It's amnesia time
It's amnesia time
Posted 00:12am (Mla time) Feb 12, 2005
By Bambi Harper
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the February 12, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
SEVERAL people have been calling to ask that I write on the 60th anniversary of the Liberation, when 100,000 Manileños were massacred. But one wonders if aside from them anybody else cares? Certainly not the government, which hasn't seen fit to even honor the Katipuneros with a memorial in Manila, although one senator has managed to dump a statue of Lapu-lapu in a park supposedly reserved for heroes of the Revolution. Even when celebrating what they considered a hundred years of independence in 1998, there was no lasting tribute to remember them -- just the remains of the Expo in Clark with Styrofoam facades. I wouldn't be surprised if soon we'd have forgotten who started the Revolution of '96.
The government hasn't bothered with a tribute to the guerrillas either, 60 years or no 60 years, but it is celebrating a Philippine-Japan Festival this month and has been doing so for the past decade. As I've said before, if we had any self-esteem (which seems to have gone down the drain together with the economy), we would at least have had the decency to choose any month other than February to celebrate Philippine-Japanese friendship. This after all was the month that saw destruction by "sword and fire" that did not just level a whole city but drove a people to their knees. I don't think we've ever quite recovered.
But why should we expect anything? One imagines that we owe Japan a ton of money or we are beholden to the Japanese because they've given us grants or tractors or roller skates in the millions and you don't want to get into a diplomatic fracas now, would you?
It's gotten so ridiculous that the town of Mabalacat has conveniently forgotten that more than a million Filipinos died in that war, with 100,000 murdered in Manila in February. Instead they chose to remember the kamikaze pilots and honored them with a statue. What can you say about a people like that?
One wonders how we expect anybody to respect us when we don't even respect ourselves. A people who pay tribute to their former enemies rather than to their own heroes? You must admit there's something very wrong here.
On this 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Auschwitz, Holocaust survivors gathered and prayed the kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, as well as Christian prayers. It says "such gestures movingly conjured up the past." Last Feb. 3, a priest who shall remain nameless attended a ceremony supposedly commemorating the liberation at the Manila City Hall and heard one councilor praising the mayor's uncle and then the mayor praising his uncle, too. No one appeared to have remembered those 100,000 dead.
Soon enough World War II will cease to be a living memory as survivors die off and yet we still haven't gotten the story straight. To be fair, it's not as though we've come to terms with our history, whether with the 1896 Revolution or the Philippine-American War or the American occupation or even the collaborators. Come to think of it, wasn't it decided that aside from some unknowns there weren't any collaborators at all?
We should keep our history alive for the generations who will come after us, yet what we seem to be doing is trying our darndest to forget it. So what exactly is the Filipino supposed to be proud of at this point? What will make him rally around the flag?Right now we're trembling in our collective boots because Japan wants to reduce the number of "Japayukis" (isn't that what they call our so-called entertainers?). Even the secretary of foreign affairs had to step in, fly to Japan and I'm sure beg the Japanese on bended knees not to cut off future foreign remittances that we expect to bolster a moribund economy. And this small band of brothers expects the government to remember Japanese atrocities? Get real.
Last Monday was the local premier of a riveting movie, "The Great Raid," based on, among other accounts, Hampton Sides' "Ghost Soldiers" (referring to American POWs) who were mostly survivors of the Bataan Death March. It deals with the rescue of 511 American POWs on Jan. 30, 1945 from a Japanese camp, notorious for its brutality since of the original 12,000 prisoners only 511 remained. (The healthier ones had been sent to Japan to work as slaves.)
It was a raid conducted by 121 soldiers handpicked from the US Army's 6th Ranger Battalion commanded by Henry Mucci and guerrillas under Juan Pajota (played by Cesar Montano) and Eduardo Joson. The guerrillas held Gabu Bridge, thus preventing Japanese reinforcements from crossing the river.
Today in Cabanatuan only six concrete blocks from the camp's water tower remain. A memorial was dedicated in 1982 with the names of those who died in the camp. In 2003 another memorial was dedicated to the US Army troopers who liberated the camp in 1945. Out of the 121 Rangers, there were two casualties. Two POWs didn't survive. But 21 Filipino guerrillas were killed in that raid.
Have you ever heard of Juan Pajota or Eduardo Joson and their men? Is anybody putting up anything in their honor 60 years after the event? Stupid question.
The generation of those who fought that war is dying. Their stories surely should be told. It is said that the most crucial duty imposed by war is never to forget. We obviously have never heard of the saying.
Posted 00:12am (Mla time) Feb 12, 2005
By Bambi Harper
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the February 12, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
SEVERAL people have been calling to ask that I write on the 60th anniversary of the Liberation, when 100,000 Manileños were massacred. But one wonders if aside from them anybody else cares? Certainly not the government, which hasn't seen fit to even honor the Katipuneros with a memorial in Manila, although one senator has managed to dump a statue of Lapu-lapu in a park supposedly reserved for heroes of the Revolution. Even when celebrating what they considered a hundred years of independence in 1998, there was no lasting tribute to remember them -- just the remains of the Expo in Clark with Styrofoam facades. I wouldn't be surprised if soon we'd have forgotten who started the Revolution of '96.
The government hasn't bothered with a tribute to the guerrillas either, 60 years or no 60 years, but it is celebrating a Philippine-Japan Festival this month and has been doing so for the past decade. As I've said before, if we had any self-esteem (which seems to have gone down the drain together with the economy), we would at least have had the decency to choose any month other than February to celebrate Philippine-Japanese friendship. This after all was the month that saw destruction by "sword and fire" that did not just level a whole city but drove a people to their knees. I don't think we've ever quite recovered.
But why should we expect anything? One imagines that we owe Japan a ton of money or we are beholden to the Japanese because they've given us grants or tractors or roller skates in the millions and you don't want to get into a diplomatic fracas now, would you?
It's gotten so ridiculous that the town of Mabalacat has conveniently forgotten that more than a million Filipinos died in that war, with 100,000 murdered in Manila in February. Instead they chose to remember the kamikaze pilots and honored them with a statue. What can you say about a people like that?
One wonders how we expect anybody to respect us when we don't even respect ourselves. A people who pay tribute to their former enemies rather than to their own heroes? You must admit there's something very wrong here.
On this 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Auschwitz, Holocaust survivors gathered and prayed the kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, as well as Christian prayers. It says "such gestures movingly conjured up the past." Last Feb. 3, a priest who shall remain nameless attended a ceremony supposedly commemorating the liberation at the Manila City Hall and heard one councilor praising the mayor's uncle and then the mayor praising his uncle, too. No one appeared to have remembered those 100,000 dead.
Soon enough World War II will cease to be a living memory as survivors die off and yet we still haven't gotten the story straight. To be fair, it's not as though we've come to terms with our history, whether with the 1896 Revolution or the Philippine-American War or the American occupation or even the collaborators. Come to think of it, wasn't it decided that aside from some unknowns there weren't any collaborators at all?
We should keep our history alive for the generations who will come after us, yet what we seem to be doing is trying our darndest to forget it. So what exactly is the Filipino supposed to be proud of at this point? What will make him rally around the flag?Right now we're trembling in our collective boots because Japan wants to reduce the number of "Japayukis" (isn't that what they call our so-called entertainers?). Even the secretary of foreign affairs had to step in, fly to Japan and I'm sure beg the Japanese on bended knees not to cut off future foreign remittances that we expect to bolster a moribund economy. And this small band of brothers expects the government to remember Japanese atrocities? Get real.
Last Monday was the local premier of a riveting movie, "The Great Raid," based on, among other accounts, Hampton Sides' "Ghost Soldiers" (referring to American POWs) who were mostly survivors of the Bataan Death March. It deals with the rescue of 511 American POWs on Jan. 30, 1945 from a Japanese camp, notorious for its brutality since of the original 12,000 prisoners only 511 remained. (The healthier ones had been sent to Japan to work as slaves.)
It was a raid conducted by 121 soldiers handpicked from the US Army's 6th Ranger Battalion commanded by Henry Mucci and guerrillas under Juan Pajota (played by Cesar Montano) and Eduardo Joson. The guerrillas held Gabu Bridge, thus preventing Japanese reinforcements from crossing the river.
Today in Cabanatuan only six concrete blocks from the camp's water tower remain. A memorial was dedicated in 1982 with the names of those who died in the camp. In 2003 another memorial was dedicated to the US Army troopers who liberated the camp in 1945. Out of the 121 Rangers, there were two casualties. Two POWs didn't survive. But 21 Filipino guerrillas were killed in that raid.
Have you ever heard of Juan Pajota or Eduardo Joson and their men? Is anybody putting up anything in their honor 60 years after the event? Stupid question.
The generation of those who fought that war is dying. Their stories surely should be told. It is said that the most crucial duty imposed by war is never to forget. We obviously have never heard of the saying.
posted by Dante at 7:14 PM
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