On the last Saturday of October, I was pleasantly surprised to see in my Facebook my 94-year-old father in a wheelchair being awarded the US Congressional Medal of Honor for his gallantry and valor during World War II. My youngest brother, Jonathan, and my other siblings, who are now US citizens were with my father when the honor was conferred on him in Tacoma, south of Seattle, in the State of Washington, USA. I was there with them a month ago and I had the opportunity to interview my father about his war experience. He was just a young 17-year-old lad in 1941 when the Japanese Imperial Army bombed Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii. That triggered World War II. The bombing of Hawaii was followed by the invasion of the Pacific including the Philippines.
At the height of the armed conflicts in 1942, my uncle Lorenzo was inducted into the USAFFE and their unit was assigned to defend the mountains of Dumanjug, Ronda, and Alcantara, and the guerillas were holding camps in the hills of Pusodsawa, a sitio of Langin, as well as in the valleys of Malalay near the boundaries of Ronda and Alcantara, and the boundaries of Ronda and the barangays of Argao and Sibonga. My paternal grandmother, who was protective of her son, ordered my father, who was the youngest, to go to the mountain camp to bring food to my uncle. When the battalion commander saw my father almost daily, he told my uncle that he was going to induct the younger Jimenez into the regular force. My father has a black belt in judo and karate and the commander found him very good material for the signal corps. Thus, my father was accepted into the USAFFE.
He figured in many battles and was even sent to a nocturnal hand-to-hand combat somewhere in the mountains that separated Cebu City and Balamban. He was just a teenager when he was wounded in battle, but he survived. Most of the time during that war, my father stayed with his unit in their Pusodsawa camp. That was the place he met my mother, a 15-year-old maiden who happened to be the eldest daughter of the teniente del barrio who owned the house where the soldiers stayed in encampment. That house and that land ti stands on now belong to me as I purchased that in a deed of absolute sale signed by my maternal grandparents, and witnessed by my uncles and aunts. I bought that ancestral house to perpetuate the memory of my late mother and the moment they met for the first time in 1942.
After the war, my parents became public school teachers. My father taught in many barangay schools from 1950s up to the 1990s. They struggled through life and had 19 children, but only eight of us survived. Many of my siblings died at childbirth, others while they were infants, and still others in early childhood. When the US government opened the doors of citizenship for veterans, I was the one who prepared all the documents and gathered all the evidence of my father's service to the US and the Philippine government. As a result, he was granted a Philippine Veterans pension aside from his pension as a retired DepEd employee. Then we submitted his application to the US veterans’ office. In no time, my father was called for an interview in Hawaii. My mother and youngest brother accompanied him. In less than one year, he and my mom were granted US citizenship. My brother followed and then all my other siblings.
They stayed in Hawaii for more than 15 years. They worked there in some odd jobs like my father working in the airport as a baggage sorter, and my mother in a fast food chain as a cashier. They were then in their sixties but still strong. My brother was in the US Air Force and was sent to combat duty in Kuwait when Iraq invaded that tiny but rich oil-rich country. Then my brother joined the police force in Honolulu. After a while, they all migrated to Washington, in a town called Fife, south of Seattle and Tacoma. My brother now owns a two-acre lot with a big ancestral house in the middle. That is where my mother died and where my 94-year old father lives surrounded by his American caregivers and therapists. I am happy for Papa who got the most prestigious award by the US government for his gallantry and valor in war and in peace.