Bataan’s dark legacy

Bataan has fallen. Was it Carlos P. Romulo or Raul Manglapus who intoned those three dreadful words over the radio on April 9, 1941? Whether it was one or the other or both probably does not matter. Not then, not now, not ever.

The exhausted Philippine-American forces gave up fighting the Japanese invaders on that darkest of all days for the then-emerging Filipino republic. We have never recovered from the lacerating shame of surrender and defeat that has stuck like glue upon the face of national honor to this very day.

The unfathomable horror of that April day was bound to happen and find the Philippines utterly naked before another foreign invader coming on the heels of the Spanish and American conquerors of past centuries. Only empty bravura and false hopes had kept the doomed resistance on Bataan going for three intolerably punishing months, followed a month later by the merciful, if final, humiliation at Corregidor.

Bataan was a lost cause long before the valiant but unknowing allied soldiers were called upon to put a brave face to American perfidy and rank incompetence.

For almost a decade, the Roosevelt administration in Washington ignored all signs of impending doom. It was impervious to the fact that its only colony in the Far East lay helplessly on the path of surging Japanese expansionism towards Southeast Asia, Australia and the Indian Ocean. Preoccupied with the debilitating aftermath of the Great Depression, it seemed just as oblivious of the Hitlerian menace that was at the same time gobbling up all of Europe and its overseas empires.

Under America’s far-from-secret Plan Orange, the best that the Philippines could expect was ill-defined  “holding action” in Bataan, the strategic peninsula guarding Manila from the sea, until, theoretically speaking, US warships from Hawaii could rush across the vast Pacific Ocean to save the day.

That implausible defense fantasy evaporated into thin air with the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. On that very same day, Manila was bombed by Japanese war planes from nearby Taiwan, sending the unmistakable signal that American retaliation, if any, had been nullified and pushed off to the very distant future or perhaps never.

In the meantime, the Filipinos would have to cope with inevitable Japanese occupation. By Christmas Day, President Quezon and his inner circle had fled to the island fortress of Corregidor, close enough to hear and share the terror of massive and unrelenting Japanese bombardment.

Under the cover of night, Quezon, followed by his military commander, General Douglas MacArthur, departed not long after by submarine, leapfrogging down the southern islands for Australia. The troops in Bataan were no more than sacrificial lambs awaiting slaughter. Still, the insistent government propaganda line was that mile-long American military convoys were just days away to reverse the tide of defeat. 

The general population had no choice but to believe this brazen lie. Such was the myth of American invulnerability, indeed the superiority of Anglo-Saxon over Japanese power. To admit that the Philippine-America forces were as good as dead was to admit that all was lost in the Philippines. The Death March from Bataan to Tarlac that was to follow could not have been unanticipated given Japan’s barbaric Rape of Nanjing and Shanghai in China just a few years earlier.

Quezon’s loyal followers in the collapsing commonwealth regime knew better. They were ordered to “cooperate” with the incoming masters, although with the improbable condition of not taking an oath of allegiance to Emperor Hirohito.

Almost to the last man they submitted to this flawed and dishonest directive. It set the stage for the collaboration issue that, in retrospect, was to poison the colony’s political life upon the return of American power three years into the future.

Quezon’s men knew how to hedge bets and have it both ways. They enlisted en masse in the puppet government imposed by Tokyo. In Washington, their exiled but ailing leader kept on vouching for their continuing loyalty to America.

But the American mandarins were no innocents. Extensive files were made on the so-called Filipino collaborators. Ample warnings were made that retribution would come with planned American re-conquest of the islands. Those who betrayed America would be held accountable and pay dearly. The exact opposite was to take place after the war; sleeping with the enemy, not resistance, was, in effect, rewarded and very richly at that.

But first things first. The “Europe First” policy meant the bigger war in Europe against Hitler would take priority. This would provide the Filipino quislings with the wily Quezonian defense: How could  the Americans bother about distant cousins in Europe when its innocent children in the Philippines were being raped and slaughtered?

The logic was cleverly dishonest. The European cousins, especially the British, were white and infinitely closer to the American heart than the brown-skinned wards on the other side of the world. Quezon knew how and when to play the race card as his convoluted political games dictated.

Because the Filipinos had been left to the wolves, they, it was later to be strenuously argued, couldn’t exactly be blamed for coming to terms with the new conquerors. Always speaking in behalf of the voiceless masses, the elite did exactly what they had long perfected in dealing with previous foreign conquerors: they struck a hard bargain for themselves — and damned the old colonial power as well as the poor people who were caught in between.

All of Quezon’s men from Vargas to Laurel, Aquino, Paredes, Recto and others dutifully served in Tokyo’s puppet government. Only Roxas (Gerry’s dad and Mar’s grandpa) played coy and left Laurel (Doy’s dad) and Aquino (Ninoy’s dad and Noynoy’s grandpa) to battle it out for the Japanese-backed presidency, which Laurel won, hands down. But towards the end of the ruthless regime, Roxas also joined the gang, seemingly only halfway, by becoming its rice czar.

This belated but low-profile acquiescence saved Roxas from the odious tag of collaboration that was to bedevil his more indiscreet colleagues. As returning pro-consul, MacArthur pointedly “liberated” Roxas, his old buddy and partner, and pushed from behind the scenes to assure Roxas’ election as president of the new republic in 1946. By then Quezon had succumbed to tuberculosis and MacArthur had no need for old man Osmeña (Serging’s dad and Serge’s grandpa), the ad-interim president.

Roxas was no hypocrite. He all but absolved the rest of the cabal, first with half-hearted show trials for treason and, more decisively, a sweeping pardon that restored everybody to the status quo ante of Quezon’s pre-war happy days, this time under Roxas rule.  

This deft maneuver was bound to be messy and embarrassing. How about those who really fought the Japanese — the unsung guerrillas and unyielding nationalists who rejected the cowardice and opportunism of the Quezon crowd? There were the Cabilis and the Confesors, a tiny splinter from the old elite, plus the Huks of Central Luzon who refused to compromise and somehow upheld Filipino honor against all odds. Were they to be demonized to clear the way for the thoroughly discredited Quezonians?

The Huks were surely brave peasant fighters, but weren’t they led by some communist elements? They had to be minions of Stalin who, as soon as the Germans and Japanese were crushed, emerged as America’s principal bête noir.

Anti-communism had  become the order of the day. This was in the early phase of the Cold War pitting the new superpowers — the United States and the Soviet Union — and their titanic duel would last for the next 46 years and all but blow the world into nuclear smithereens.

Because the Huks were led by some communists (Lavas,Tarucs and fellow travelers) who fought the Japanese and pushed the landlords of Luzon out of their haciendas and into the arms of the conquerors, they had to be dealt with as America’s enemies.

Roxas delivered his “mailed-fist” to these unwanted elements and a full-scale rebellion soon erupted all over the main island. But Roxas died within two years and his successor, Quirino (Cory’s grandpa and Kuh’s grandpa-in-law), all but lost the young republic to the Huks, if not for the timely counter-insurgency genius of Magsaysay (Jun’s dad), a former guerrilla leader who was to become the next president.

Such was the bitter fruit of Bataan. Contrary to the official line, Bataan was never a bright shining moment of our history, but a sad cacophony of dishonesty and contradictions. It brought out the best and worst in the Filipino character — the raw patriotism of the aroused peasantry and middle classes as well as the unremitting duplicity of the American-empowered elite. Fighting to truly reform the fledgling republic was to amount to nothing because America’s grand post-war strategy fitted so well into the elite’s compelling vested interests.

The Ilustrados or learned ones were back to the self-serving politics of pragmatism that, in 1898, took a calculated gamble on American “tutelage” over Aguinaldo’s would-be banana republic in the grim Latin America tradition.

What was to become mainstream Filipino politics was no more than organized chaos moderated by long-term US military presence and financial engineering. When the bases had to go in 1991, the Corazonian order that filled up the vacuum after Marcos held on to American apron springs but could also bank on convenient safety nets such as mass labor exportation and a remittance-based economy.

Back in 1946, the contentious issues of granting US military bases and parity rights to Americans in the exploitation of natural resources were fatal to nationalist aspirations and independent nationhood. But then again, this was well in line with America’s pre-eminent Asian strategy and the Filipino elite’s survival and prosperity.

Only Recto and Laurel broke off from this unholy alliance, but, it must be pointed out, only because they felt persecuted and bypassed by the Americans who favored Roxas and company as post-independence caretakers of the former colony.

No wonder Recto and Laurel became the icons of latter-day nationalism that, unfortunately, would prove weak-kneed in blunting the aggressive machinations of the youth-based radical left. Because Rectonian nationalism was mostly anti-American in terms of the bases and parity but totally in league with the “Filipino First” bloc of the Lopezes and other local monopolists, it eventually lost out to the Maoists and, intentionally or not, paved the way for the Marcos dictatorship.

Government ineptitude and diminished lower-class aspirations have long since conspired to bring forth a republic premised on continuing servility to foreign interests and an anything-goes consumerist culture without any moral backbone.

What are the cultural highlights of today’s harsh Philippine reality?  Just imagine the wild brew of SM Megamall, ABS-CBN telenobela, Mother Lily films, texting culture, SWS poll surveys, Smartmatic, etc. — and cry buckets of tears in despair.     

And why not? Some 10 million Filipinos — one out of every 10 — now live and work abroad, sending home the equivalent of a huge chunk of gross national product. Without unfailing remittances and the social parasitism that it unfortunately engenders, the country would be in shambles or fall into another dictatorship of whatever left or right variety.

In the absence of real and sustainable hope, what is there to rejoice about? Well, there are our grandstanding boxers and dime-a-dozen beauty queens, the rather unlikely symbols of national pride in recent years. In the absence of Nobel laureates, nuclear physicists, inventors or artists, we have to crow about anybody who could be passed off as famous or exemplary with a straight face.

In retrospect, Bataan could have been our glorious moment in the sun as a nation-in-the-making caught between two warring empires that availed of its sudden window of opportunity to break out of colonial bondage. But unlike neighboring countries, we produced no Nehru, Sukarno, Aung Sun or Mao to exemplify patriotism and rally the people to the Filipino cause. Alas, we had Roxas who praised the post-war American empire to the high heavens and died of a heart attack in the bosom of an American military base on Philippine soil.

It is for this reason that we always talk of “The Unfinished Revolution” in this country. The enemies of freedom have been on a winning streak for so long that we appear to be a nation destined for eternal failure and humiliation. There are no victories to celebrate, just defeats masquerading as triumphs — Bataan, Corregidor, and, most incomprehensible of all, Jabidah, as dictated by the Aquino III dispensation.

Remember, too, that we won the world’s admiration at EDSA in 1986 for a revolution that overthrew tyranny without bloodshed, only for that great and sweet victory to be hijacked by the very same dark forces that abandoned us in Bataan. 

Indeed, the Philippines remains the long-term hostage of a terrible past that we have to overcome if we are to be truly free and worthy of respect.