‘Kapitana’ remembers laundry days with ‘darling’ MacArthur

DAGUPAN CITY, Philippines – Every time the city commemorates the Lingayen Gulf landing, laundrywoman Julita Vallejos, now 86, remembers how jolly and sweet the late Gen. Douglas MacArthur had been to her.

MacArthur and his troops camped at the West Central Elementary School here near the end of World War II.

Vallejos, fondly called Kapitana Juling by her constituents in Poblacion Oeste where she has been a barangay captain for 26 years, told The STAR that she remembers MacArthur every time the city celebrates the landing on Jan. 9.

She recalled that the general stayed inside the Home Economics building of the West Central Elementary School, where his bathtub remains to this day.

“We, including my two aunts, Nana Consing and Nana Silang, washed his clothes,” Vallejos said.

Of the three, she is the only one still alive.

Her task then was to get the dirty clothes of MacArthur, count them, turn them over to the actual laundrywomen, count the clean clothes and give them back to him.

Vallejos said she was often the one who talked with the general because her colleagues were shy and she was the only one who could speak a little English.

The general, she recalled, would give her and her colleagues candies, milk, corned beef and other imported goods sent to American soldiers.

She described MacArthur as very jolly and sweet, at times even calling her “darling,” aside from being handsome and generous.

He gave them milk every morning. “He was a very good person,” Vallejos added.

At times, MacArthur would also bring her on trips like the one they had in San Fabian town, which the general described as a place “where you ride and see the underground water.”

“It was like a submarine,” she excitedly narrated.

MacArthur did not join the local baile (dance), preferring his wine.

Aside from the school, which became the headquarters of the American troops, some US soldiers camped in Bonuan and in the present pool site in Poblacion Oeste.

MacArthur asked her to teach him the Pangasinan dialect.

She would say, “Magangana ka kwanmo (Say I am beautiful)” and MacArthur would try to repeat but ended up saying, “Gang gan gan gana,” which made her laugh.

“He was funny,” Vallejos said.

Their friendship started by accident.

She recalled she was taken inside the soldiers’ camp for treatment when her foot got injured in the process of hiding her relative, the late Don Luis Samson, in barangay Ambuetel, Calasiao town.

“He gave me a medicine box which I brought home. He even gave me candies,” Vallejos said.

It was also then that MacArthur asked her to look for laundrywomen to wash his clothes. She said she volunteered to do the job but MacArthur did not approve as she was barely into her teens then.

Vallejos said she and her aunts cried when MacArthur and his troops bid them goodbye. He left them with goodies.

“We respect them (American troops) because they saved us,” she said.

Now with grandchildren of her own, Vallejos said she never forgets to narrate to her children and their sons and daughters her interactions with the famous general.