Life is full of struggles that you need to surpass.

Throughout the world almost

every living person on the planet will witness suffering at least once in a life time.
Suffering as we know it is defined as the pain we experience due to an injury, medical
malpractice or even disruptions in one’s family life and many more. Although we endure
suffering, do we constantly suffer? According to the German Philosopher, Arthur
Schopenhauer who proposed that life is “full of suffering” and that this suffering is
directly caused by the will of the individual.

Job is an important factor and without work life is impossible. With job we can do
everything, either fulfill our desires or family needs but the important one is we
eventually attain confidence, self-respect and social status which makes us feel the part
of society. We need to work harder if we like to live longer. Getting a job is only the key
to make money. So in order for you to have work, you must be graduated from school.
But the question is, how about those people who are not able to go in school because
of lack of money? Base on the Philippine Star, the number of elementary and high
school dropouts has risen, reaching 4.8 million or an 11 percent increase since 2012,
according to a senior administration lawmaker. Truly, drop out rate in the Philippines is
gradually increasing. It means that the number of families who are suffering from
poverty Is increasing too.

In certain work, capitalist can live longer without labour but labourers can’t live
without the capitalist, because labourer needs to have a job to make money so he can
sustain the necessity of his family. This is the life of people who are under in the middle-
class. The middle class is a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy. The
definition of the term “middle class” is highly political and vigorously contested by
various schools of political and economic philosophy. A strong middle class promotes
the development of human capital and a well educated population. A strong middle
class creates a stable source of demand for goods and services. These people are very
important because they are the ones who create products and any materials that can
use for the company or even in the industry. According to latest data from the FIES
(PSA 2015a), about 2 in every 5 (40.2%) Filipinos belonged to middle-income class,
nearly three-fifths (58.4%) to low-income, and the remaining (1.4%) to high-income. It
means that are many workers who contributing to development of our economy and for
the betterment of our country.

Being in a middle-class before is really hard. They have experienced inequality,

discrimination and unequal rights. In fact, they suffered from surplus value and
exploitation. According to Karl Marx, the core of capitalism is exploitation. The value of
the product produced by labor is greater than the actual price of labor as paid out in
wages. Because of this exploitation, capitalist society must be full of thieves (bourgeois
or capitalists). The workers were exploited by the capitalists. They had always overtime
on their works but their salaries were still lower. So Karl Marx wanted to overthrow the
capitalism and replace with socialism and then communism. Socialism would be step
towards the disappearance of the state’ and communist would be, according to Marx, a
society where goods and services would be distributed. So he wanted to have an equal
society where goods and services would be distributed equally.

It is somehow related to the Eutopia. Because Utopia is a term for an imagined

place where everything is perfect. Utopia turns to be synonymous with impossible
because an ideal life in a perfect society that it offers appears to be out of reach. The
authors of utopias depict the societies similar to theirs but better organized. According
to what I have read, Utopia is very impossible to exist because the students there are
very active in school, they are very smart and intelligent . Also, the people are kind and
this place has zero crime rate. I therefore concluded that it is impossible to exist
because people are sinful ones. In fact, according to the Swedish Normad, St Louis is
ranked as the most dangerous city in the US with a violent crime rate of 1,817.10 per
100,000 residents. It’s also listed as one of the most dangerous cities in the world
because of its high murder rate. There’s a positive trend though with crime decreasing
in general, although the crime rate as much higher than the US average. So the
dreamed society which is the Eutopia, will remain as a dream only.
Even in the past decades, there were people who deceived others to only have money
on their pockets. The big example here is when Japanese colonized the Philippines.
They bulit bulidings for the self satisfaction of the Japanese.

The first comfort station was established in the Japanese concession in Shanghai
in 1932. Earlier comfort women were Japanese prostitutes who volunteered for such
service. Many women responded to calls for work as factory workers or nurses, and did
not know that they were being pressed into sexual slavery. The installation was meant
to pay homage to the estimated 200,000 comfort women from South Korea, Taiwan,
Indonesia, the Netherlands and the Philippines who were condemned to a life of rape
and enslavement by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. Out of the said
figure, 1,000 are believed to be Filipino women. It means that the victims of this crime
were not only Filipino women but also women from other countries. Even until now
many cases of human trafficking happened in the Philippines according to the United
Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) estimated that 60,000 to 100,000 children in the
Philippines were involved in prostitution rings. According to the International Labour
Organization (ILO) about 100,000 children were involved in prostitution as of 2009.

I am very sad when I noticed that there were many innocent people who
suffered from the Japanese colonization. They abused women only to satisfy
themselves. They forced these pityful women to have sex with them. The Japanese are
demonic creature. They deserve to be in hell. They didn’t even think the feelings and
emotions of ladies. Lady deserves to threat like a princess and not an animal.

In 1993, Yohei Kono, the Japanese chief cabinet secretary, had actually offered
the comfort women an apology. However, in recent years, the Japanese government
has retracted the statement and denied the existence of the comfort women system.
There government denied that this crime is not true. They tried to cover up what was
really happened but they failed to do that because there were many victims who voice
out how the Japanese did cruelty to them. There is no secret that couldn’t be revealed.
Even they tried all their best to hide it, the reality is always a reality.

Their Government assert that the women were not slaves and were merely
voluntary prostitutes, working to make money. They said this because they wanted to
clean their names from this crime. So there were over sixty kidnapped victims who
courageously shared their stories and gave testimonies. But, many members of the
Japanese government still denied what was really happened .

And for those that acknowledge the system, or for those people who were didn’t
deny like Toru Hashimoto, governor of Osaka. According to him, sex slavery was
merely a “necessary component” of the war to keep discipline among the troops.He said
that this is not a crime, it is needed for the war. But, Lee Ok Seon, one of the survivors
thinks this is mindless and terrible. She said that, “I cannot grasp how anyone can say
such a thing. Whoever refuses to accept what the Japanese did back then is not a
human being.” The Japanese were so selfish, they thought that having sex with these
women was only okay. They did it in humanly.

Even now in our generation, there’s still exploitation. A report published in

2004 by the Vatican stated: The Philippines has a serious trafficking problem of women
and children illegally recruited into the tourist industry for sexual exploitation.
Destinations within the country are Metro Manila, Angeles City, Olongapo City, towns in
Bulacan, Batangas, Cebu City, Davao and Cagayan de Oro City and other sex tourist
resorts such as Puerto Galera, which is notorious, Pagsanjan, Laguna, San Fernando
Pampanga, and many beach resorts throughout the country. The promise of recruiters
offers women and children attractive jobs in the country or abroad, and instead they are
coerced and forced and controlled into the sex industry for tourists. Recruiters usually
scout for potential recruits in local communities, aided by headhunters who know the
community and its residents well enough. These headhunters help recruiters convince
parents to allow their children to leave. Often, the recruiters give parents cash, making it
even more tempting for them to send their children to work.

Japanese authorities also contend that the issue was settled after the
government delivered an aid package worth $800 million to South Korea in 1965.
However, what Kim Bok Dong seeks is not money or aid: “I can’t die without receiving
an apology from the Japanese government.” Until now, she can’t forgive the Japanese
soldiers who used her body as sex slave. She is very old woman but she couldn’t forget
all those bad memories.

According to Blakemor(2018), Between 1932 and 1945, Japan forced women

from Korea, China and other occupied countries to become military prostitutes.It’s been
nearly a century since the first women were forced into sexual slavery for imperial
Japan, but the details of their servitude remains painful and politically divisive in Japan
and the countries it once occupied. Records of the women’s subjugation is scant; there
are very few survivors and an estimated 90 percent of “comfort women” did not survive
the war. There are only few women who survived from this tragedy. I think the reasons
are; they were being traumatized and killed by the Japanese soldiers. According to
Katona, et al. (N. D), Human trafficking is a form of modern slavery that involves the
forced movement of people internally within countries, or externally across borders.
Victims who are trafficked for sexual exploitation are subject to repeated, multiple
trauma, and high rates of mental health problems including posttraumatic stress
disorder (PTSD) have been found. Narrative exposure therapy (NET) is an evidence-
based treatment for PTSD.

There are many cases here in the Philippines of comfort women especially the
youths because of the illegal recruitment . They use the children’s as a comfort women
because within this has many money they can get. Human trafficking is considered one
of the most profitable organized crimes in the world as it generates almost $32 billion
each year it shows that the human trafficking is make getting worst specially in the third
world countries like the Philippines and also because of poverty many women attracted
to money that they may earned from this job. In 2010, CNN ran an article about a 15-
year-old who began working in prostitution in a bar in the notorious fields ave, Angeles
City because she needed money to support her baby. She was eventually trafficked to
Malaysia where she was forced to take drugs and forced to service 20 customers a day.

It is true that the country who has high rate in human trafficking is in the third
word country. Even the parent uses their child to only to have money on their pocket.
There are some instances that the parent is taking video to their undressed child and
will be going to send that video to the customers online.

The most shocking event that is happened here in our country is when after the
typhoon Haiwan. Human trafficking prevalent in post-typhoon Philippines Almost two
months after Super Typhoon Haiyan hit the central part of the Philippines, people are
still suffering from hunger, dehydration, displacement and emotional stress, as well as
another tragedy often linked to natural disasters: human trafficking.

Out of the thousands of survivors relocated to Manila and Cebu, a yet unknown
number of youngsters have been snatched by mafias to be sold to prostitution dens and
modern slavemasters, according to Bishop Broderick Pabillo, convenor of the
Philippines’ Interfaith Movement Against Human Trafficking and Manila’s auxiliary
bishop.

“During disaster situations [like Haiyan], a lot of people are desperate to look for
work, shelter, and education, among other things. These particular vulnerabilities are
the usual things offered to them by exploiters,” Pabillo told Devex. “It’s sad that victims
are already suffering the effects of disasters and are still being put under human
trafficking.”

Haiyan affected over 16 million people with 4 million displaced, according to the
country’s disaster management agency. Although a number of victims have decided to
come back and rebuild their lives in their devastated communities in Leyte and Samar,
the majority remain in Manila and Cebu.

These people include women and children, the most vulnerable to human
trafficking, a long-standing concern in the Philippines, described as “a source
destination and transit country for men, women and children who are subjected to sex
trafficking and forced labor”

Back in year 2015, there was an agreement that is happened. The core objective
of the 2015 agreement between Japan and South Korea on the so-called “comfort
women” issue is to restore the honor and dignity of victims and heal their wounds
through joint efforts by the two governments. So both government thought that their
decision would possibly resolve the problem about this crime? This crime will remain
unforgettable for those women who suffered from it even the Japanese government
gave a big money for victims.

The foundation has become dysfunctional as most of its board members have
resigned since last year. The South Korean government would say that the reality has
forced its decision to disband the body.
In fact, however, the foundation has produced some benefits for former comfort women.
More than 70 percent of the surviving victims eligible for the financial support program
expressed their intention to accept the money.

It is said that it was a bitter decision for many of them. But there is no denying
that the foundation played an important role in helping the victims. The foundation was
designed to engage in long-term efforts to heal their wounds. How does the South
Korean government intend to provide relief to former comfort women after scrapping the
body?

Like the United Nations, The United Nations Voluntary Trust Fund for Victims of
Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children was established in 2010 within
the UN Global Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons, in line with the Protocol
to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and
Children, supplementing the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.
The UN and the Japanese Government were both gave big fund for the victims of
human trafficking. They have same objective but have different reason. The Un gave
this fund to help these people, but the Japanese Government gave fund to apologize
from the crime that they have made.

From the final report of Philippine government, Many of the victims of comfort
women were taken forcefully by the Japanese soldiers while in their home. A few were
taken while they were at home while a few were either working on their duty. Many of
them were still single but there were other married women. A victim from Bicol was
asleep when the Japanese came to their village and got some children.Then, they were
taken to the municipal hall. Another victim was told by her mother to buy food from the
nearby town while the other one was gathering “sisid” (wet) rice near the pier in
Malabon.
 I am so sad when read the narration of one of the victims. She narrated that all
the corners of a particular church in Manila had a woman being raped by the Japanese
every night. There was even a case where the Lola’s house itself was converted into a
garrison. A tunnel was reportedly used to house comfort women. Even the house of
God didn’t value by these Japanese soldiers. According to the digital museum, The
period of confinement of the victims ranged from three days to more than a year. About
25 percent of them were confined for four months or longer while 17 percent were kept
for three months and l6 percent were there for one month. All the victims reported to
have been raped throughout their period of confinement.

Another is the case of Maria Rosa L. Henson. She was born in Pasay City on 5
December 1927 . She was raped by Japanese soldiers first in February 1942. While she
went to find firewood together with her uncles and neighbors for her family.
Unfortunately, she was caught and raped by three Japanese, one of whom seemed to
be an officer. After two weeks she was again raped by the same Japanese officer, while
finding firewoods. Because of this, She felt strong anger toward the Japanese military.
So without hesitation she joined the HUKBALAHAP, an anti-Japanese guerilla. As time
passes by, In April 1943 she was arrested by Japanese at a check point so they taken
her to the headquarters. That was the time that they forced her to become a comfort
woman.

After three months, she was transferred to another comfort station which was a
former rice mill. Maria Rosa and a group of other young women were washing clothes
when a Filipino collaborator of the Japanese suggested that they could earn money
from washing clothes for the Japanese soldiers. So they went with the collaborator to
three Japanese soldiers who were waiting for them. They were taken to a two-storey
houses and were held there for a year washing clothes during day time and being raped
at night
 They decided to do it because they wanted to live longer. This is their work at
that time. They washing the clothes of Japanese soldiers during the day but they served
as comfort women at night. In the first place, they thought that were going to pay when
they wash clothes, but that was only technique of the Japanese to they can bring these
women in a particular comfort station.

According to an article Rappler there was a eighteen years old women who
victim’s of human trafficking she met Alicia Tongco, who introduced herself as an owner
of a talent management agency in Manila, offered to make her an actress and to
become her manager. It was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. Julie the girl( not real
name) ignore her parents and choose to join in manila with opportunity because Alicia
Tongco allowed Julie to live her house free with the other women. At first everything
seemed all right, until Julie was peddled to customers hungry for sex. She was sold 9
times to different men. According to the US State Department’s Human Rights Report
this case is one of about 400,000 women trafficked within the Philippines All over the
world, over 10 million Filipino men, women, and children are subjected to sex trafficking
and forced labor, according to research done by the US government in 2014. This
cases is almost like the cases were happened before in Japanese era were the
Japanese soldiers use many comfort women as their slaves and they also said from
these women that they only do is work for them and these women’s didn’t really know
that they make them as a sex slave by the soldiers. However it’s just like were
happened today many illegal recruiter find a young women to become like that and they
didn’t really know what’s the real plan for them and we have many cases like this
around the world. In fact, Philippines is one of the top it comes to human trafficking.
Many of us bite these kind of scam because of poverty and many of us continue to do
this things to support their families but also there are cases that make them as a slave
like what happened before in Japanese period.

Even children didn’t skip from harassment and sexual abuse brought by these
Japanese soldiers. Lee Ok-seon was running an errand for her parents when it
happened: a group of uniformed men burst out of a car, attacked her and dragged her
into the vehicle. As they drove away, she had no idea that she would never see her
parents again. Because that was the last time that she have seen her parent. She just
only a 14 years old at that time.

Another story of a child who was a victim of the crime is Chong Ok-sun, she was
born on 1920. One day in June, at the age of 13, she had to prepare lunch for her
parents who were working in the field and so she went to the village well to fetch water.
A Japanese garrison soldier surprised her and they took her away, so that her parents
never knew what had happened to their daughter. She was taken to the police station in
a truck, where she was raped by several policemen. When she shouted, they put socks
in her mouth and continued to rape her. The head of the police station hit her in her left
eye because she was crying. So that day she lost her eyesight in the left eye.

After 10 days or so, she was taken to the Japanese army garrison barracks in
Heysan City. There were around 400 other Korean young girls with her and we had to
serve over 5,000 Japanese soldiers as sex slaves every day, up to 40 men per day.
Each time she protested, they hit her or stuffed rags in her mouth. One held a
matchstick to her private parts until she obeyed him. Her private parts were oozing with
blood.

One Korean girl who was with her once demanded why they had to serve so
many, up to 40, men per day. To punish her for her questioning, the Japanese company
commander Yamamoto ordered her to be beaten with a sword. In the end, they cut off
her head. Another Japanese, Yamamoto, told us that “it’s easy to kill you all, easier than
killing dogs.” He also said “since those Korean girls are crying because they have not
eaten, boil the human flesh and make them eat it.”
 Another sad story is about the struggle that have encountered by Hwang So-
gun, she was born 1918. When she was 17 years old, in 1936, the head of our village
came to their house and promised her to help her find a job in a factory. Because her
family was so poor, she gladly accepted this offer of a well-paid job. She was taken to
the railway station in a Japanese truck where 20 or so other Korean girls were already
waiting. They were put on the train, then onto a truck and after a few days’ travel they
reached a big house at the River Mudinjian in China. She thought it was the factory, but
she realized that there was no factory. Each girl was assigned one small room with a
straw bag to sleep on, with a number on each door.

After two days of waiting, without knowing what was happening to her, a
Japanese soldier in army uniform, wearing a sword, came to her room. He asked her
“will you obey my words or not?,” then pulled her hair, put her on the floor and asked me
to open her legs. He raped her. When he left, she saw there were 20 or 30 more men
waiting outside. They all raped her that day. From then on, every night she was
assaulted by 15 to 20 men.

They had to undergo medical examinations regularly. Those who were found
disease-stricken were killed and buried in unknown places. One day, a new girl was put
in the compartment next to her. She tried to resist the men and bit one of them in his
arm. She was then taken to the courtyard and in front of all of us, her head was cut off
with a sword and her body was cut into small pieces

This is how the Japanese treated the women at that time. It is not Important on
what would be happened to the comfort women, the important for them is to satisfy
themselves and to feel relax. These stories are not outliers; tens or perhaps hundreds of
thousands of women and girls were enslaved by the Japanese military from 1932 to
1945. While many were Korean, the Imperial Japanese Army took “comfort women”
from virtually every country it invaded in Asia.
While these stories may feel like distant memories, they are recent enough that some of
the women who endured it, many of them only children at the time, are still alive to talk
about it.

According to the Inquirer.net, For Tessie Ang See, chair of Movement for the
Restoration of Peace and Order, the removal of the Filipino comfort woman statue on
Roxas Boulevard last April was insulting to the highest order. See made her
vehemence about the demolition known during the “Remembering Our Lolas: Opposing
Wars of Aggression” She said that, ““Nakakahiya, yung ibang bansa mayroong ganung
comfort women [statue], pinressure ng Japan hindi naman tinanggal. Only in the
Philippines…” See said. “They betrayed our lolas, kasi yung Japan binigyan natin ng
hektaryang lupa. Itong comfort women halos isang square meter lang hindi pa natin
mapagbigyan.” According to See, for the statue would not be removed if there was
nothing to hide nor fear. President Rodrigo Duterte has since stated that the statue was
removed to avoid offending Japan, adding that Japan had already apologized and made
reparations.

The removal of the statue for the comfort women was really a big deal specially
here in our country. See said that, “Japan was given an hectare of land. Our comfort
women only had almost one square meter, and they could not grant it.” But our
President said that we need to remove it to avoid offending Japan. Why we need to
remove it if that was really happened in our history? And the apologized that have made
by Japan was accepted by the president easily? Because he said that the Japan had
already apologized and made reparation.

I can’t say that the survivors from being a comfort women is fortunate or
unfortunate because their sufferings did not end in 1945 with Japan’s defeat. Many kept
their experiences secret out of shame, or were pressured into silence by their
communities and families back home, who often blamed the young women for what had
been done to them.

The life of a working class before is really harder than their life in now generation.
They say that it is really hard to live now because primary necessities or the basic
needs are in high price. Do they even think the life of workers in the past decades? Do
they know why they are receiving proper wages now a days? A lot of sacrifices that
have made by the people before to have rights and equal treatment in the society.

Those poor people were easily to deceive because they wanted to have money so they
can provide the basic needs of their family. But because of their willingness they would
go but at the end of the day, they would cry asking for help and asking for their lives.

The book of Edward Thompson which is the making of English of the working class has
a big contribution in the society. Thompson uses the term "working class" rather than
"classes" throughout, to emphasize the growth of a working-class consciousness. He
claims in the Preface that "in the years between 1780 and 1832 most English working
people came to feel an identity of interests as between themselves, and as against
other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs."
(Thompson, 1980: 11). He wrote this book to enlighten and open up the eyes of working
class or the proletariat. His book is one of the reasons why people in this world are
somehow experiencing the peaceful way of life.

One of his basis why he have written the Making of English of the working class is
the idea of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. These two social scientists wanted to have
an equal society. They believed that no one should have power over another, that
everyone should be equal. Marx most famous book was the Communist Manifesto. He
wrote it with Friedrich Engels in 1848. The book is about the ideas and aims of
communism.

As I have stated on the second paragraph, education is relevant in aiming for a

better life and for a better nation. When you are graduated, you will become
professional someday. Because of that you can contribute for the development of
economic. The nation will become strong and powerful. Therefore, we can defend our
country for colonization. We can protect women and not letting them to experience the
cruelty brought by the Japanese soldiers.

References

Capeda Cody(2016)8 Facts You Should Know About Filipino Comfort

Women, 8List.PH

https://8list.ph/japan-emperor-state-visit-philippines-comfort-women/

Esmaquel II P. ,Chua RD,(2015) Human trafficking 101: What

trafficking is all about, Rappler.com

https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/115637-human-trafficking-101

Diaz R.E(2015)AN ACT TO INSTITUTE POLICIES TO ELIMINATE

TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS ESPECIALLY WOMEN AND CHILDREN,
ESTABLISHING THE NECESSARY INSTITUTIONAL MECHANISMS
FOR THE PROTECTION AND SUPPORT OF TRAFFICKED PERSONS,
PROVIDING PENALTIES FOR ITS VIOLATIONS, AND FOR OTHER

http://www.chanrobles.com/republicactno9208.html#.Xec3CRjQGDY
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December 4 2019

https://humantrafficking-ctwy-2014-37.weebly.com/history-of-
philippines.html

Galupo Rey(2018)34 women rescued from illegal recruiter in Manila,

Philstar Global

https://www.philstar.com/nation/2018/07/10/1832108/34-women-
rescued-illegal-recruiter-manila/amp/

Porcalla Delon(2017)Number of elementary, high school dropouts

rising – lawmaker, Philstar Global

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.philstar.com/headlines/2017/06/2
5/1713711/number-elementary-high-school-dropouts-rising-
lawmaker/amp/

Most Dangerous Cities In The US 2019(2019) SWEDISH NOMAD

https://www.swedishnomad.com/most-dangerous-cities-in-the-us/

Katona C. Roberts J. Robjant K.(2017)Treating Posttraumatic Stress

Disorder in Female Victims of Trafficking Using Narrative Exposure
Therapy: A Retrospective Audit, Frontiers in Psychiatry

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5451503/

EDITORIAL: Letting ‘comfort women’ deal die a slow death is a

backward step(2018) The Asahi Shimbun Asia&Japan Watch

http://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/AJ201811220016.html
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December 4 2019

http://www.awf.or.jp/e1/philippine-00.html

Han Eliot(2015) An Uncomfortable Essay on “Comfort Women”,

https://medium.com/@eliothan/an-uncomfortable-essay-on-comfort-
women-written-on-7-19-2015-990fefe7012d

Capeda Cody (2018) Remembering the Filipino comfort women,

INQUIRER.NET

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remembering-the-filipino-comfort-women/amp

“‘I Can’t Die without Getting Apology’” Koreatimes. Web. 18 July

2015.

“A Korean “comfort Woman” Still Seeks Redress from Japan —

CNN.com.” CNN. Cable News Network. Web. 18 July 2015.

“Former Comfort Woman Tells Uncomforting Story | Asia | DW.COM |

02.09.2013.” DW.COM. Web. 18 July 2015.
 The Making of English of the

Working Class
By Edward Palmer Thompson

“Comfort Women”

Submitted by: Aprilgene G. Raganta

Emmanuel M. Virgines Jr.

Submitted to: Sir Benedict Reyes