BOOKS
BY
CARLOS P. ROMULO:
I See the Philippines Rise
My Brother Americans Mother America I Saw the Fall of the Philippines
I
SEE THE PHILIPPINES RISE
BY CARLOS P. ROMULO
. Garden City, N. Y.
"It'
DOUBLEDAY Be COMPANY, INC.
BY CARLOS P. ROMULO
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. FIRST EDITION
DEDICATION
HE
CAME from the farm and from the city. He was the patriotism incarnate of our land at war. This book, giving at best but the shadow of his story, is a humble offering for his grave-the grave of the Unknown Filipino Soldier. Out of the long roster of names of the dead that make his immortal we can select three to represent this man who died for us and our democratic faith. To these three this book is dedicated: To the Filipino government official, the HON. JOSE ABAD SANTOS, who as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in Manila followed Quezon and Osmena to Corregidor, and en route to safety turned back at Cebu, determined to fight and die, as die he did, on Filipino soil. To the Filipino newspaperman, ANTONIO H. ESCODA, who with his wife smuggled food and medicine to the starving Americans in the civilian and soldier prison camps, and was killed, with her, in reprisal by the Japanese. To the Filipino soldier, B~IGADIER GENERAL VICENTE LIM, captured by the Japanese on Bataan and murdered by them for his refusal to collaborate. These are but three men. They typify the Filipino thousands whose sacrifices were equally great and whose deaths, never to be forgiven, are forever to be remembered. v
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION I.
THE FIRST STEP BACK
2.
"WE WILL GO BACK TOGETHER--"
3· 4· 5· 6.
AGAIN THE PACIFIC
7·
HOLLANDIA CONVOY A-DAY ON LEYTE "HERE WE ARE!"
8. 9· 10.
TACLOBAN
II.
LIBERATION
12. 13· 14· 15· 16. 17· 18. 19·
LETTERS FROM YAY
INNER VICTORY
LIFE ON LEYTE
RECESS IN AMERICA IN JANUARY AND STILL-JANUARY MANILA BATAAN CORREGIDOR AND REUNION THIS LAND SET FREE INDEX
vii
IX
I
6 25 36 59 78 90 106 12 3 141 151 166 180 188 208 216 23 0 242 254 26 5
INTRODUCTION
let me explain I am not writing history. This book is not a military account of the release of the Philippines. It is the sequel to the book, I Saw t13e Fall of the Philippines, which was a journalist's account of the tragedy that had overwhelmed his country, written while he himself was still ravaged, mentally and physically, by war. That book was not complete. It could not be. I did not intend it to be the whole story of the Philippines' fall. But I had learned upon coming to America that the part played by the Filipinos in the Philippine war was almost unknown. Only the American side had been pictured in the United States. Here was the first opportunity offered to a Filipino to tell the Philippine story. The American public was wearying of cryptic news accounts and wanted personal experiences. They wanted the war pictured for them at first hand. So, greatly against my will and the Filipino mode of thought, I wrote in the first person. There are few things I hate more than the use of the personal pronoun. Filipinos as a race are jarred by the word "I." The Tagalog dialect, if we use it, prefers the plural usage, "we," as a more courteous term than "I." AGAIN
ix
x
INTRODUCTION
As a newspaper reporter and editor I had lived my writing life behind that editorial "we." But of gre~ter importance was the need to show the Filipino side and to make known the unrecorded Philippine saga so that the American would better respect the Filipino as a fighter, a devotee of democracy, and an equal. This alone, I was convinced, could serve to raise Filipino prestige in the United States. This could be achieved only if I wrote and spoke as a Filipino, emblematizing in my own experience all the other Filipinos had endured. Personal experience alone would serve, so with extreme reluctance, and certainly not for personal vainglory, I wrote for the first time in my life as "I." All worthy of praise could not be made room for in the Fall of the Philippines. If that had been done it would not have been a book but a roster of heroes. Mother America followed in the attempt to solidify the respect we had won, and My Brother Americans was a tribute to the Americans who had believed in the Filipinos and were preparing to go to their rescue, and in these books also the first person had to speak, not for myself, but for eighteen millions trapped by the Japanese. Now, writing of their liberation, I can only speak again via that small segment of the Philippine story that is myself, a very small paragraph indeed. Again, with apologies, it is in the first person. But it is not of myself that I write, but of a large and loyal nation that America, due to Bataan, Corregidor, and Manila, has learned to respect and trust as an ally and a friend. I wish to thank our great chief, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, for making this book possible by having permitted me to return with him to the Philippines.
INTRODUCTION
xi
To President of the Philippines Sergio Osmena I would like to express my gratitude for appointing me Resident Commissioner of the Philippines, Acting Secretary of Public Instruction, and to other offices that have broadened my working field and my field of vision toward a safer and more humane world. To Speaker Sam Rayburn, Majority Floor Leader John W. McCormack, Minority Floor Leader Joseph W. Martin, Jr., Senator Millard E. Tydings, Senator Carl Hayden, Congressman C. Jasper Bell, and other members of the Seventy-eighth Congress and the Seventy-ninth Congress whose friendship I value, my heartfelt thanks. To those who protected my family in the Philippines during the entire enemy occupation I cannot offer, in words, the gratitude t~at will be part of me as long as I live. They, who endured so much, will understand. Also I would like to express my gratitude to my most loyal friend in the United States, Evelyn Wells, who has stood by me in my darkest hours and been my editorial guide and inspiration.