Mabalacat welcomes Japanese visitors marking Kamikaze’s birth

MABALACAT, Pampanga — Some 100 Japanese tourists are expected in this town tomorrow to mark an episode in World War II history when, exactly 62 years ago, on Oct. 25, 1944, a Japanese aircraft of the Kamikaze Special Attack Force founded in Barangay Cacutud here flew off for its first suicide mission in Australia.

It was an attack that, by the end of the war, saw 2,525 Japanese navy men and 1,387 Japanese army personnel giving up their lives in aircraft suicide missions that sank 81 US ships and damaged 81 others in the Pacific region.

Mabalacat tourism officer Guy Hilbero said the Japanese visitors will lay a wreath and say prayers at the memorial shrine at the former Kamikaze airfield in Cacutud.

Among those expected are Buddhist bishop Ekan Ikeguchi, Dr. Michihiro Sugahara of the Tokkotai Peace Memorial Association, and Kiyoshi Wakamiya of Tokushu Kai Medical Corp.

Wakamiya was the Japanese journalist in the company of the late Sen. Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino when the latter was shot at the tarmac of the Manila International Airport on Aug. 21,1983.

In 1998, the Mabalacat municipal government and Japanese officials led by Ikeguchi declared this town and the neighboring Clark special economic zone "City of World Peace."

Noting the controversies surrounding the shrine, Hilbero, who helped put it up, appealed to critics, saying the shrine was "not meant to extol war."

"Such a shrine is supposed to remind us of how war can make the lives of people utterly miserable," he said.

But he added: "While war is evil, it would be wrong to conclude that all those who fought in it, regardless of whose side (they were), were devoid of goodness."

In his speech tomorrow before Japanese tourists at Lily Hill at the Clark ecozone where another Japanese shrine for world peace was built six years ago, Mabalacat Mayor Marino Morales said he would cite the need to put up shrines to remind people of the lessons of war.

"Six decades after the end of World War II, we still hear about innocent civilians, especially children, whose lives are suddenly snuffed out by land mines, sniper fire, artillery shelling, or aerial bombardment," he said.

"Sadly, to this day, our world remains a dangerous place to live in and I am afraid that this (situation) will continue to be so unless we raise our voice in collective condemnation of those nations and those leaders whose obsession for world superiority and personal greatness leads them to madness and threatens to consign humanity to oblivion," he added.

Meanwhile, Hilbero said Mabalacat officials and non-government organizations are also pursuing plans to build memorials for US Air Force Capt. Colin Kelly Jr. and Aeta Kudiaro Laxamana, who are also regarded by local folk as heroes of World War II.

The US Armed Forces lists Kelly as the first American hero to die in World War II when his B17 bomber crashed in Barangay Bical here on Dec. 10, 1941.

Kelly met his death after he attacked the Japanese battleship Ashigara off the coast of Aparri as the Japanese forces advanced into Clark, then a US military base.

Laxamana, on the other hand, was the only Aeta known to have been given an honorary rank of lieutenant colonel by the US military, which cited his exploits in helping the Americans against the Japanese during World War II.

He died in the 1970s and was buried at the Clark cemetery together with US soldiers.

Hilbero said plans are now being finalized to put up a statue of Kelly on a 5,000-square-meter lot near an abandoned theater, also named after the American hero, at Clark.

Sculptor Nick Reyes has finished Kelly’s life-size statue, in coordination with historian Dan Dizon of Angeles City.

He said the Kelly theater will also be transformed into a center for the promotion of arts and culture, also in his honor.

"As for Laxamana, another shrine in his honor will rise on a two-hectare site in Sitio Hadwan at Marcos Village. The area is now part of the Aeta ancestral domain," Hilbero said.

Hilbero said the construction of the memorials honoring Kelly and Laxamana, alongside the Japanese shrines, would reflect the friendship that now exists between the Americans and the Japanese.

"We cannot hate the Japanese for the rest of eternity," he said, noting the close bilateral ties between the Philippines and Japan.