FOR some relief from the congestion, fumes and hustle of Manila, take a day-cruise to the island of Corregidor. Guarding the entrance to Manila Bay, the “Gibraltar of the East” has seen the junks that brought Chinese trade and Islam, galleons that brought Spanish Catholicism and, in 1898, the warships of Commodore George Dewey that brought American rule. In 1941 came Japanese invaders who, as tour-guides tell it, made sport of throwing Filipino babies in the air and catching them on bayonets.
The shared memory of the second world war—the rearguard defence of Corregidor by American and Filipino soldiers, the horrors of occupation such as the “Bataan death-march” of POWs to distant internment camps, and the triumphant return of General Douglas MacArthur in 1944—goes a long way to explain the affection of many Filipinos for America. It is hard to imagine other former colonised peoples putting up, or putting up with, the “Brothers in Arms” statue on Corregidor: it depicts an American GI (tall and strong, with a helmet) holding up a Filipino buddy (short and wounded, with a bandana).
Such comradeship assuages some of the resentment...Continue reading
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