I was a teenager at the time, too young to be in MacArthur’s fledgling army, and too old to be confined with the women, and so was Benito J. Legarda, Jr., the author of this splendid memoir about the Occupation. He was born in Manila and grew up like most upper-class Filipinos in privileged circumstances. In this memoir, Legarda recalls the gracious life before World War II, some personalities among them, expatriates who enlivened Manila’s cultural life. But like all Filipinos who had no experience with the Japanese, we came to regard them as manufacturers of inferior products.
In that small town where I was born, a Japanese salesman came often to refurbish the store fronting the schoolhouse with defective pencils, bubble gum, paper balloons, and oil paper umbrellas.
I came to Manila in 1938 and enrolled at the Far Eastern University High School. At the time, there were a few Japanese shops in Manila, some of them refreshment parlors. The ominous spread of war clouds over Asia came soon after and in 1941, air raid drills and practice evacuations were held in Manila.
When the Japanese came, they brought with them Gen. Artemio Ricarte, the Filipino revolutionary who refused to pledge allegiance to the United States and spent three decades in exile in Japan. He was deemed a patriot by many; when the Japanese retreated to the Cordilleras in 1945, he joined them. He died in Ifugao in April of that year, a victim of old age and possibly dysentery.
Declared an Open City by MacArthur, Manila was not damaged upon the entry of the Japanese. There were some fires and a lot of looting of stores and American bodegas which were opened to the public rather than have them fall into Japanese hands.
Legarda retrieved lucid memories of the Occupation, some enhanced by the diaries kept by his parents. He recalls how Filipino ingenuity flourished during those years of deprivation. The charcoal driven automobile was one of them. For the upper-class Filipinos who no longer had cars, they relied on the dokar, a fancy calesa with tire wheels, usually drawn by retired ponies from the race tracks. Returning relatives from Bataan and the Death March recounted Japanese brutality, capped by the destruction of Malate-Ermita in February and March 1945 when finally the Americans arrived.
Alfonso Aluit’s By Sword and Fire is the definitive book on the destruction of Manila; well researched, descriptive, and written from eyewitness accounts by survivors. It describes the horror when the city was demolished by the retreating Japanese.
In hindsight, some misguided Filipinos have blamed the Americans for destroying Ermita-Malate and Intramuros. Of course, much of the destruction was done by American artillery, but what is forgotten is that the Japanese were there, burning, looting, raping and killing. How many more would have been massacred if they were not killed?
In an effort to understand Japanese modernization, and learn from it, I met Japanese scholars and writers. In one of these visits in the early Seventies, I met Ooka Shohei who had, by then, acquired reputation not just in Japan but elsewhere with his novel Fires on the Plain, based on his experience in the Philippines as a soldier in the last days of the Occupation.
He came to see me at the Dominican monastery in Shibuya where I was staying. The first words he uttered were, "I did not kill a single Filipino while I was in your country." He was quite short, very slim, with watery eyes. He was a student of French literature, and his English was passable. Fires on the Plain, is a stark narrative which retells the plight of the Japanese in their retreat, hounded perpetually by guerrillas. When Japan had already recovered and prospered he returned to the Philippines to assess the damage the Imperial Army had wrought. He recounted the great waste, the rampage and havoc on the people. Indeed, Shohei is one of the few Japanese filled with this sense of guilt. Stahl’s study on the man and his work is actually a tribute to great Japanese writer and humanist.
Legarda ends his memoir with a visit to the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo. This shrine is dedicated to Japan’s war dead and in its war museum, Legarda notes that the Japanese had glossed over the atrocities they committed, not just in the Philippines but in China and in other countries which they occupied.
This refusal to face the past contradicts the German contrition towards the Nazi persecution of the Jews. It is understandable from the Japanese point of view because such a past shames them.
The end of the war brought about a lot of stories, among them the treasure of Yamashita. This famous general was also called "The Tiger of Malaya" because of his easy conquest of Malaya and Singapore. It was rumored that he brought to the Philippines a gold hoard that was buried in several places when the Japanese retreated.
A similar story, already confirmed, concerned a Japanese who operated in China during the war. When the defeat of Japan was imminent, he parlayed his loot into diamonds which he then brought to Japan. He used this fortune to set up a gambling enterprise and finance the career of several politicians.
Aluit and Legarda are talented story tellers who lifted history from the aridity of bare facts and numbing chronology by using personal anecdotes, and vivid detail – elements often absent in scholarly tomes. Both books are not final and exhaustive – they still leave so many aspects of the Occupation that can be told: the deadly guerrilla fratricide, the perfidy of so many so called leaders. How many Ilokanos themselves know, for instance, that the father of Ferdinand Marcos was executed by the guerrillas for collaboration with the Japanese? How many old scores were settled, how many heroes are unrecognized? And who are the so called patriots today who profited from the invaders?
Legarda concludes his book by citing a few who did not share the Japanese penchant for amnesia. One of them is Jintaro Ishida, a former schoolteacher who has written about such atrocities and even interviewed Japanese soldiers who served in the Philippines.
But it is not the Japanese who have easily forgotten "it is us Filipinos who even permitted them to build monuments to their war dead on our own soil."
Those three years of the Occupation exposed deep cracks in our society. Many Filipino leaders as well as masses of people allied themselves with the conquerors, a collaboration which rankles to this very day. How many Filipinos recall that Claro M. Recto was jailed in Iwahig for serving the Japanese, that Ninoy Aquino’s father was a ranking official in the puppet government? It has often been said, that collaboration as a political issue was settled when Jose P. Laurel who was made President of the puppet republic ran for public office after the war and got elected. But as a moral issue, collaboration riles us to this very day, not so much that it happened at all, but because the collaborators were never punished or ostracized. If they were punished, collaboration with Marcos which is much more damaging because he was Filipino would never have been tolerated. The Marcos children, Imelda most of all, and all the Marcos cronies would have never been welcomed back or returned to power.
This condition is a damning commentary not only on our political culture but on our morality as well.
One hundred fifty years ago this year, the black ships of Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Nagasaki in Japan and opened up that country to trade. That momentous event marked the beginning of a major epoch in Asian history, and the beginning of the Asian renaissance.
I first went to Japan in the early fifties, uneasy that I now had to deal with the Japanese socially. During that first visit, I was immediately made aware of what the people were although in the fifties, Japan was still poor, Tokyo still bore the scabs of World War II and yet to come was the dizzying progress. That progress was predetermined, the infrastructures, technical expertise, a disciplined work force – these were not destroyed.
My favorite Tokyo district is Shibuya. I visited this district because I was told there was a restaurant near the station that served whale sushi. There was only one subway line in all Japan then, the Ginza which ran through the heart of Tokyo from Shibuya to Asakusa, the entertainment area. The stairs of the station in Shibuya were made of wood and they shook everytime a crowd was on it.
Through the years, I watched this district grow, the wooden buildings replaced by stone and steel monoliths, its crowds composed mostly of young people. Near the station is an elite district called Nampeidai. It is here where the Philippine embassy used to be. The building is still there, a Philippine property because the embassy has already moved to its spanking new edifice in Roppongi. Near the embassy along the same street is a Dominican church and the Gaston Petit atelier where I often stay. Father Petit is a French Canadian artist whose work I exhibited in the Sixties at our Solidaridad Galleries when he visited Manila.
Close to the square fronting the Shibuya station is a modern building, its upper floors are restaurants. For years, an old wooden building clung to its side like a stubborn scab. I marveled at the tenacity of the owner for not having succumbed to the lure of modernity and the very high price his property must have commanded. This time, I am sorry to note that the old building is gone and has been replaced by a structure of glass and stone.
At the main plaza fronting the station, is a statue of a dog, Hachiko. This is the most popular meeting place not just in Tokyo but in all Japan. The story of the statue is another of those popular legends like that of the 47 ronin, the jobless samurai all of whom committed suicide as proof of their loyalty to their master whose death they avenged. The statue is that of the Akita, an indigenous breed of dog known for its loyalty to only one master. The dog used to go to the station every afternoon to wait for its master to return from work then they would walk home together. The master died, but unknown to the dog, it continued to wait at the station. It never left till it died, too.
Sometime back, my Toshiba laptop went on the blink and I hastened to the Toshiba office in Makati. At the counter, I was told that because it was already a quarter to twelve, I should return at one when the shop reopened. I immediately flared and told the clerk that if I were in Japan, even though it was twelve, I would be attended to. Toshiba is a Japanese company; if Filipinos are to improve at all, they should work like the Japanese. A supervisor inside who heard my outburst went out and told the clerk to attend to me.
On this last trip to Tokyo, while waiting for my wife do her shopping at the Mitsukoshi Ginza, I watched a girl at the Johan bakeshop counter work, manning both the cash register and putting the rolls in plastic bags. When the line of customers lengthened, another girl joined her without being called. I watched them fascinated by their coordination, efficiency, their movements, fast, precise, no motion wasted. I never saw our counter people work as well.
In one of my flights from San Francisco to Tokyo, a Boeing engineer sat beside me. He said that some of their parts were manufactured in Japan and it occurred to me to ask if there was any difference between American and Japanese industrial workers. He drew on a piece of paper a circle and said, if an American worker was asked to put a bolt in the circle, he will put it there. The Japanese worker will always put the bolt smack in the center of the circle.
The Japanese have been accused of being imitators, not originators, and there is some truth to this. The earliest Nikon camera was a replica of the German Contax, and the Canon a copy of the Leica. But look at Japanese cameras now – they dominate the world market not just in quality but in innovation.
The French TGV train may be the world’s fastest, but the Japanese Shinkansen, is more stable and comfortable; if it is one minute late apologies are announced on the speaker system. Half an hour late, and fares are refunded. Indeed, Japanese trains are the world’s most efficient. I had chicken tandori at an Indian restaurant in Roponggi and I swear it was better than the tandori at Old Delhi’s Moti Majal. Listen now to Philippe Pons, veteran correspondent of Le Monde in Tokyo: "French bread in Tokyo is superior to French bread in Paris."
In my university lectures on culture and development, I tell my classes to study the Meiji Restoration of 1868.
A bit of background on this historical event: The rulers of Japan had isolated their country from the West for centuries except for a few missionaries. When Commodore Perry opened the country to trade, the Japanese realized that they must now modernize or face the fate of other Asian countries that became Western colonies. They embarked at once on a process of modernization, sending thousands of their scholars and bureaucrats to Europe and to America to learn what made the West progressive and powerful.
Some 15 years ago, the Toyota Foundation gave me a grant to translate Japanese books into Tagalog and I immediately zeroed in on the Meiji Restoration, on books that explained Japan’s speedy rise to modernity so that in one generation, it had become a world power. The program – a pioneering job – developed a corps of translators which helped intellectualize the national language. Of the forty or so books published by the program, I like most the autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa who was the leading ideologue of that change, and "Memories of Silk and Straw." Fukuzawa formulated such policies that adopted western technology, coupling it with the Japanese spirit. "Memories of Silk and Straw" is a series of interviews by a medical doctor in Ibaraki. His patients included a wide range of people, from royalty to geishas, yakuza and common peasants. The interviews revealed a Japan that was still traditional and poor, that many of the peasants and fishermen wore the same clothes in summer as they did in winter. The book illustrates vividly how a people can live and prosper beyond adversity.
Unfortunately, the books did not sell; the translation program was a generation ahead of its time. Instead of the books rotting away in a storehouse, we gave thousands to public libraries.
Edward Seidensticker, America’s foremost scholar and translator of Japanese literature, has also written books on Japan. He is an old friend and like me, he also has known Japan for over five decades. On those occasions that we meet in Tokyo or in Honolulu where he has retired, our conversation often revolves around our Japanese experience. He is not so happy with the young Japanese who, he feels, have lost a lot of the solid virtues of their grandparents. He claims that they simply have too much money.
One thing is sure, Japan has changed a lot from the Japan of the Forties and Fifties and the changes are not only physical.
My translator, Matsuyo Yamamoto, and older Japanese friends would agree with Edward’s assessment, that the young are too pleasure oriented. They are bigger, too, but again, they are supposed to be less strong compared to the older generation. They are also less disciplined, too self centered, too susceptible to the seduction of modern gadgetry.
I do not readily believe such notions. When the great Kobe earthquake struck some time back, the Japanese bureaucracy was paralyzed. Thousands of young Japanese in a spirit of volunteerism rushed to Kobe to aid the victims, illustrating how the youth is not so sybaritic and hopeless after all.
It is not my intention to gloss over the underside of Japanese society. In spite of its prosperity, Japan has dark aspects which the Japanese themselves criticize. But these are problems of affluence, not of poverty. Corruption exists in Japan in a big way but their justice system works and corrupt officials, if discovered and tried are sent to prison. They don’t insist on their innocence. And in some cases, following the time honored tradition, the guilty even commit suicide. What is important to remember is not just the existence of a stringent moral code in Japanese society, but that the Japanese can afford their corruption. We cannot.
Yes, General Ricarte was right in admiring the Japanese, in wanting Filipinos to emulate them. But he was wrong in depending on them; he should have depended on nothing else but the Filipino spirit, in the same sense that it was wrong for us to depend on the Spaniards, the Americans, and on our elites like Marcos. We should end once and for all time, our mendicancy, our reliance on others and build this nation with the Filipino spirit like the Japanese did.
Yes, there is a Yamashita treasure hidden in this country, but it is not in precious metals or jewels that are stashed underground. The Yamashita treasure is what we can glean from the Japanese experience – the negative aspect of which we were brutalized with. This Yamashita treasure is the lesson that an Asian country, feudal and poor, can attain prosperity and freedom such as what Japan has today.