Philippines Redux 2: Corregidor

Map of Manila Bay

On the same day I visited Fort Santiago, I also took a boat out to Corregidor, an island in Manila Bay and site of a critical fortress guarding the approach to Manila.

'Bataan Death March,' 1994 painting by Lideo Mariano, in the
museum on Corregidor.

Corregidor was the last bastion of U.S.-Philippine (or, as it was known at the time, Filamerican) resistance to the Japanese invasion of the Philippines in 1941-2. The Japanese attack on the Philippines began simultaneously with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor (and since the Philippines is on the other side of the international date line, this was technically December 8 rather than December 7). Japanese forces had expected the Philippines to fall as quickly as British and Dutch forces did in Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, and modern Indonesia, but thanks primarily to the sacrificial and committed service of Philippine soldiers (around 120,000), along with a smaller force of U.S. soldiers (around 30,000). With their air force destroyed in the initial attack, and no reinforcements coming from the United States due to the losses at Pearl Harbor, this force fought a rearguard action against the Japanese which tied them down on the Bataan Peninsula for five months. The invading Japanese forces punished the nearly 100,000 Filamerican captured soldiers on the brutal Bataan Death March.

The Bataan campaign had been coordinated from Corregidor by General Douglas MacArthur. After the fall of Bataan on April 12, 1942, Corregidor became the last bastion of Filamerican forces, and was subjected to merciless bombing. The small force remaining on Corregidor took refuge in the Malinta Tunnel under the island's central mountain, a smoke-filled space crowded with generals, Philippine politicians, and the dead and wounded.

Effects of Japanese bombing, inside Malinta Tunnel

Romulo (standing) with Philippine Commonwealth
president Manuel Quezon in Malinta Tunnel.

The Philippine politician I study, Carlos P. Romulo, served as General MacArthur's press officer during this period, and writes memorably in his book, I Saw the Fall of the Philippines, about the difficulties of this experience--as well as the eccentricities of MacArthur, who would stand outside during Japanese bombing raids, smoking his corncob pipe, firm in his belief that he was divinely ordained to survive and lead a Filamerican victory. MacArthur had been furious with FDR for choosing not to send reinforcements to the Philippines--though MacArthur also deserves blame for leaving the entire U.S. air defense on their runways after reports of the Pearl Harbor attack came in, allowing the Japanese to destroy nearly every U.S. plane without a fight. MacArthur did lead a victory, of a sort; when he evacuated to Australia (against his will), he promised, "I will return." He did return, with Filamerican forces, in 1944, but only after thousands and thousands of casualties, a brutal Japanese occupation, and the near total destruction of Manila.

Pacific War Memorial

Altar within the rotunda

Corregidor finally fell to the Japanese on May 5, 1942. Not surprisingly, the story of Corregidor has not been forgotten in the Philippines, though most Americans likely have never heard of Bataan or Corregidor. The U.S. government funded a Pacific War Memorial on the island, with a rotunda where the sun shines down onto the central altar at noon on May 5 to commemorate the surrender.

I am glad that the U.S. government funded this structure, but I wish that more Americans knew about and remembered Bataan and Corregidor. It reminds us of the immense debt we owe, not only to U.S. servicemen, but to Philippine forces as well. Without their sacrifices on Bataan and Corregidor, the fight to retake the Pacific from the Japanese would have been much more difficult--and Australia might have fallen to Japan. In a time when 'America First' returns to the U.S. vocabulary, it is critically important to remember and honor the Americans and Filipinos who gave the last full measure of devotion--but to my mind, especially the Filipinos, who defended a United States they considered their occupier, and which had abandoned their country to the enemy in the interest of 'Europe First.'

Corregidor is the final resting place not only of Filipinos and Americans, but of Japanese as well. In the 1990s, the unmarked graves of Corregidor's Japanese casualties were finally identified, and a small memorial set up by the Japanese government. Also found was a flag used by the Japanese force defending the island when Filamerican forces retook it in February 1945. Rather than villains, I hope we can remember and mourn these Japanese soldiers, too, as the victims of a war machine which engulfed the entire world from 1914 until 1945.

Today, Corregidor is a beautiful island, quiet and still. As tensions return to Southeast Asia, with another rising power challenging U.S. power and its allies, I pray that Corregidor remains quiet and still.

The island's characteristic eastern 'tail'

Looking up the mountain ridge which dominates Corregidor

If you ever visit the Philippines, I would encourage you to take the day trip from Manila, which takes you by ferry to the island for a walking and bus tour, lunch, and then gets you back by the afternoon. You won't regret it.

***

The video is a bit somber today, but I think this is appropriate.

Nigeria 1: Oyinbo on Okada

On March 6, I traveled from Manila to Lagos via Doha (I'm sure glad I was flying through Doha before Qatar became the target of a Saudi blockade). Thanks to the very generous help of the sister and brother-in-law of a Nigerian friend I met at the Baptist Campus Ministry at Western Kentucky University, I got from Lagos to the city of Ibadan, about an hour's drive north of Lagos. This Nigerian friend of mine currently lives in Australia, and he's married to a Trinidadian woman: if that's not globalization, I don't know what is!

Ibadan is an old city, long pre-dating British rule in Nigeria, which came relatively late in the scheme of things. In fact, Nigeria as a unit only dates back to 1914, when Lord Lugard amalgamated the British colony of Lagos, the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, and the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria. Ibadan was and is the center of southwestern Nigeria, a region dominated by the Yoruba people. Much smaller than Lagos but still a sizable city, Ibadan also hosts Nigeria's premier university, where I conducted most of my research.

The gate to the University of Ibadan

The University of Ibadan, housed on a former British military base, dates back to 1948 when the British established it as University College, Ibadan, which awarded degrees from University College, London. In 1960, with Nigeria's independence, UI became an independent degree-granting institution. UI's alumnae include renowned Nigerian authors Chinua Achebe and (Nobel laureate) Wole Soyinka.

Lovely statue at the center of UI's campus

National Archives of Nigeria, Ibadan branch

UI also hosts the main branch of the National Archives of Nigeria. I split my time between the National Archives and the special collections of UI's Kenneth Dike Library, which hold the private papers of several important figures in Nigerian political history.

Kenneth Dike Library

Most days, I would go from the house where I was staying (more on that in another post) to UI's campus by riding on an okada, a motorcycle taxi. ('Okada' was a Nigerian airline which went out of business in 1997, but its memory lives on in the speed of the motor taxis!) This clip isn't of my commute to UI, but it gives an idea of what it's like to ride around on an okada, and to see some of Ibadan. Please pardon the very amateur videography, especially when the opening shot is of my pants: https://youtu.be/6aoaq3mrtjs

In Nigeria, I learned quickly that I was 'oyibo' (pronounced, and sometimes spelled, 'oyinbo'), which means 'white man' in the English pidgin dialect used commonly by Nigeria's many languages. Just walking down the street, and especially riding on the okada, I would hear 'Oyibo!' at frequent but random intervals. I quickly learned to think of myself as an oyinbo.

I will admit this took some getting used to. It was a small piece of the difference non-white people in Europe and the United States experience every single day, with much more of a burden. (I should add, 'oyinbo' was never said to me as an offensive statement, just stating a fact. I am very white.) Once a baby, maybe one year old, started crying when I saw him, and his father explained I was the first oyinbo he had ever seen in person. I was reminded of the much more extreme version of this which Frantz Fanon recounts in Black Skin, White Masks, about a French child crying out in fear at seeing him in his small village. My mind also went frequently to WEB Du Bois's description of 'double consciousness,' the constant experience of black people in the United States experiencing themselves and their lives not simply as people, as Americans, but as always Africans, too, seen as different by those around them.

I share this not to equate my experience with those, but simply to point out that being an oyinbo forced me to think about these phenomena differently than I've ever had to in the United States. On a purely human basis, divorced from sociology and histories of constructing race, it is a very odd thing indeed to be identified by one's skin. I often thought when hearing 'oyinbo!,' "I'm not oyinbo, I'm Mark." Which is a very oyinbo thing to think.

***

My other video today offers (a) joy from my dark soul, and (b) at 9:34 and 9:56, what it sometimes feels like when doing archival research:

Philippines Redux 1: Fort Santiago--An Interpretation

Just before I left Manila, I went to the old section of Manila, Intramuros, which dates back to the beginning of Spanish colonization in the 1500s. There is an old Spanish fort here, Fort Santiago, guarding the banks of the Pasig River, around which Manila first developed. First built in 1571, I see Fort Santiago as a sort of symbol of the Philippines' long history of imperial conquests--as well as its resiliency leading to the independence struggle of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The gate to Fort Santiago

The site of Fort Santiago pre-dates the arrival of Spaniards, having served as the fortress of Malay ruler Raja Soliman. This reminds us (me!) that despite the long Spanish presence in the Philippines, the archipelago's history as a part of the wider Malay world stretching across Southeast Asia reaches far into the past. After the Spanish defeated Raja Soliman, they built Fort Santiago, which was completed in 1571. Damaged in earthquakes and attacks over the next two hundred years, the fort took its current form by 1778.

The sculpture above the gate depicts Saint James (Santiago in Spanish), the patron saint of the Spanish state, who was associated with the defeat of Muslims. This provides a useful opportunity to point out that the conquest of the Philippines and the Americas was part and parcel of the creation of Spain as a state--symbolized most poignantly in the fact that Columbus' landing in the Americas and the Spanish conquest of Grenada both occurred in 1492. The sculpture portrays of Spanish rule in the Philippines as another theater for an anti-Muslim reconquista, though the importance of Manila to Spain had a slightly more pecuniary interest. After the discovery of vast reserves of silver in current Mexico and Bolivia, Manila served as the way station for Spanish galleons bearing silver back to Spain and for trade with Ming Dynasty China and various Indian and Southeast Asian states. Manila was the linchpin of the first truly global economic network.

Since the 1570s, Fort Santiago has witnessed and symbolized the different colonial regimes governing the Philippines. Fort Santiago first changed hands during the often-forgotten British occupation of Manila from 1762-1764--a reminder that what Americans remember as the "French and Indian War" was in fact part of what Winston Churchill called the "First World War," the Seven Years' War of 1754-63, which involved all the European powers and their colonies in Europe, the Americas, South and Southeast Asia. Britain returned Manila to Spain as part of the negotiations to end the War.

Statue of Rizal in the cell where he spent his final night.

In addition to the imperial realignments, Fort Santiago also hosted an important factor in the creation of Philippine nationalism. In the latter part of Spain's rule, the fort served as a prison, and its most famous prisoner was Jose Rizal. Rizal, a prolific writer and polymath, severely criticized the Spanish colonial regime and proposed reform in the relationship between Spain and the archipelago (another useful reminder that, like in the United States, anticolonial revolution rarely began with demands for independence!). Falsely accused of cooperating with more radical nationalists who rose up against Spain in 1896, Rizal was imprisoned en route to serve as a doctor in Cuba. Returned to Manila and imprisoned in Fort Santiago, Rizal was shot just outside the fortress on December 30, 1896. As with Jose Marti in Cuba, Spain made a martyr-hero out of Rizal, just before losing control.

Modern Manila, stretching out on the opposite bank of the Pasig River.

Also like Marti's Cuba, the United States swooped into the vacuum left by Spain to dominate the Philippines for the next fifty years, and beyond. In the aftermath of the failed 1896 revolt, the U.S. defeat of Spain in 1898 seemed to offer what Rizal had inspired the revolutionaries to fight for: Philippine independence, but the United States instead occupied the Philippines and governed it from 1898 to 1946--after a bloody war of occupation fought from 1899 to 1902. The U.S. military used Fort Santiago as its headquarters during the American occupation.

But before Philippine independence in 1946, another imperial overlord passed through Fort Santiago. When Japan invaded and occupied the Philippines from 1942 to 1945, Japanese forces used Fort Santiago as a prison for captured U.S. forces and Philippine guerrillas. Like the rest of Manila, Fort Santiago was almost entirely destroyed by the Battle of Manila between U.S. and Japanese forces in 1945, and rebuilt by the independent Philippine government.

Manila Cathedral, seen from Fort Santiago. First built in 1581, its current building dates from the 1950s.

There is great truth, and hope, in that last fact: despite the utter destruction wreaked on the Philippines by the Second World War, the latest in a series of imperial battles which caught the Philippines in the middle, Filipinos have proven resilient, and rebuilt. Like Jose Rizal, outlasting the forces of destruction which tried to extinguish him and the independence of the Philippines, the Philippines and Filipinos persist, survive, and rebuild.

As a Christian, I don't want to play up this metaphor too much, lest one idolize and deify a nation rather than God. I see it as a picture, a reflection, of a greater Resurrection, of life triumphing over what seemed like the darkest of defeats.


***

The video for today is more somber than usual, but it reflects the sobriety of violence and war. Rudyard Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" is the piece of literature most associated with the U.S. occupation of the Philippines, but an equally important one is Mark Twain's "The War Prayer," which reminds us to face squarely and honestly the consequences of war, and of associating particular political projects with God's name.

Programming Note

My apologies for going off the grid. I was in Nigeria from March 6 to May 31, and due to a more limited Wifi situation, it was more difficult to get blog posts up. I've been in New Delhi since June 1, and despite the better Wifi, I've been lazy about getting stuff up.

So, I will intermingle my last few posts from the Philippines with new posts about Nigeria and new posts about India (there will be lots of posts catching up over the next week or two).