60 years later
Many WWII vets trekked to the nation’s capital to attend the dedication of the long-awaited National WWII Memorial this Memorial Day weekend. Sixty years after the theatres of military operations were officially concluded, the 16 million men and women in uniform who fought that global conflict, 400,000 of whom cost them their lives, are finally getting their permanent place of honor in the nation’s pantheon of war memories. The granite-and-bronze memorial sits between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall.
Memorial Day as a U.S. holiday began as Decoration Day, a healing event to honor the casualties of the American Civil War. Some sectors in the Confederate States decided to hold a separate day of remembrance for their fallen warriors. The holiday later evolved to include armed forces casualties of all wars that the nation had ever engaged in.
I lived as a Mr. Mom for five years in Arlington, VA. in the 90s. On weekdays, in turn, I brought 2 infants for mid-morning nursing to my wife’s office in a federal agency near the Arlington cemetery. I parked at the nearby Iwo Jima Memorial Monument and would invariably be drawn to the inscription at the base of the monument listing all the military operations that the Marines were party to. It read in part: “Philippine Insurrection.”
Schooled in glorified images of the Philippine Revolution, first, against Spain, and later, against the occupying forces of the United States, the word “insurrection” did not quite describe fully and fairly for me the kind of passionate atrocities that the opposing forces displayed at the time. Perusing news accounts of the day, description of Filipinos as the “poor brown brother,” at best, and “newly evolved monkeys,” at worst, provided me with a way of understanding the choice of word.
The prejudicial and discriminatory nature of that understanding was dramatically shown to me by the simple act of an old WWII vet from the Philippines who chained himself on to the White House fence in protest against the continuing discriminatory treatment of most WWII Filipino veterans by the United States government.
It appears that after WWII, the U.S. Congress granted equal benefits to every one around the world who were ever commissioned to fight under the United States flag. Except members of the Philippine Commonwealth Army and Guerilla Forces commissioned under the USAFFE. The rational then was that the Philippines was just granted its full Independence from being previously a Commonwealth of the United States. The difference in the economic standards post-WWII between the two countries led congressional planners to grant only 50 percent of the benefits to the Filipino veterans. The new Philippine government was obligated to meet the other half. Needless to say, this is the charitable view. Others, with good historical memories, claim a pattern of discrimination against what was perceived earlier as “newly evolved monkeys.”
Daniel Inouye, a decorated WWII vet and Senator from Hawaii, picked up the cause in the 90s for the Filipino veterans as legislation got introduced to rectify the structural inequity built into the VA benefit system. Referring to the Philippines before Independence, Senator Inouye said: “The Philippines was not a foreign territory within the meaning of the U.S. Constitution and that the Commonwealth of the Philippines was under the sovereignty of the United States. The U.S. legally involved the Philippines in a war of the U.S. against Japan. Likewise dictated the political and military strategy of the conflict.”
Some Filipino veterans who responded to FDR’s call to arms later migrated to the United States yet continued to receive their benefits at the reduced rate. Currently, a move to raise Filipino veterans in the US to $800 per month benefit languishes in Congress. Those who remained in the Philippines still receive the same $100 a month pension benefit granted them from the start.
My Dad produced a clandestine newsletter for the guerrilla forces in his area, and if not for the friendly tip of a Christian Japanese officer who alerted him of an impending arrest, I would never have made it into history. I was conceived on the run. My Dad allegedly was commissioned a second Louie, but he never pursued his claim for veteran’s benefits. He muses now in his ripe 92nd year what difference it would have made in his life and that of his children’s education if he did.
No regrets here. No VA benefits got the children to where they are. Three of my nephews are currently in the service. All have done a tour in the Gulf. Perhaps, their children will utilize their parent’s benefit.
But others had not been as fortunate. In the sunset of their years, many WWII Filipino veterans feel that Uncle Sam had not been equitable in the treatment of the brown brothers in the Far East of America’s Greatest Generation. A minor fishbone on the throat that history might cough out soon. But we dare not forget. Nor should we want it repeated ever again!
