A Riot in Manila
The political situation in the Philippines in early 1970 was tense. There was resurgent, low level guerrilla activity and sporadic demonstrations and some rioting in the urban areas. Marcos, already unpopular with the student movement was responding with increasingly repressive measures.
As a young seaman newly arrived to WESTPAC, I was blissfully unaware of this, the news at the time being dominated by the war in Vietnam. There was also little talk of such things in the insulated world of the Navy town of Olangapo. There were other things there that captured the interests of most sailors.
When I got the invitation from one of the stewards to visit his family in Manila it seemed like an excellent chance to really learn something of the country and it’s people. Never mind that sailors were restricted to Olongapo, we were restricted from Baggio, too, and everyone was ignoring that rule.
Pete, the steward, provided me with some civvies when we got to town (as an E3 I was not allowed civilian clothes in foreign ports) and we were soon on the bus for Manila.
The ride was beautiful jungle and colorful bustling towns and I was in a travelers heaven of the new and exotic. On the way in I commented on how religious the people were, with crosses painted on all the houses. Pete laughed and said that these crosses were a holdover from an older religion and meant to protect the house from evil spirits from the jungle. When I was accosted in a station by some particularly aggressive plantain vendors he stepped in to drive them off, he was a good host.
We arrived in Manila and went straight to his home in the suburbs. Pete was greeted as a homecoming hero and a big celebration quickly ensued. There was much beer, some balut (don’t ask) lumpia and other delicacies and lots of relatives passing through. We toured the local neighborhood and mall and I was struck by the presence of armed guards at the entrance of the mall. As middle class citizens, the family proudly showed off the newest addition to their house, an indoor flush toilet. It was a great few hours and we were sad when time came to leave.
We boarded a local bus for central Manila, where we were to catch the bus back to Olongapo, and drove straight into chaos. Thousands of students, protesting the Marcos’ policies were marching on the Government Palace.
We got off the local bus and headed for the bus station but a crowd of young men started forming nearby, casting threatening looks my way, apparently their anger at Marcos extended to Americans. We hailed a cab and started for a cousins house, seeking refuge. The cab driver took the shortest route. Unfortunately this led right past the Palace.
The cab drove right between a huge crowd on one side and a line of Philippine soldiers on the other. They were lined up at the fence of the Palace. Seeing me in the cab a few students threw things our way, but none caused any damage.
This was too much for the driver, however, and when he had driven around the corner he ordered us from his cab and we found ourselves on the street. We set out at a good pace, short of running, trying to put some distance between us and the confrontation at the Palace.
A group of students spotted us and began to follow so we took off at a run around the corner. There we were saved. There was one of the open city busses there, with bench seats, and the people on the bus, sensing our predicament, motioned for us to board the bus and put us in the middle of one of the bench seats and closed in around us. The bus started forward and the students, rounding the corner, ran right by, not seeing us. A narrow escape.
After much wandering and more narrow escapes we finally gained his cousins house on a narrow little downtown side street, a little after dark. As crowds were now wandering the streets it was decided that we could not try for the depot again and I left town in the trunk of his cousins car.
We reached the highway back to Olongapo and finally caught a bus for the long ride back, relieved to be safe. A short while later, though, the bus was stopped at a roadblock. Armed soldiers came aboard and checked all the passengers and ordered me onto the floor of the bus for the rest of the trip. The bus ahead of us had Americans aboard and had been fired on by Huks (communist guerrillas) who were inspired, I suppose, by the riots in the city. I spent the next hour on the floor, happy enough to be there and we made it back to the ship safe and sound, though a little late. After what we’d been through that day, conning our way past a couple of Marine guards at the gate was a piece of cake.
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