The day of Filipino valor and bravery
What used to be called the day of "The Fall of Bataan" patterned after France's Fall of Bastille) was renamed by President Ferdinand Marcos, a World War II veteran himself, to "Araw ng Kagitingan." It was a positive move because it stresses the valor of those thousands of Filipino and American soldiers who fought for so long, despite being outnumbered and surrounded by enemies with superior arms and war hardware. It was a day of valor because the Philippines was the last country in southeast Asia to surrender to the Japanese Imperial Army. Malaysia fell on January 31, Singapore on February 15, and Indonesia on March 10, all in 1942. Instead of what it used to be, a day of sadness and embarrassment, it became an occasion to celebrate the gallantry and daring of the allied forces.
On April 9, 1942, a month after the fall of Indonesia, Maj. Gen. Edward King Jr. disobeyed the orders of his superiors, the famous five-star Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Gen. Jonathan Wainright to never surrender and to hold the last line of defense until reinforcements arrive. General King surrendered some 76,000 starving, disease-stricken, badly-clad, and ill-equipped soldiers with low morale. They were composed of about 67,000 Filipinos, 1,000 Chinese Filipinos, and 11,796 Americans. The sick, physically weakened, emotionally-drained soldiers were forced to undergo the infamous Death March, which was an exodus walking under the heat of the sun along the 140-kilometer bad road from Bataan to Capas, Tarlac. Thirteen thousand died along the way due to starvation, dehydration, infection, and summary execution by the cruel Kempeitai.
Some of the Filipinos who survived the Death March are still alive in their nineties. They still wait for the fulfillment of the promise of then US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and later President Harry Truman that whatever benefits that could be extended to American veterans should also be given to Filipino veterans. What happened was that the benefits granted to Filipinos were inferior than those being enjoyed by US veterans. True, the Filipinos were granted US citizenship, but their pension is too meager and hardly enough for them to survive in America. I should know. My father, now 92, is sadly waiting for the fulfillment of that promise. If not for my brothers and sisters who are working in America, my father would have preferred to come home and die in his own native land, the land he fiercely defended, and for which he was wounded in battle.
Today, we should remember the sacrifices of our fathers and grandfathers, and the sorrows of our mothers and grandmothers. The Filipinos suffered a lot and gave up a lot just to defend our country against the enemy of America. We should be proud of the valor and gallantry of the Filipino defenders. If not for them, this country would have been colonized by Japan and perhaps would have been transformed into a province of that country. The Filipinos suffered for 377 years under Spain, four years under Japanese invasion and some 45 years under the Americans. But perhaps the most cruel, most destructive era was under Japanese occupation. Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos died. The economy was devastated, and our women molested and abused by the Japanese. Today, we should also remember how the cruelty of Japan inflicted an indelible damage into the psyche of the Filipinos.
This is a day of sadness but also a day of pride and victory. We surrendered our physical selves but we never surrendered our dignity as a freedom-loving people.
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