MANILA, Philippines — Mention “World War II ’’ and the only role that Filipino women seem to have played in it was either that of a comfort woman, or of a romantic partner to a sympathetic Japanese soldier.

And then there’s popular culture that gave us movies like “Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos” and “Gatas sa Dibdib ng Kaaway”, where Filipino women discover that the Japanese are not all bad after all.

But in the new book “Bride of War: My Mother’s World War II Memories”, an entirely new image of the WWII -era Filipina is revealed. Neither comfort woman nor lover to a Japanese soldier, the Filipino woman at the center of this book is a part of the resistance – a HUKBALAHAP (Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon) bride who has experienced the threat of Japanese invaders almost the same way her husband did. And the most amazing thing about it is that it is as true as it can possibly be.

Written by University of the Philippines professor Teresa Gimenez Maceda, “Bride of War” skillfully stitches together the memories of her late mother into a compelling narrative about one woman’s life under the Japanese regime. The book was launched last week at the University of the Philippines.

WRITING AS THERAPY

The idea of writing down her mother’s memories about such a traumatic period in our country’s history came shortly after Maceda’s mother suffered a stroke in 2003. Upon the advice of a friend, Maceda urged her mother to write down her memories as part of her therapy.

“It was a project I suggested to her, to keep her mind active and to improve the dexterity of her hands.

I thought it was important that while she still had her memories of World War II , she should write them down to help her never forget what molded her as a person,” Maceda writes in the introduction to her book.

But the author notes that even before her mother’s stroke, she was already taking notes of the stories her mother shared, instinctively sensing that the story was something that had not yet been told.

“It was always my father who was telling his side of war when he was talking to his grandchildren.

He would talk about the war and the battle strategies. But there would always be my mother on the side saying that she was with him, or she would give me these tremendously compelling snippets of her life. I had been taking notes of many stories of Mama, even before her stroke, when she was more detailed with her oral recounting,” Maceda says.

Her mother’s death in November 2009 not only plunged her family into mourning, it also made Maceda question her own insistence at having her mother recount those painful years of living under Japanese rule.

“Did I hasten my mother’s death when I asked her to write down her memories of the war? Did I cause her more stress and anxiety with my constant goading for her to continue with her writing? Or was it my relentless interviews of her about the war?” she wonders.

JOURNALS AND MEMORIES

It would be a month af ter her mother’s death that Maceda, upon the encouragement of her husband, would look at all the information that her mother had left her and consider piecing it all together into a narrative.

As she continued working on it, it would turn out to be a bigger collaborative project, with other members of the family sharing their own memories and stories they heard from their mother about experiences during the war.

“I went through all the files of her writing. I looked at my dad’s military journals and my old notebooks where I would record now and then war stories from my father. My family also added their own memories, until the book was further enriched,” she says.

With Maceda and her family piecing together the puzzle of her mother’s memories, the book slowly took form, and with acclaimed writers Jun Cruz Reyes and National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera’s input, it has now become “Bride of War”.

Maceda says that the book is as much about how she and her siblings have been shaped by their mother, in much the same way that the war shaped a part of her mother’s life.

“The book is the story, as well, of how I stitched together the different multicolored strands of my mother’s memories of war, revealing, in the process, how these have helped mold (my siblings) Tony, Tommy, Lulu, and myself into the persons we are today,” she explains in her book’s introduction.

As much pain as it caused the family to revisit some of their mother’s memories — Maceda recounts her sister Lulu being unable to read the first page of the first draft because of grief – she says that sharing stories like these are essential not just for families, but for the country’s history as well. “I think each family has a narrative about a historical moment.

I am sure that other women have also gone through horrendous experiences, but the thing is they are confined inside families, among communities, and they become legends. I think it’s important that they share it, because that is what really creates us as a nation, their stories,” she ends.