Nearly 80 years since they were abducted and raped by Japanese soldiers, a small group of elderly Filipino women hope their government will finally acknowledge their wartime ordeal by creating a compensation fund.
For the few remaining survivors, all in their late 80s or 90s, the reparations demand issued by a U.N. committee earlier this year is realistically their last hope following a series of disappointments in their long quest for justice.
"In our last moments alive, I hope we can still receive the reparations for what we suffered," said survivor Maria Quilantang, 88, in Mapaniqui village, close to the Japanese barracks where the abuses involving about 100 women and girls took place in 1944.