SeanMcEnroe Painting the Philippines with an American Brush Visions ofRace andNational Mission amongthe Oregon Volunteers inthe Philippine Warsof1898 and 1899 On January 26, 1902, the U.S. Senate opened a series of i hearings to investigate the origins and conduct of the on ' going war in the Philippines. For three and a half years, American troops had fought there, first against the Spanish in 1898 and then against an army of Philippine nationalists who opposed U.S. annexation of the islands in 1899. The hearings were closed to the public, and their findings were not widely publicized; but the testimony given at the hearings reveals both the brutality of thewar and the racial vision that accompanied it.Over fivemonths, soldiers described the tor ture and execution of Filipino captives, thewholesale destruction of Phil ippine villages, and the displacement of civilians. The leaders of theU.S. occupation ? Elwell Otis, Arthur MacArthur, andWilliam Howard Taft ? presented elaborate theories on America s racial mandate to rule. Ex perts on military science, experienced in the Indian wars of theAmerican West, justified the destruction of villages and regarded the resulting civil ian deaths as regrettable but unavoidable. By the time the hearings closed in June 1902,U.S. military effortshad achieved near-complete success and domestic criticism ofU.S. policy in the Philippines had subsided. On July 4, President William McKinley declared the insurrection over. Nothing came of the hearings.1 24 OHQ vol. 104, no. 1 ? 2003 Oregon Historical Society W.J. Street, photographer, OHS neg., OrHi 3926 The Oregon Volunteers were thefirst U.S. soldiers to return from the Philippines, arriving at San Francisco on July 12, 1899. Although many of them had described their departure for war a year earlier with pride and optimism, some returned in a more somber mood. Years later, H.C. Thompson recalled: "Things had changed us.... We had high respect for authority and itsplace, but none at all for politicians and war contractors. The only real welcome home would be from family and old friends. Those who got up these big public welcomes, had themselves inmind." (Quoted inH.C. Thompson, "War without Medals" Oregon Historical Quarterly 59:4 [December 1958]: 323.) There is considerable evidence that themen of the Second Oregon Vol unteer Infantry took part in the same sort of atrocities described in the hearings. They were among the first troops to land in the Philippines, arriving in June 1898, and they served in the Philippines for only about a year. Yet, theywitnessed thewar on Spain, the period of negotiation, and thebeginning of the counter-insurgency campaign. Their correspondence and diaries suggest that they understood the people of the Philippines through the lens of U.S. race relations and patterned their descriptions of McEnroe, Painting the Philippines with an American Brush 25 Filipinos on their beliefs about nonwhite Americans. In so doing, they were able to engage inbehavior that theywould have considered barbaric ifcarried out against whites. Their writings allow us to see how Americans constructed an understanding of Filipinos, first as unfamiliar allies, then as wards, then as rivals, and finally as enemies. The conduct of the Oregon Volunteers was no different than that of other state volunteer or U.S. regular regiments. These soldiers are inter esting precisely because they appear so representative. They were ordi nary citizens who served only briefly as soldiers, and their attitudes on the war, on race, and on America smission in theworld are consistent with those expressed by their fellow Oregonians at home, their leaders in the federal government, and many of themost influential writers of the day. The atrocities thatOregon soldiers committed are by no means rare in the history of warfare. Scholars of military history and war psychology, noting the frequency of these behaviors, have sought to characterize their institutional and cultural origins. Historian Richard Holmes concludes that the fear and fatigue of battle are so intense thatwarfare can be con ducted only through a powerful group psychology. Loyalty to the group, fear of humiliation, and the dehumanization of the enemy are necessary conditions for soldiers to carry out their duties in the field. "Without the creation of abstract images of the enemy, and without the...