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On October 14, 1943, the Second Philippine Republic, under the watch
of the Japanese Imperial Forces, was inaugurated. Like the First
(also known as the Malolos) Republic, the Second was short-lived. By
early 1945, with the forcible evacuation of key leaders to Japan and
the landing of American troops in Luzon, the Second Republic was
over.
In his book The Fateful Years about the Japanese
Occupation, Teodoro Agoncillo recalled the weather was clear that
day when President Jose P. Laurel took his oath of office before
Chief Justice Jose Yulo. The front of the Legislative Building (now
the National Museum) on P. Burgos Avenue was teeming with “all
kinds of people—paupers, new millionaires, professionals in faded
khaki shorts, mothers dragging their little ones, old women scolding
their grandchildren for walking too fast, pickpockets, guerrillas
from the hills and the Escolta, the buy-and-sell merchants in their
long-sleeved polo shirts, writers whose sunken eyes and hollow
cheeks loudly proclaimed the serious economic crisis, bearded and
long-haired men who could not afford to buy razors, well-groomed
young women proudly showing off their newly purchased second-hand
dress, not-so-young matrons who had lost their charms because the
bazaars had no lipstick and face powder to sell, vendors of Filipino
handmade rice cakes…”
Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, president of the First
Republic, and Gen. Artemio Ricarte (returned from exile in Japan)
raised the Philippine flag—the same flag first raised in Cavite (Alapan
and Kawit in 1898). Aguinaldo raised the faded flag the third time
at the Luneta, July 1946, for the American-sponsored Third Republic.
By the time the Fourth Republic was ushered in with the entry of
President Corazon Aquino after EDSA in 1986, the 1943 and 1946
personalities were all gone.
President Laurel in his inaugural speech had to
speak in parables and metaphors but everybody, suffering under the
Japanese yoke, understood what he meant: “We shall have to adapt
ourselves to the strange stimuli of a new environment and undergo
the travails of constant adjustment and readjustment.
“Together we shall work, work hard, work still
harder, work with all our might, and work as we have never worked
before,” Laurel exhorted his audience. “Every drop, every
trickle of individual effort shall be grooved into a single channel
of common endeavor until they grow into a flowing stream…”
I remember I was with the family on our way home
by train from Pangasinan to Manila and saw small Filipino flags on
display in towns along the route. We were returning home from hiding
in a barrio in Bolinao after Father was arrested in April 1946 for
his guerrilla activities. We were told that an amnesty would be
given to political detainees under the new Republic. Some prisoners
in Father’s batch in Fort Santiago were released but he, along
with many others, was sentenced by a naval court to 18 years,
transferred to Bilibid in Azcarraga and later moved to Muntinlupa
prison. In February 1945, ROTC guerrillas freed them before the
Americans troops came.
Back in our Pasay home (used as a casa in our
absence) we all had to work (manual labor in Nichols and selling) as
Laurel admonished everyone to do while waiting for the war to end.
We visited Father a few times in Muntinlupa. The first time I was
smuggled inside the penitentiary by a friendly guard who introduced
me as his relative. I hardly recognized Father, emaciated, with
shaven head and in orange uniforms.
Busy with trying to eke out a living, we
didn’t have an opportunity to sample the cultural life in the
city—like the reported stage shows and extravaganzas in downtown
theaters and plays at the Metropolitan. We were limited to watching
the few English language films in Libertad theatres and Tagalog
movies in Baclaran for recreation. And listening to popular classics
in our RCA phonograph. Or reading the books in our library. I
remembered only too well the story of Paz Marquez Benitez “A Night
in the Hills” in Philippine Prose and Poetry. I would only read
about the two journals, the Philippine Review and Pillars, after the
war in my study of literature during the Japanese Occupation. Nick
Joaquin’s story “It Was Later Than We Thought,” Francisco
Arcellana’s “How to Read” and “Writer in War,” and
Josefina Muñoz’s “Growth” made me reminisce about that
period—when we did not know what would happen at war’s end. I
didn’t know then that Manuel Arguilla was killed by the Kempetai
during the war, and that Lyd Arguilla escaped to join the Markings
in the hills.
We left in August 1944 just before the US planes
started bombing Manila. In Juban, Sorsogon, we didn’t feel the
presence of the Second Republic but that of the guerrillas and the
Japanese troops in mortal combat. We heard the great naval battles
off San Bernardino Strait and saw almost daily in fair weather
Hellcats flying low looking for enemy targets. We finally saw
American GIs and guerrillas coming down what is now called Maharlika
Highway. We knew then it was over.
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