Today, July 4th is Fil-American friendship

We have always been a great admirer of the American writer Mark Twain. In fact, our most read story "My Brother’s Peculiar Chicken" was inspired by Mark Twain’s first story "The Jumping Frog of Calavares County." I read Twain’s story and got obsessed with the idea of creating its Filipino counterpart. The result was "My Brother’s Peculiar Chicken."

We mention Mark Twain and our great admiration for him because we had always been saying that the Philippine government should put up a monument to Mark Twain. Most Filipinos do not even know that Mark Twain sided with the Filipinos when the Americans invaded the Philippines. He wrote a piece called "To The Person Sitting In Darkness," and here is an excerpt from that piece:

"Dewey could have gone about his affairs elsewhere and left the competent Filipino army to starve out the little Spanish garrison and send it home, and the Filipino citizens to set up the form of government they might prefer and deal with the friars and their doubtful acquisitions according to Filipino ideas of fairness and justice — ideas which have since been tested and found to be of as high an order as any that prevail in Europe or America.

"We entered into a military alliance with the trusting Filipinos and they hemmed in Manila on the land side, and by their valuable help the place, with its garrison of 8,000 or 10,000 Spaniards, was captured — a thing which we could not have accomplished unaided at that time. We got their help — by ingenuity. We knew they were fighting for their independence and that they had been at it for two years. We knew they supposed that we also were fighting in their worthy cause — just as we had helped the Cubans fight for Cuban independence — and we allowed them to go on thinking so. Until Manila was ours and we could get along without them. Then we showed our hand."

What better way could we commemorate Philippine-American Friendship Day than honoring Mark Twain annually for having sided with us during those hard years. One reason why Philippine American Friendship Day is hardly celebrated is — there is no annual program to commemorate the occasion. We are sure that Filipinos and Americans can agree on an annual theme to celebrate their constant alliance and friendship that started with the defeat of the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay and culminated with Americans and Filipinos fighting together in Bataan.

It would be good if Manila or Makati would put up a monument to Mark Twain and that monument would become the center of our Fil-American Friendship Day. As we pointed out there is a direct connection. Twain sided with the Filipinos during the war. We should honor him for that by making him the American model of Philippine-American Friendship Day. May we hear from Manila or Makati on how they feel about this project?