Discovering historic Guiuan, Samar by bike!

Some weeks ago, we had dinner at the residence of our good friend Ernie Aboitiz so I could meet a "Canoy" by the name of Lou Jurika…. a Filipino-Americano who once studied here in Cebu City whose American parents were born in Zamboanga City. One thing we had in common was our love of history… World War II history, which is why I brought along my uncle, Col. Manuel Segura (ret) who wrote the book "Tabunan" and the "Koga Papers" to document the guerrilla movement here in Cebu.

After dinner, Ernie showed me a copy of a very thick historical documentary compiled by P.T. Boats, Inc. about PT Boat Base No.17 located at Bobon Pt. in Guiuan, Samar. PT Boat base no. 17 apparently was the biggest PT Boat base during World War II. That book describes in great detail, complete with pictures on how this base was planned, constructed, how it operated and how it was shutdown by the US Navy. Well, we all know that the most famous PT Boat of all, is PT-109 of Lt. Jack Kennedy who later became the youngest President of the United States. Well, all those who served in PT Boats have created a veterans associations complete with a website.

Since last weekend was a long one because Cebu City celebrated its 66th Charter Day on Monday, to show our support for Visit Philippines 2003, I got on my motorcycle and went to Guiuan. This is why the other week, I attended the 2nd Poker Run in Dumaguete City and visited for the first time the new City of Bayawan...a city if developed to the fullest has the potential of becoming the next Waikiki Beach, Ipanema or Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro or Nice in the South of France.

Last weekend, my big bike buddies, Dr. Rogie Borromeo, Dodong Faelnar, Boni and Culver Suico, Eli Alfante and my old motocross buddy Boy and his brod Job Ang of Naval, Biliran came with me for this trip to Guiuan in the southernmost tip of Samar to look at the roaring Pacific Ocean. I gathered that in the past, Guiuan was difficult to access because you had to drive all the way to Borongan and go south to Guiuan. Today, there’s a new access road, constructed during Erap’s time, which makes Guiuan only a 140-kilometer ride from Tacloban City.

Like Road Knights, we went on a 533 mile round trip journey to places most of us had never been before and quite wonderfully, we rode in probably one of the best roads in the country and best of all...a road almost totally devoid of traffic. After arriving in Ormoc, our first stop was lunch in Tacloban and then on to the town of Marabut... which is a dead ringer for Phuket or Palawan.

If tourists liked the chocolate hills of Bohol, the difference is that, the hills in Marabut are off the sea. If you’re into Rock-Climbing, there’s a sheer wall jutting out just as you enter Marabut. Next stop was the historic town of Balangica... where the Americans massacred the entire village and took as their prize the now famous Bells of Balangica.

Yes, there are new bells (call them temporary) in the belfry now, but we can only wish that someday, the United States government would return those bells to its rightful owners. My only comment there is that the historical marker in the Church was in Tagalog... I already find it hard reading Cebuano... how much more for Tagalog? In fact I asked some of the kids in the Plaza across the church if they read the marker or understood it and most of them said "no."

Arriving in the historic town of Guiuan we stayed at the Tanghay View Lodge, owned by Ms. Susan Tan...who to my surprise is the sister of a friend of George Tan an old friend from our practical shooting days. Yes, we saw a US Naval Depot south of Guiuan and mistook it for the PT Boat Base. If not for Susan, I doubt if we amateur archaeologist would have found Bobon Pt. After all, even the people there don’t have any idea of what the place was before.

PT Base No. 17 is located some seven kilometers north of Guiuan in what is now the town of Mercedes and from the main highway, it is about five kilometers to Barangay Bobon. Yes, what used to be a huge American Naval or PT Boat complex is now barangay Bobon and what’s left of the PT Boat Base is the old wharf and old wooden poles. We’ll be writing more about some PT Boat history in our future columns.

Interestingly, Ms. Tan herself is also a history buff and kept clippings of the old Guiuan. Right across her hotel, is Tubabao Island, where 5,000 White Russians stayed as International Red Cross refugees during the time of Pres. Elpidio Quirino. My understanding of those clippings was that, these White Russians were the Tsarists who fought the Reds or Bolsheviks. When the Bolsheviks won and turned Russia into a Communist State, the White Russians were sent to the gulags of Siberia and eventually found their way in Nationalist China. In 1947, when Mao Zedong put China in the hands of the Communists, the White Russians were driven out and Guiuan provided a temporary haven for them, much like the Vietnamese in Morong, Bataan today.