# reparations

The Last Witnesses: Philippine ‘Grandmothers’ and the Unfinished Demand for Japan’s Apology

Survivors of Japan’s wartime system of sexual slavery in the Philippines — known locally as “grandmothers” — are dwindling, yet their demand for a formal apology and compensation persists. Activists warn that unresolved accountability, historical revisionism and geopolitical pragmatism risk allowing the memory of these crimes to be erased for younger generations.