An Ambiguous Legacy: Years at War in the Philippines

Abstract

cc OR NO NATION is worth anything unless it has learned how suffer 1'and how die.' With these words Manuel Quezon in December I94i announced that the zero hour had arrived.2 He summoned his people fight human liberty and justice, for those principles of individual freedom which we all cherish and without which life would not be worth living. In committing his nation to maintain this independence, these liberties and these freedoms, banish fear and want among all peoples, and establish a reign of justice for all the world . . . , he invoked the awesome cohesive force of nationalism. The appeal Philippine nationalism had been issued before; it had been raised by Andres Bonifacio when he destroyed his Spanish tax cedula and proclaimed national independence at Balintawak in I896. It had been echoed again and again by Emilio Aguinaldo, Apolinario Mabini and the other leaders of the independence movement from i896 i9oi. In both eras the plural societies of the Philippines-urban and rural, educated and illiterate, rich and poor, Tagalog and Bisayan, Chinese mestizo and indio, lowland peasant and migrant swidden cultivator-had been exhorted abandon their parochial worlds and unite defend their nation. The degree which this new allegiance was honored is a clear indicator of its growing acceptance. In i896 many, though certainly not all, felt sufficient loyalty this new value-the Philippine nation-to pledge their lives it. By I94I the response Quezon's call arms was overwhelming. The brutal exigencies of modern war force an articulation of values which otherwise can remain inchoate. It is a catalyst which requires stark decisions of life or death, sacrifice or self-interest, allegiance or treason. It is an acid test for nationalism, since fissiparous divisions of language, geography, social class, religion, ethnicity and culture must be subordinated the mass demands of national allegiance. Any nation which can not rally