Can we ever be one nation?

It was Araw ng Kagitingan last Monday. I suspect that outside of the official ceremonies, most of us didn’t even spend a second to think of our heroes and why they sacrificed their lives so we will all live free. It is too bad that we have little regard for history.

It had been said that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Locally, there is a similar expression: ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan ay hindi makakarating sa paroroonan. Indeed… in my 62 years on this earth, I can say how true those observations are.

I have always been fascinated by history. Knowing what happened in the past makes it easier to understand what is going on now… who we are and why we are what we are today.

Last Holy Thursday, I had the opportunity to read a really good book that made me feel like I was rummaging through dusty files and fading pictures, uncovering some dark secrets of our past. It was reading about our history like it had rarely been presented to us before.

The book, Under the Stacks, by Saul Hofilena Jr was published last year but I only got to know about it now. According to the dust jacket, Mr Hofilena is a lawyer who loves history. His idea of fun is going through yellowed and crumbling files in the National Archives or in a library somewhere or buying documents from collectors.

In a sense, history buffs are like private investigators obsessed with finding the truth from original documents. That’s exactly what Mr Hofilena did as he pursued documents on such historic events as the signing of the Treaty of Paris and the trial of General Yamashita.

And unlike most lawyers we know, Mr Hofilena writes clearly, confidently and does not straddle the fence with his conclusions. His findings often trashes what we have been taught in our history classes, specially if we studied in Catholic schools. He uses his analytic skills as a lawyer to explain in layman terms what historic legal documents really mean.

In fact, the book is quite a page turner. It is difficult to put it down. The book is structured as a collection of short pieces revolving around a topic, bite size pieces of history so to speak. There is an extensive bibliography at the end of the book with explanatory notes from the author. You can check the validity of his conclusions by going to the original documents he has listed.

The book is interesting, informative but very disturbing. It may have been over 400 years ago but the trauma our social psyche suffered from Spanish rule and the brutal experience with the Spanish clergy appear to be at the root of some of our still festering social problems today. Hofilena’s extensive research on the friar lands and its impact on today’s social inequities is quite a mind opener.

We all know how we were sold like cattle by Spain to the Americans under the Treaty of Paris. But the worse part of it is how the Spaniards successfully inserted a provision that validated the ownership by Catholic religious orders of vast hectares of friar lands. Don’t be surprised that the religious orders used legal subterfuges to hide their ownership through layering, like present day public officials trying to hide ill-gotten wealth.

The Americans didn’t come out smelling like a rose in the book either. The period in our history our history classes dismissed in a chapter on the Filipino American War is extensively discussed with fresh information from documents such as treaties and internal memos of American bureaucrats.

There is this disturbing revelation about how a treaty an American general signed with a Sulu sultan was mistranslated to say the sultan ceded sovereignty. The original document in the native language talked merely of being under a protectorate. This could be at the root of present problems in Mindanao.

The racism of our former colonial masters is matched only by our colonial mentality… we allow ourselves to be insulted. There is this Military Order of the Carabao, an association of American soldiers who fought in the Philippine American war. Their annual meetings feature singing racist songs about Filipinos.

The most disturbing portions of the book had to do with the Japanese occupation years. This is another era that our history books merely skim through. Hofilena documented the viciousness of the Japanese occupying forces. That same Japanese brutality is depicted in the Nanjing museum. I left that museum with a heavy heart. According to Hofilena, my own people suffered as much.

Worse than Japanese brutality is Filipino treachery. There is an extensive reportage on the Makapilis and the other collaborators. Sadly, Hofilena observed, “a study of our history would reveal that during wars against foreign aggressors… internal conflicts arise among us corroding and preventing national unity.” This perpetual state of animosity, he observed, are “nothing more than self serving and interminable skirmishes for power and hegemony…”

If you are wondering how come we are unable to get retribution from Marcos and his cronies for plundering this nation under his martial rule, read the portion on the Collaboration Trials. After all the huffing and puffing, then President Manuel Roxas, himself under a cloud of doubt, issued an amnesty that got everyone off the hook.

The arguments for the amnesty sounds like the arguments we often hear these days on why we should just let bygones be bygones and let Ate Glue off with a loving slap on the wrist. Heaven forbid but we may yet have the disgraced dictator’s son back in the Palace because we are a people who remember nothing of the past and so we keep committing the same mistakes over and over and over again.?

On the Roxas amnesty, Hofilena observed: “The moral aspects of collaboration remain unresolved because the offenders were not punished. Although not all of those accused may be held responsible for the crime, nevertheless, there were those whose actions during the Japanese Occupation cannot be interpreted in any other manner but as high acts of treason.

“In hindsight, perhaps the amnesty was unwise. Maybe those who were charged with treason should have been tried in order to acquit the innocent and punish the guilty. But such thoughts have no meaning --- to a people with missing memories in a nation that has resolved to forget its past.”

Forget our past indeed. Hofilena laments that the most unexplainable proof of our tendency for national amnesia is allowing monuments to convicted Japanese war criminals to be built on Philippine soil. There is a monument to a kamikaze pilot, an exact duplicate of the one in Japan, that stands in Mabalacat, Pampanga courtesy of a former mayor.

Hofilena rightly complains that “it is outrageous that a government official would agree to the establishment of a kamikaze statue on Philippine soil when Filipinos suffered so much in the hands of the Japanese during the second world war.”

That’s not all. “There are two other objectionable war memorials established by the Japanese in Los Banos, Laguna. One honors general Tomoyuki Yamashita, the ‘Tiger of Malaya’… His monument is erected on the very site where he was hung before dawn. There is a plaque written in Japanese without an English or Tagalog translation…

“The other monument shamelessly honors Gen. Masaharu Homma as a martyr to world peace when we all know it was he who led the 14th Army responsible for the fall of the Philippines and for the infamous Death March. The two monuments are disgraceful because Laguna was ground zero for the numerous massacres perpetrated by the Japanese in their ‘subjugation’ campaigns in Southern Luzon.”

I agree with Hofilena that “the existence of these monuments on Philippine soil is beyond comprehension to those who read their history… Why have we forgotten our past so soon should be the subject of another monument to remind us of our collective amnesia.”

More than that, these monuments show our lack of national self respect. No wonder we get shabbily treated abroad and get no respect from adversaries. I cannot imagine China allowing those monuments on Chinese soil. 

Hofilena’s book should be required reading not only for our youth but for every Filipino, specially those holding political power. In tracing the roots of our present conflicts and dilemmas, the book isn’t just about history but also about our sociology… why we are who we are.

But Hofilena leaves unanswered the question of whether we can ever be truly one nation. I am hoping the eventual answer is yes.

Kamikaze

Speaking of Kamikaze pilots, have you ever wondered why they wore helmets? It is like death convicts being given lethal injections using sterilized syringes.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco