Foreign Relations of the Second Republic of the Philippines, 1943–1945

Abstract

Much of pre-war Japanese propaganda was devoted to convincing fellow Asians that their cause of freedom from colonial rule was that of Japan too. And yet, when the Japanese landed in the Philippines in December 1941, they had to fight not only American troops, but a Philippine army as well. Japanese propagandists thus faced a challenging task in Manila. In the case of the Philippines, the pretense of liberating colonial areas from the clutches of Western imperialism was difficult to uphold: the country was by then largely self-governing and due to obtain its full independence by 1946. To make matters worse for Japan, while the Americans had settled on a definite course, the Tokyo government had still to make up its mind on the fate of the “South Seas” territories which it was about to conquer. The daily humiliations and brutalities, and the economic hardship endured by the Filipino people under the heel of an occupation army, cast doubt on the generosity of Japanese aims.