By the time of MacArthur’s return, of the 48 provinces of the Philippines only 12 were still firmly under Japanese control, a record that all Filipinos and Americans can be proud of.
Lest We Forget
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Filipinos embraced American ideals and culture, and you can see why.
Ezabelle:
At the risk of sounding a little flippant, they also embraced each other, and the first large group of mixed-race kids (slowly) accepted by modern American society included (at least in California and Hawaii) many of American-Filipino heritage. That’s a good quarter of the kids in my last school here in Daly City.
(One could argue for the precedence of white-Hispanic mixes, but Hispanics were “white” or maybe “off-white” in the 1950s).
In the early 1970s either a former guerrilla or his son would come to the NDW Commandants office to pay their respects to the Chief of Staff. The Captain was a WWII pilot who had been shot down in Manila Bay and was rescued by Filipino guerrillas. About once a year his wife would call the office and in her very Texan accent accent, “Si can’t come in to the office today, he’s been sidelined by a malaria attack”.
Then in the late 80s we were stationed at NAS CUBI PI. I read everything I could about war in the PI. I took my oldest son by boat to Corregidor. Very sobering to see the building ruins with the same architecture of the buildings of Ft Myer and McNair. We toured the Malinta Tunnel, It seemed similar to the catacombs in Rome. Hallowed ground.
The Boy Scouts reenacted the Death March from Bataan to Camp O’Donnell. Of course the merit badge did not require walking the whole way for the kids. They did have to take malaria prophylactics in order to participate.
Thanks Tom. Interesting to know. That would have been a big deal having a quarter of your school year Filipino-American. That’s proper progression at a time where much of the west was still predominantly white.
I find it interesting that of all the Asian cultures, Filipinos are good at integrating into Western society without making a big deal about it. I could be talking out of order for other countries, but in my neck of the woods the Filipino community are really good citizens. Their indigenous communities have always been open to foreigners and mixed with their Catholicism, Filipinos seem to resolve things peacefully and without conflict. Kudos to them.
Ezabelle:
My brother-in-law (from Metro Manila) pointed the history of regional trade going back to the year 1000. Merchant and trading communities are typically more open to foreigners and marriage to outsiders than many communities. I would add that the Catholic Church has always supported interracial marriages among Catholics.
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