992, she had actively fought for justice and indemnity for Japanese wartime sex slaves, joining marches and hearings, and filing a lawsuit in Japan. In 1994, she released Comfort woman: slave of destiny, then the only autobiography written by any of the hundreds of thousands of known comfort women in Asia. She once said that remembering was the best revenge.