A well-meaning festival in an incompatible month

To begin with, we want to make it clear that we are totally in favor of having an annual Philippine-Japanese Festival celebration. A festival is an occasion that promotes the good feeling that the participants have for each other in their social and political relations. It should commemorate an event when such a spirit prevailed. Along with our Department of Foreign Affairs, the ASEAN-Japan Exchange Year has decided to make February the month to hold a Philippine-Japanese Festival commemoration. They chose February because of the inconsequential historical fact that it was the month that the construction of Kennon Road began and the Americans, then, got Japanese laborers to do the manual work. This was probably because Filipino laborers at that time had had no experience in constructing mountain roads.

What they all seem to have forgotten is that they had picked the very worst month for the celebration. It is in February is when the worst Japanese atrocities took place in Manila. Intramuros, the loyal and ever loyal city, was totally destroyed. The rest is true of the rest of Manila south of the Pasig. Manila was the second most destroyed city in World War II, second only to Warsaw. But it was not the destruction of the old Spanish churches and homes that caused hell in Intramuros. It was the systematic killing of helpless civilians. Nothing like it happened on such a scale in all our years of colonial history. All these began on February 5, 1945, that was when the Japanese confined all Intramuros residents to the Cathedral, San Agustin Church and the Colegio de Santa Rosa. On February 7, all male residents 14 years and above were marched in groups of four to Fort Santiago. The next day they put Intramuros to the torch. (By the way, February 23, 1946 WAS WHEN General Tomoyuki Yamashita, Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese forces in the Philippines was hanged for war crimes in Los Baños, Laguna.) To celebrate Philippine-Japanese Festival on the month of February is to add insult to injury.

Again, we wish to reiterate that we are a friend of Japan. Friendship is the only bind that will ever hold the world together. Jeremy Taylor defined it as "The ally of our sorrows, the ease of our passions, the counselor of doubts, the clarity of our minds, the emission of our thoughts, the exercise and the improvement of what we meditate." That is what we should prevail in any friendship festivity.

We also want to make it clear that we are not blaming any individual or organization for having committed the blunder of having chosen the wrong month to commemorate a worthy celebration. What we precisely want is to make the occasion a notable success. Our saying that February is the worst month to celebrate Philippine-Japanese Festival also does not mean that the Japan Foundation office should postpone its plans to hold the Shigeko Suzuki Musical Concert, the 30th Nihingo Speech Contest this February. Those are activities that are conducted whether it is in Philippine-Japanese Friendship month or not.

In our opinion, the greatest gesture of friendship between Japan and the Philippines was when Crown Prince Akihito paid the Philippines an official visit during the term of President Diosdado Macapagal. How can one compare the hiring of Japanese laborers to construct Kennon Road to that historically unprecedented event?