The Japanese Occupation

With the rising tensions in the South China Sea, the possibility of an accidental war between the United States and China is not remote. War games players predict a Chinese win; if so, we may then expect a Sino Occupation. With 70 percent of the Philippine economy in the hands of ethnic Chinese and many pro-Chinese Filipinos, the Sino Occupation is a shoo-in. If it does happen, I hope it will not be as harsh as the Japanese Occupation.

I lived through the Japanese Occupation; I will now describe what it was like.

It is not true as President Duterte says that if we were not an American colony, the Japanese would not have invaded the Philippines. Japan had already occupied Korea, Taiwan, parts of China and Indo-China in December 1941 – all these countries were in Japan’s plan of empire.

We were not unprepared for that war. Gen. MacArthur, whom President Quezon asked to help shape the Philippine Army, was already here. Manila had air raid drills. Although MacArthur had an eight-hour advance notice of the Pearl Harbor debacle, he was unprepared for the Japanese air raid that crippled the American Air Force stationed in Pampanga and in Zambales.

Manila was an open city and the Japanese came without firing a shot. We had expected them to be barbarous but during the first few months they acted correctly and appointed many of the elite Filipinos back to their posts. Several of them refused, among them Chief Justice Jose Abad Santos, whom they executed.

There was looting at the piers. All the schools were closed, many of the school buildings were taken over and all the so-called strategic areas were cordoned off and they posted sentries in them, making it obligatory for Filipinos to bow before the sentries, else they would be slapped.

It goes without saying that almost all Filipinos at the time had that experience of being slapped by the Japanese sentries. After the fall of Bataan and the Death March they became brutal.

Our greatest problem was food shortage, particularly felt in the cities; the transport system was disrupted, rice was controlled. It was my duty to transport rice from Rosales to Manila, just half a sack which I could carry. Much of the transport was by calesas or bull carts as all the buses except a few trucks were sequestered by the army at the start of the war. Only the Japanese and the powerful Filipinos who collaborated with them had cars. The rich Filipinos had elaborate calesas called Dokar drawn by race horses. A few cars appeared fueled with carbon gas, a huge contraption in the back of the car that used charcoal from coconut shell.

Soap was manufactured locally. There were no toothbrushes much less toothpaste, and we used table salt to brush our teeth. Every available plot of land in Manila was planted to camotes and talinum, all of which were never enough. Soon the malnutrition showed in the emaciated bodies of people. Dried meat and dried fish were difficult to come by and much of the goods from the South were brought to Manila by sailboat.

In the early days of the war the Japanese cigarette, Akibono, was rationed. But soon enough, there was no more tobacco available except the native variety for cigars, and even this was not publicly available. The very thin paper such as those used in the Bible was made as cigarette wrapper, and the tobacco leaf was actually dried papaya leaves.

People who were sick and needed medicine suffered most because there were no longer imported drugs and doctors had to make do with local medicinal plants. For those who wanted chestnuts that were a common fare during Christmas time, we had roasted coconut meat. There being no electricity in the cities or even in the towns, we used coconut oil for lighting.

Cotton was rationed but not enough and soon some very poor Filipinos wore sack cloth. For shoes, leather for local shoes were no longer available. I was fortunate to have a piece of canvas which a shoemaker made into a pair of shoes with rubber tire as heels; it lasted me till the Liberation.

For so many Filipinos, including the women, Filipino ingenuity created wooden shoes with décor and carving. How I wish some would still be done today.

There being no more movies, the theaters in Manila without air-conditioning staged plays in Tagalog, many of them adapted from the classics and acted out by movie stars. The theaters were full. The Japanese Occupation resulted in the flowering of the Tagalog stage.

In 1944, the colleges in Manila opened and I enrolled at the University of Santo Tomas in Intramuros. We were living in Antipolo street and it was very rare for me to catch the streetcar, so I walked that distance every day.

We were having our lessons in Japanese that early morning, our teacher a naval lieutenant, when the American planes came roaring very low, just above the acacia trees. They were dark planes with white bands and stars, and knowing they were Americans we started jumping and shouting happily. That was our last day in school.

Early November we no longer had food, so a cousin, my mother and I walked all the way to Rosales.

There was no more traffic in the streets as the air was dominated by American planes. We slept in the abandoned houses along the highway and at night could hear the Japanese march in their retreat to the Cordilleras. It took us seven days before we reached Rosales, where we waited for the Americans to come.

It was during the Liberation that the Japanese committed their worst atrocities, the Ermita-Malate massacres in February 1945. Linus Von Plata, a graduate student at UP Los Baños, told me that after the dramatic rescue of American prisoners in Los Baños, the Japanese swooped down on the town and killed thousands.

These three catastrophic events in our history – the 1896 Revolution, the Japanese Occupation and Martial Law – were challenges that tested us. Our hardiness as a people, our loyalty as well. In these civic crises, morality is thrown out of the window, as each man is for himself. One shameful event that transpired during the Occupation is not just the collaboration of our elites with the Japanese but the fact that so many Filipinos were killed by other Filipinos to square off all deaths and for the guerillas to kill other guerillas in their battle for supremacy. These are the tragic events in our history that have afflicted us and from which we have yet to recover.