Our day of infamy

Today we commemorate Araw ng Kagitingan or Heroes Day but we forget where this heroism comes from and why April 9. How many today remember that Good Friday, April 9, 1942 except the World War II veterans, their widows and orphans and a few others?

To most this is just another holiday and this year makes the five-day non-working days a chance to liaise around. How many towns and cities do celebrate to honor the heroes not just of World War II but other armed conflicts that showed the bravery of the Filipino soldier?

One of the criticisms against April 9 as Heroes Day is that this day, to paraphrase US President Franklin Roosevelt, is our “day of infamy” not because of the treacherous attack of Hawaii by Japan, but a debacle caused by the unfulfilled American promise.

Under War Plan Orange the Philippines would be defended from attack by Japan. As early as 1905 when America was solidly set in the Philippines, it already considered Japan as a possible aggressor. At this time, Japan was industrializing and had begun expanding its military capabilities. Japan’s victory in the naval battle against Russia in 1905 was a test for Japan’s naval power.

Japan had actually begun its plans for the conquest of Asia as early as 1850 but Japan was primarily an agricultural economy so that it sent the best of its people to study in the US and Europe while its intelligence units spanned all over Asia, including the Philippines where they lived obscure and lowly lives that allowed them to go to the rural areas and map out the Philippines.

This plan was dictated by Japan’s limited natural resources that abound from China to Indonesia. It even looked with envious eyes to Australia. The rise of Nazim and Socialism in Europe allowed Japan to enter into an agreement dividing the world into spheres of influence – Italy in Western Europe, Germany in the East and Japan in Asia. The Americans had already defined theirs – “America for the Americans” under its Monroe Doctrine, enunciated in 1823 by US President James Monroe for Europe to stay out of the Americas.

The Philippines was then a Spanish colony and almost all the Asian countries were colonies of the European nations. They stayed away from the Americas that even Spain had to relinquish its colonies there.

Despite this division of the world into spheres of influence, the United States colonized the Philippines in 1899 so that in a way Japan felt threatened.

That was the beginning of our infamy, the shame that would to this day remain a blot in our national psyche. We did not know it then, until the US failed its promise under the War Plan Orange.

Early US military strategists, especially the navy wrote an analysis in 1927 when the world situation was beginning to deteriorate with the rise of totalitarianism that the Philippines is “our indefensible rampant.” This assessment troubled President Manuel Quezon when the US decided in 1934 to free the Philippines from its military responsibility by granting Philippine independence.

When the US Army Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Douglas MacArthur retired, he asked the general to prepare the Philippines for defense. MacArthur dusted off the original War Plans and with his aide, Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower, drafted the Philippine National Defense Act that the National Assembly immediately approved, thus this law became known as the National Defense Act No. 1.

The problem was that it would take ten years to put together an effective fighting force with 100,000 troops, 75% of which was reserved and 25% regular soldiers. It had no weaponry for war, like heavy guns, air force or navy although it was admitted the enemy would come from the sea.

Quezon was at least able to secure the pledge of the United States to provide its fledgling army with the weapons of war and in case it is attacked (as envisioned by WP Orange) a “miles long convoy from the US” will come to the aid of the Philippines.

Japan attacked us in December 1941 when the Philippines was still an American colony yet to be independent on July 4, 1946. It was thus a war against America, to kick it out of Asia. As the situation deteriorated and US intelligence believed that war was imminent, Roosevelt ordered national mobilization of Filipinos and placed them under the United States Army in the Far East under MacArthur who was recalled from retirement.

Japan calculated Philippine defenses would collapse by January 20, 1942 but the Philippines held, buoyed by the promise of the “miles long convoy” that Roosevelt eventually admitted to Quezon and MacArthur had to be diverted to avert the collapse of England.

And so began our agony on Good Friday, our day of infamy.*

back to top