RIZAL WAS RIGHT: a person has to recall the lessons of his
past to forge a better future. Taking this adage to embrace the Filipino nation
means Filipinos must cast a studied eye at past greatness to exceed that
greatness in the future.
This country is a Great Nation. But it is a Nation that has
forgotten the meaning of greatness because it refuses to recognize the
greatness in its past.
For some Filipinos whose minds are warped by the archetypal
image of the downtrodden Pinoy, these bold statements will be shocking. These
Filipinos will be hard pressed to remember a time in our history when Filipinos
were great.
What they will see are some four centuries of unrelieved Spanish
tyranny; close to five decades of petty American “culture” and three years of
inhuman Japanese brutality.
Where is the greatness in this litany of oppression?
Memories of
Filipino greatness
The greatness lies in that the Filipino Nation defeated four
centuries of imperial racism by these colonial empires.
The greatness lies in the Filipino Nation defeating the
hated Spaniards in 1898. A local revolt in what is now Quezon City triggered in
1896 by an obscure warehouse helper named Andres Bonifacio grew so rapidly that
it had reduced Spain’s hold on the Philippines to the single city of Intramuros
by 1898.
Filipino revolutionaries, mostly unlettered farmers armed
with bolos and bamboo spears and emboldened by an enduring hatred of the
Spaniard, had inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Spanish Empire and had
wrested control of Las Islas Filipinas from the unwelcome invader.
Independence would have been ours had not the Americans
intervened in 1898. It became ours in 1946 but only after a vicious war against
the barbaric Japanese that left some one million Filipinos dead by 1945, out of
a population of only 17 million Filipinos.
Filipino guerillas, mostly unlettered farmers armed with
bolos and bamboo spears like their Revolutionary fathers and emboldened by an
intense hatred of the Japanese, had helped inflict one of the greatest military
defeats in the history of the Empire of Japan.
Of the 380,000 Japanese invaders in the Philippines in
October 1944, only 40,000 remained alive when the Imperial Japanese Army
surrendered to Filipinos in Kiangan, Ifugao on September 2, 1945. The
Philippines was the largest grave of Japanese soldiers in Southeast Asia during
World War 2.
What is not well known even until today is how effective the
Filipino was in the guerilla war against the Japanese. When the Americans
returned to the Philippines at Leyte in October 1944, Filipino guerillas
controlled 36 of the Philippines’ 48 provinces.
This almost complete Filipino domination of the countryside
meant that fighting was limited to pockets of Japanese resistance, mostly in the
larger cities in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. Some of these pockets such as
those in north Luzon proved difficult to crush, but the task of exterminating
the Japanese would have been much harder for the Filipino-American allies had
the Japanese held the countryside.
The Japanese did not, and this disadvantage proved fatal to
them in the long-run since they were unable to deploy soldiers, equipment and
supplies freely to where they were needed. Filipino guerillas blockaded roads,
destroyed bridges and attacked Japanese convoys almost at will. American
airpower constricted Japanese movements even more.
The great Battle of Bessang Pass in Ilocos Norte from
February to June 1945—the greatest victory by Filipinos over the Japanese—was
an all-Filipino battle that proved the martial superiority of Filipinos over
the Japanese in the attack.
By defeating the entrenched Japanese who held positions in
hills and ridges some 1,500 meters high, the Filipino guerillas of the United
States Army Forces in the Philippines-Northern Luzon (USAFIP-NL) put to a victorious
end to the most vicious close quarter battle of the Liberation, and finally
surrounded the remnants of the Imperial Japanese Army in north Luzon in a ring
of steel from which they were unable to escape.
Memorials to
Filipino greatness
But it was the great defensive struggle for Bataan and
Corregidor from January to May 1942 that most vividly illustrates the innate
greatness of the Filipino.
Unprepared, ill-equipped and mostly untrained, the Filipinos
of the Commonwealth Army fatally disrupted Japan’s timetable for conquest by
their superhuman endurance and bravery. Our resistance against mammoth odds set
the stage for an unbroken string of Japanese defeats that began at the Battle
of Midway a month after the surrender of Corregidor, and ended with the
annihilation of the Imperial Japanese Army in the Philippines in September
1945.
With our blood and suffering, we had bought time for the
Americans to counterattack, and for Freedom to win in the end.
All this, most Filipinos of today remain contentedly
unaware.
If you do want to be inspired by tangible monuments to our
past heroism, go on a pilgrimage to Bataan and Corregidor, the Holy Shrines to
Filipino Heroism.
But before you embark on the guided tour of these Sacred
Grounds, first immerse yourself in their history. Read about our resistance in
the Second World War so you will see beyond the immediate images of shattered
buildings, massive mortars and battlegrounds long since overgrown with new
grass.
Your mindset must be that of a religious pilgrim, not that
of a tourist. A religious pilgrim sees the significance behind the symbols; a
tourist sees symbols merely as backgrounds for his photographs.
Your tour guide will go on and on about battlegrounds that have
since become tourist spots. He will crack jokes and in the main resemble
something of an entertainer.
Forget his facetiousness, and remember the ground on which
you tread has been sanctified by the blood of our grandfathers and fathers. Tread lightly and with reverence.
This sacredness is more palpable on Corregidor. I visited
“The Rock” on April 7 as part of a group that took part in the “Araw ng
Kagitingan” (Day of Valor) commemoration. This group consisted of a few World
War 2 veterans and a horde of young people who traveled to the island on board
the BRP Pampanga, a search and rescue vessel of the Philippine Coast Guard.
The trip was arranged by the Philippine Veterans Affairs
Office (PVAO), the government agency that looks after the welfare of Filipino
veterans of all our wars and internal conflicts.
Corregidor had changed substantially since I last visited in
the 1970s. It’s very tourist friendly, meaning that the wants and needs of
tourists are adequately met by the island’s infrastructure and people.
Corregidor has been wonderfully preserved. The sheer
commercialism of the tourist trade on which Corregidor thrives seems an affront
to this Holy Shrine, but tourism seems the only way to make Filipinos realize
the exceptional valor that ruled this island 60 years ago.
The massive mortars and guns of the Corregidor batteries
remain the “star” of these guided tours. And, at every battery, tour guides
give you ample time for “picture-picture.”
The guns have been painted a warm green. In contrast, they
were unpainted when I first saw them decades ago. I must admit the dull and
menacing color of naked steel was more impressive than the friendly green that
coats these guns today.
At “Topside,” however, is the most imposing monument to
Filipino gallantry on Corregidor. Here stands the “Filipino Heroes Memorial,” a
shrine studded with statues and symbols honoring the Filipino soldier, guerilla
and the Filipino Nation In Arms during World War 2.
Wrapped around his left shoulder is the rope used to tie his
carabao and resting against his right leg is the “araro” or plow used to till
his field. A sheathed bolo hangs from a rope tied around his waist.
Behind him stands the tallest flagpole on the island from
which flutters a huge National Flag.
It is an image both familiar and frightening. It is as if
this gentle soul was forced into the brutal task of fighting so he could once
again revert to his former and gentler self.
The many monuments on this island proclaim loudly about
Filipino heroism and greatness. It will be impossible not to be awed by the
magnificent symbolism.
On the sun-baked province of Bataan, however, the symbols to
Filipino heroism are fewer and not at myriad as those on Corregidor. But they
are much larger, and none is larger than the 92 meter tall Dambana ng
Kagitingan Memorial Cross (Shrine of Valor Memorial Cross) at the peak of
historic Mt. Samat.
The absence of massive guns and shattered buildings endows
the Mt. Samat memorial shrine complex with a serenity that makes it difficult
to comprehend the terror faced by Filipinos who stubbornly defended this ground
against a better equipped enemy.
Here, on this hallowed ground 60 years ago, Filipinos fought
the final actions in the doomed Battle for Bataan. They had held out months
longer than the enemy anticipated, and had at one point come close to
decisively defeating the Japanese in Bataan.
Here, Filipinos were shot, blasted, bayoneted and burned to
death. Surrender did not halt their suffering. The murderous Bataan Death March
saw the Japanese murder 10,000 surrendered Filipino fighting men along the 128
kilometer route from Bataan to Capas, Tarlac.
Try as one might, it proves difficult imagining that these
horrific events took place here among the well-manicured gardens and lush
greenery. Nature’s healing beauty has paved over the unspeakable horror this
mountain witnessed six decades ago.
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