THE PHILIPPINES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4535, 11 February 1942, Page 6

THE PHILIPPINES

ORPHANS OF THE PACIFIC JAPAN’S ACTIVE FIFTH COLUMN (By “ Ludgate ”) The war in Asia and Europe, having been extended suddenly and treacherously into the Pacific, the Philippine Islands and the Filipinos have been pushed into a position from which there is no retreat. Whether we will it or not, we must increase our knowledge of the extraordinary group of 7091 islands,

stretching out to China, Japan, and Malaya, which make up the Philippines, and of the 16,000,000 Filipinos who inhabit a fraction of them.

To our aid comes a remarkably interesting and well-documented book, “ Orphans of the Pacific,” by Florence Horn, with thirty-two pages of photographs by Fenno Jacobs. Miss Horn has studied her subject at first hand for years, and has brought her survey down to the end of last year.

Obviously her book was written long before the negotiations between the United States of America and Japan had approached the acute stage, preceding Japan’s wanton assault upon British and United States of America outposts; but, equally obviously, Miss Horn knew that only the United States of America and the Allied democracies could save the

the tyranny of Spain was merely a Filipinos from a slavery beside which sefni-benevolent and religious despotism,

After being “ the white man’s burden ” for nearly 400 years, the Philippines are now being saved from becoming the yellow man’s prey by the very Power which the Filipinos a few years ago sought to be free in the name of “ complete, absolute, and immediate independence.” Because of their unhappy geographical position between Japan and the Dutch East Indies, which, to use Miss Horn’s quaint English, “ bulge with tempting goodies,” these orphans of the Pacific are right in the path of the Japanese war god’s aspirations. GEOGRAPHICAL SITUATION If Japan is to be denied the gratification of her now utterly naked ambitions, our authoress shows, the Allied Powers must, long ago, have faced the geographical situation. The most northern Philippine island is only 65 miles from the most southern island in the Japanese group. “ Look at the map,” she says, “ and you will see that the natural course of Japanese ambitions southward is, step by step, from the Philippines to the Dutch islands (43 miles from Philippine territory), to British Malaya and Singapore. Then a swing eastward to Australia and New Zealand.

“In January Japan exercised her alleged right by taking upon herself the settlement of the Thailand-French Indo-China war, thereby entrenching herself close to Singapore, the great British naval base. Intelligent Filipinos know that a ‘ new order ’ in the South Pacific can never be complete, or perhaps even possible, unless Japan eventually possesses Manila Bay and the Philippines. If the Filipinos have no taste for traditional suicide they can beg, for the sake of their American markets and the comfort of the United States Asiatic fleet, to remain just as they are—a commonwealth under the United States flag.”

To-day Miss Horn’s problem is solved by the dread arbitrament of total war. The United States of America and Britain must save the 16,000,000 , “ little brown brothers ” and their leader, Manuel Quezon, from a slavery which recognises neither God nor human agencies, When Admiral Dewey steamed into Manila Bay at dawn on Ist May, 1898, and mopped up a weak and benighted Spanish squadron, Japan’s vulture-

like gaze on the Philippines received its first shock. JAPANESE PENETRATION Peaceful penetration began, and December, 1941, finds in many Filipino towns half the traders thrust into internment camps—in some cases 70 per cent of them. Political movements and trades unionism in the islands, in 1940, were honeycombed with Japanese or Japanese-trained cells. Loyal Filipinos and constructionalists assert that, prior to, -say, a year ago, many of the 29,000 Japanese known to be in the islands were joined by disloyalist local agitators who were “ open apologists for the Japanese.” Despite restrictive laws, at least 80 per cent of the deep-sea fishing boats in the islands waters are operated by Japanese. “ They prowl in all Philippine waters,” writes Miss Horn. “ They have radios. They can, and doubtless do, keep a careful watch over the United States Navy movements. . . . There is absolutely no question that Filipino names are frequently used as dummy owners of Japanese vessels and as dummy officers of fishing companies.” ' Of the humbler “ native ” companies it is said that many are working with and for Japanese overlords. Davao, a considerable city, is overwhelmingly Japanese; its Japanese residents cultivate 150,000 acres of the surrounding • land. Japanese plantation companies flourish in most of the fertile islands. The local hemp trade is largely in Japanese hands, Filipino labourers working under Japanese foremen.

Japanese investments in the rich island of Mindanao are said to be enormous. The Japanese retail stores in Manila and other large towns successfully withstood a boycott organised by indignant Filipinos and competing Chinese retailers. UNITED STATES RULE BENEFICENT While recognising the strength and driving force of the Independence movement and the nearness (1946) of the date when the Philippine Government may claim to stand alone, Miss Horn has no doubts as to the beneficence of American rule—-quite apart from the war and defence aspects—as far as the able, hard-working sections of the Filipinos are concernedShe found the Filipinos as a race lazy and only partly literate. They liked their children to learn a smattering of English at school, but soon allowed them to sink back into one of the native dialects. These people were more or less at the mercy of extremist orators and clever exploiters of native labour. But there is a substantial and influential section of the urban Filipinos which benefits by American rule so markedly that when the war is over it Will insist that the islands remain under American protection and friendly guidance for at least a generation.

These urban Filipinos claim to have the highest standard of living in the Orient. Philippine unskilled labour earns a wage of 50 cents a day. “ That,” writes Miss Horn “ is the industrial, urban minimum in the islands and it is considerably higher than the Far Eastern level. It permits a native to put more rice into his family’s stomachs than ever before. He can also buy a few Ameri-can-made shirts for himself, and perhaps, on easy-time payments, a sewing machine for his wife. The rural Filipinos, the share-croppers, who make up the bulk of the population, get no such splendid wages. They are lucky, indeed, if 50 dollars in cash passes through their hands in a year. They don’t get rice to nourish themselves properly; the bananas that yield all the year round and the fish in the streams don’t make up an adequate diet. Their feudal status has remained just about the same under Spain, the United States, and the Philippine Commonwealth.” Nevertheless, Miss Horn thinks that even the oppressed rural workers will have a greater chance- of happiness under a further period of United States tutelage than if left to the plans of Manuel Quezon or conquered by the Tokio war lords. Economic salvation is more probable at the hands of the democracies. If the George Washington of the Philippines, Jose Rizal, whose statue appears on the plaza of every considerable Philippine town, were alive in 1941-1942 he would cry to the Filipinos to hitch their waggon to the star' of BritishAmerican good faith and sane idealism in these months of crisis. Rizal was executed by Spain for his criticism of her cruel government. Many brave Americans and Filipinos have already bitten the dust in a conflict more deadly and more ruthless than ever Rizal’s followers waged. MANILA BAY AND CITY Manila, the capital of the Philippines, is emphatically not one of the world’s beautiful cities, even though the approach by sea is dramatic. Miss Horn says Manila Bay is a great crescent, backed by distant hills and mountains. Corregidor, a formidable rock-like island, stands at the entrance with a United States Army post upon it. The city is flat and low. It is partly very old Spanish and partly very new American. There are .fine streets and gloomy slums. The old walled city, Intramuros, is filled with old Spanish residences and antiques of all kinds. The buildings in the modern city are very American, a’nd similar to those of Bridgeport, Connecticut. The most distinguished

building is Malacanang Palace, where lives Manuel Quezon, President of the Comnionwealth and head of the “Complete Independence ” movement. All cars, we are told, must slow down to 15 miles an hour when they pass Malacanang Palace !

There is a social register at Manila and its “ upper ten.” The lower the number on the license plate of one’s car, the greater the local importance of the owner. The President is, of course, PI-I; but the American High Commissioner and his staff have special license plates, “ as they form a separate caste outside the social register.” Manila’s shopping centre is well equipped and quite modern.

Manila is hot—stickily, depressingly, incredibly hot. It is hard for the new-comer to endure this heat. He sleeps with difficulty, and wakes with hair, pillow, and pyjamas damp. Airconditioned stores exist, and cool suits can be bought; but Americans, particularly the women, insist on behaving as if they were in New York, and do not abandon dark colours easily. The streets are crowded. Manila’s slums, plus superstition, which still holds millions in its grip, provide ideal conditions for the spread of tuberculosis. One of the local pests is the little black bug—a little bigger than a flea—which comes wherever copra is stored. House lizards abound. They are harmless but annoying when they fall from the ceiling on the back of your neck ! Mosquitoes are fiendishly active, but can be guarded against by proper netting. The water supply is good.

There are in the Philippines not quite 1,000,000 “ pagans.” Manila leaders would appear to discourage forcing the mental growth of their backward relatives. “ If the Christian Filipino pushes the pagans around too much,” Miss Horn argues, “he will have on his hands nasty, vindictive guerilla warfare.” She counsels against large-scale and hurried civilising of the pagan minority on the islands.