In August, 1941, my mother bore twin girls. It was a complicated delivery
and she was hospitalized for a period after the birth. My father was to
be transferred to Mindanao in early December and so he brought mother home
from the hospital, but she was very weak still. I did what I could to help
and remember rocking back in forth on a chair at home with the pair of
twins, one on each arm and a bottle in each of their mouths. My father
told us that he expected a war to break out by March and that he had stockpiled
some gasoline. Before he left to Mindanao, around December fifth, my father
was promoted to First Lieutenant.
I was in Pasig, Rizal for my High School preliminaries [exams]. My friends
and I had gone to a Japanese run halo-halo store [halo-halo,
or mixed up, is a traditional cold Philippine desert] for our merienda
[snack break] when we heard Harry Fenton's voice interrupt the music we
were listening to as he told us in English that the Japanese had bombed
Pearl Harbor. It was December 8th in the Philippines which is on the other
side of the international dateline from Hawaii [clocks in Hawaii are nineteen
hours behind clocks in the Philippines]. The attack announcement happened
also to coincide with Fiesta, a religious festival in honor of the local
patron saint, and the streets were crowded with people. News spread rapidly
and the street scene evolved almost instantaneously from one of merriment
to panic, fear, and cries of "what to do?!" My first thought was that Fort
McKinnley would be attacked. Together with my friends I took the first
streetcar I could. It was overflowing with people who were in a hurry like
I was to get home. I got off the street car when it ran as close as the
track did to the base and ran the rest of the way home. The MPs were on
alert and I saw cannons that I had never seen before, manned with soldiers
who were looking into the sky. I had never seen the cannons any place other
than the two that were positioned next to the flag pole for reveille. Some
of the cannons were being loaded with shells.
My mother was still sick and resting when I got home. She hadn't heard
the news. Of course she was shocked and frightened, and suggested that
we pray. Before night-time fell, we were told to "keep the lights out,
and keep quiet." During the night the siren sounded and then there was
a drone of planes. All at once there was a flashing of bright lights and
a thundered of bombs exploding. I held one twin and my mother held the
other as we sat together on an army bed. The springs of the bed broke during
the commotion and we both fell through the bed. We got up to wake everyone
else. The planes came and went throughout the night. The air was filled
with their droning noise, sirens, the cannons firing at them, machine guns
firing, and explosions. During the daylight hours the skies would darken
with Japanese planes and the sirens would sound again warning us to hide.
We were told to get under the house. The housing had been built on an incline
so there was quite a large gap underneath part of our house.
We sawed a hole in the floor of our house and slid down the hole using
the piece of floor set at an angle as the slide. We lowered a table through
the hole in the floor and covered it with a blanket so we could use a flashlight
without the Japanese seeing the light. Then we put galvanized iron sheeting
in the front of our little hideout to slow the path of bullets should the
Japanese shoot at our house from the street. We also had firewood that
was rationed to us so we could cook there underneath the house. I snuck
out once to get cans of milk from the PX for the baby twins and saw the
soldiers running around in a panic looking completely unorganized.
[The Japanese invasion of Luzon consisted of air attacks from December
9 through the 12th. On the evening of the twelfth, the Japanese were reported
to be landing at Vigan in Northern Luzon and Japanese naval forces were
sited off Pangasinan Province heading south.]
After a while we were informed that it wasn't safe underneath the house
because the Japanese might parachute to the ground. We could hear gunfire,
but I didn't know what was happening. We decided to abandon the house and
go sleep outside with numerous other families (about fifty) on the grass
away from the houses and other buildings. There were lots of rumors about
deaths of soldiers and everyone was praying. We heard that gas masks were
being distributed at the community store so I went to get some for our
family. When I arrived, I was told that each family was only to receive
one gas mask so I went back to where our family was and told my mother.
She told me, "Don't take one then. If only one will live, the rest will
die. We might as well all die together. So we'll pray, and God will protect
us."
The Red Cross came to evacuate us. We were soldiers' families so we
weren't told where we were going. We just followed orders. All we were
permitted to take with us was three sets of clothes and some food, but
no other property. They loaded us into trucks and we were taken to the
train station in Pasig. When we got into the train, we were told to pull
down the blinds so that the Japanese could not see us. We kids peeked out
the windows anyway and saw lots of parachutes falling from the sky and
prayed they wouldn't drop too close to the station.
The train headed south from Manila and we stopped in Calamba the next
morning where we were each given coffee and two pieces of pan de sal
[a biscuit]. I asked my friends to get some rocks. We had learned that
we were going to be stopping in Santa Cruz, so I quickly wrote a note:
"Dear Uncle, The Red Cross is taking us to Santa Cruz, but we don't know
where we'll be staying." I wrapped the note around the stone I had and
waited for the train to pass the station in Los Baños. My godmother
owned a karinderia [eatery] at the train station there, so at just
the right moment I threw the stone out the window, yelling my uncle's name
and saying that it was for him.
We stayed at a school house in Santa Cruz while we waited for a bus
that was suppose to take us to Quezon Province. My cousin met us there
and told the family to come with him by train back to Los Baños
where we were to stay in my uncle's house. The rest of the evacuees continued
on to Quezon, but I don't know if any of them survived. You see, the Japanese
had landed in Mabuan, Quezon Province but the Red Cross didn't know that.
We arrived in Los Baños after Christmas, it had been bombed and
the streets had been strafed with machine guns. There was a train already
at the station that had been bombed. There were also undetonated bombs
still attached to their parachutes hanging on wires around the train station.
We heard that Manila was an open city, but didn't understand what that
meant and neither did the Japanese. At night the skyline was a strange
orangeish-red color in the direction of Manila. News spread on the streets
and from household to household: "women should hide, children should also
hide."
It was Christmas season, and although there was a war in progress around
us, children would sometimes play carelessly in the street. Japanese planes
strafed the street when they saw these children and some were wounded but
luckily nobody was killed. I saw bullets stuck in papaya and coconuts.
Some bullets pierced the roof of my uncle's house, went through the floor,
and stuck in the bangka*. The local depot was looted and we got
our family's share of flour. Fox holes were dug under houses and in yards.
When the Americans arrived to liberate the internees in Los Baños
they crushed some of the fox holes, but nobody was in them at the time
so nobody was hurt. [*a bangka is a single outrigger boats used
for fishing in the Laguna de Bay]
Before the Japanese soldiers came to Los Baños, we heard that
a force of Koreanos, who were said to be bigger and more fierce
than the Japanese were about to arrive. I heard that they were going to
rape us, and kill us. We put black soot on our faces, messed up our hair,
dressed crazy, and acted crazy whenever we were in public so they would
leave us alone when they arrived. When we were home we would stay in a
a foxhole we built on our property.
The Japanese occupation forces arrived slowly. They took over some of
the wealthier residents' homes near the bay that were located on a hill
overlooking Bayan [the civic center of Los Baños] and setup
there communications equipment there. More communications equipment was
setup in the center of our barrio, and soldiers setup camp and supplies
along the shores of the bay. Sometime later an internee camp setup at the
University of the Philippines Los Baños campus, but classes continued
to be held in those parts of the campus not taken over by the Japanese
soldiers for use as the internee camp. Pro-Japanese Filipinos were assembled
into a force to assist the Japanese in the administration of the barrios.
We called them the "bamboo army" because they were only permitted to carry
bamboo poles as weapons. It was members of the "bamboo army" and other
pro-Japanese who would ridicule our family by calling us "Americanitos"
("little Americans") and "Hah, when are your Americans coming?!" because
they new my father was an officer in the American army. [the "bamboo army"
was formally referred to as the Makapilis, see note at the end of
the story]
Many of the Japanese officers knew how to speak English. The Japanese
soldiers in our barrio who belonged to the supply and command were
well behaved. They even encouraged the Filipinos to play games with them,
learn Judo, fencing, and compete in relays. Sometimes they would ask the
Filipinos to teach them about our customs. When the Japanese soldiers bathed
at the barrio artesian well, they did so with only a strap of cloth
that went under their crotch and was wrapped at their waste. All the women
were told to stay at home out of site of the soldiers whenever this happened
because we feared that the soldiers might rape us. One Japanese officer
married a Filipina and had two children with her. He was killed during
fighting at Bayan (the town civic center) at the end of the war.
PRINTER-FRIENDLY FORMAT
