This paper discusses the human cost of two major wars in Leyte and Samar this century -- the Leyte episode of World War II and the Samar episode of the Philippine-American War. These events had long been appropriated as key components of our national history.

Among other details, this paper includes two doomed love stories -- one real and verified, the other speculative and inferential -- involving individuals on both sides of the conflict during the two wars in our region. The first had events around the Leyte Landing during World War II for its setting. The second had for its backdrop the Balangiga massacre and its aftermath during the Philippine-American War. Both stories underscore the tragedy of war and the creative need to attain a condition of general peace and understanding among peoples in our region.

This paper concludes with a narration of recent efforts toward peace, understanding and reconciliation related to the Balangiga massacre, which will commemorate its own centennial in 2001.

My paper discusses the human cost of two major wars in Leyte and Samar this century -- the Leyte episode of World War II and the Samar episode of the Philippine-American War. Of note, these events had long been appropriated as key components of our national history.

Among other details, this paper includes two doomed love stories - yes, love stories - one real and verified, the other speculative and inferential, involving individuals on both sides of the conflict during the two wars in our region. The first had events around the Leyte Landing during World War II for its setting. The second had for its backdrop the Balangiga massacre and its aftermath during the Philippine-American War. Both stories underscore the tragedy of war and the creative need to attain a condition of general peace and understanding among peoples in our region.

This paper concludes with a narration of recent efforts toward peace, understanding and reconciliation related to the Balangiga massacre, which will commemorate its own centennial in 2001, or nearly two years from now.

Let me first discuss about World War II in Leyte.

The Leyteño’s knowledge of World War II is largely limited to Bataan and Corregidor, and General Douglas MacArthur and the Leyte Landing. These topics are highlighted in our history textbooks and commemorated with local ceremonies and holidays attended by war veterans and former guerrillas. From family lore, the Leyteño learned about guerrilla activities and how his or her relatives and forebears survived the war years as individuals and as families.

However, not much has been written about how communities and an entire culture and society coped with the war years. This fact is particularly real for Biliran, which was part of Leyte until it became a separate province in 1992. The omission pertains to the block of time from the departure of Gen. MacArthur and top-level Filipino officials from Corregidor to Australia in early 1942, until the months prior to the Leyte Landing in Oct. 1944. This spanned a period of nearly three years.

Fortunately, I have come across a sympathetic third-party account pertaining to this historical gap. It was written by a Japanese veteran who had fought and survived the war in Leyte. This came in the form of a memoir published in 1986 by Kennosuke Nakajima, a Japanese radio operator assigned with the 10th Company, 3rd Battalion, of the 9th Infantry Regiment of the Japanese Imperial Army, which was stationed in Biliran town. The ethnographic first chapter, titled "Sunset in Biliran," was translated for me by a friend who is Japanese journalist specialising on Leyte. The whole book was titled Leyte Island: Wandering between Life and Death. (1)

Written by a Japanese war veteran in the style of a peace activist critical of his own country’s wartime policies, the memoir takes a sympathetic view of the Filipinos during those years. He described the Filipinos and their way of life in an objective way, devoid of the name-calling and the "Americans are good, Japanese are bad" propaganda passed off as history in our elementary and high school textbooks.

Nakajima’s observations of the people’s lifestyle during the dark years when our national government was in exile in the United States, and the Leyteños were ruled by Japanese appointees to local government positions, largely conform with the folkloric accounts. Our people tried to live as normally and peacefully as possible, despite the basic tension brought about by the presence of both Japanese soldiers and guerrillas in their midst. As a result of their resiliency and adjustments, lesser number of civilians were killed at the hands of the Japanese invaders during the early phase of the war in this province.

US military histories claimed that Leyte was the "surprise" landing site of the Allied Forces under Gen. MacArthur. These histories were noted by Prof. Ambeth R. Ocampo to have been "written by Americans to glorify MacArthur rather than the forgotten Filipinos who died fighting that war." (2)

However, and this is still unknown to most of us, the Japanese military appeared to have correctly predicted the American troop movements. They prepared for a possible Leyte Landing as early as April 1944. (3)

Nakajima vividly described the feverish Japanese military preparation in northern Leyte and Biliran Island during the few months prior to Oct. 1944. This initially involved the transfer of the command headquarters of the 16th Infantry Division of the Japanese Imperial Army from Luzon to Leyte in April that year. That move was a shocker viewed as a bad omen by the Japanese soldiers, particularly to about one-fifth of them who had already completed their tours of duty and were waiting to be sent home.

Subsequent orders included the conduct of intensive drills among the Japanese soldiers in their respective stations, the forced conscription of native laborers to construct bomb shelters along the beaches of eastern Leyte and two airports in Burauen and another one in Dulag, and the confiscation of rice and food stocks from the local population. All these were made in preparation for the eventual Battle of Leyte, which became a reality in Oct. 1944.

The most tragic episode of the pre-Leyte Landing phase of the war was the anti-guerrilla patrols conducted by the Japanese soldiers in the hinterlands of the province. In their effort to break up the backbone of the guerrilla resistance, the Japanese went to the extent of executing every suspicious male civilian they had captured and interrogated during their patrols.

Nobody had bothered to make a headcount of the civilian losses. The guerrillas officially reported later that less than 100 guerrillas were killed or captured by the Japanese throughout the war in the entire province of Leyte. I would like to be specific. Their report said: "From Feb. 1 to Sept. 1944, the Leyte guerrillas had engaged the enemy in 307 encounters, claiming 3,869 killed, 485 wounded, and 55 captured. The guerrillas lost 36 lives, 4 were wounded and 22 were taken prisoners." (4)

The guerrilla leader who submitted the report, probably Colonel Ruperto Kangleon, appeared to be lying though his teeth about the guerrilla-related statistics. But the under-reporting probably had some prodding from Gen. MacArthur himself. Among the American generals, he was officially known to have incurred the least numbers of civilian losses in his warpaths, a reputation sneered at by his military colleagues.

In contrast, Nakajima wrote that during the ten-day patrol he had joined as radio operator in northwestern Leyte, his companions captured and executed about 30 male civilians, whose fates he promptly reported to the battalion headquarters in Ormoc. His account gives the reader a rare glimpse of a Japanese soldier’s perception of a reign of terror that elderly Leyteños called juez de cutsillo (bayonet justice). This occurred on a widespread scale only after it became imminent that the Allied Forces would land in Leyte.

Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, more civilians were also killed by friendly fire from American carpet-bombing in Oct. 1944. These were not likewise reported. For instance, the Allied bombing of Dulag poblacion on Oct. 18-19, 1944, which resulted in the slaughter of hundreds of civilians including the town mayor, remains uninvestigated to this day. (5)

This was the general background of a love story set in the town of Biliran, which was an oasis of peace during World War II. The relationship between the local residents and the company of Japanese soldiers stationed there was very harmonious, at least until about April 1944. And this was probably due to the fact that a Japanese officer was romantically involved with the daughter of the wartime mayor. (6)

Corazon Nierras, in her mid-20s in 1944, was one of the most beautiful girls in town. She got enamoured with a Captain Sasaki, an English-speaking, American-educated officer assigned at the Japanese company headquarters in Biliran. Her engagement to the Japanese officer had met approval of her family and the wedding was planned after the war.

Unfortunately, the two lovers were separated as early as Aug. 1944, when the Japanese company in Biliran was pulled out to beef up the defenses of eastern Leyte. The last communication that Corazon got from Captain Sasaki was a letter sent from Dulag, which she received early in Oct. 1944. It reminded her of their engagement.

Soon after, MacArthur returned and Corazon never heard from her fiance again.

Corazon Nierras, now Mrs. Pajota, a retired public school teacher and 80-year old grandmother, learned about the tragic fate of her Japanese fiance only in March this year, 54 years after MacArthur’s victorious return. I was not exactly happy with my role of having to break the story to her. But I had to do so out of a sense of moral duty.

The details of the story were translated from a sequel of Nakajima’s memoir, entitled Leyte’s Songs for the Dead and published in 1988.

Nakajima learned from fellow survivors after the war that Captain Sasaki was seriously wounded during combat near the town of Dagami. He was heard to have shouted "please, bring me with you!" when he could no longer catch up with the other Japanese soldiers who were withdrawing toward the forest of central Leyte.

Instead of offering help, the company commander reportedly walked to Sasaki and whispered something to him. Nakajima interpreted this gesture as a suggestion for Sasaki to commit suicide.

Sasaki probably obeyed his commander’s order. His body has never been found. He was young when last seen alive, about 27 years old.

Sasaki was one of estimated 50,000 Japanese soldiers who died in Leyte. (7) To the jaded observer, his case was just a drop in the ocean. But then love is love, and this one love story was doomed because, instead of leap-frogging to Taiwan and bypassing the Philippines, Gen. MacArthur decided to return to Leyte on the same date of his arrival in Tacloban as a young lieutenant for his first field military assignment after West Point in 1903. (8)

The number of Japanese who died in Leyte should shock us as much as it does the Japanese themselves, who continue to conduct pilgrimages for their dead here. Leyte is just a small dot in the Asia-Pacific map, yet a ratio of one out of every 20 Japanese dead during the entire World War II perished in this island. (9)

From World War II, let me bring you back to an earlier war in our local history. I refer to the conflict with the invading Americans at the turn of the century.

The Philippine-American War in our region largely remains a hidden facet of our history. But it was one conflict that we should remember and learn lessons from because it was the greater war in our local history. Compared to civilian casualties during World War II, I had estimated that a dozen times more civilians in our region perished as a consequence of that earlier war.

The most significant episode of the Philippine-American War in our region was the Balangiga Massacre of 1901. In brief, here was the story: (10)

In the morning of Sept. 28, 1901, hundreds of native fighters armed with bolos staged a successful surprise attack on U.S. troops mostly eating breakfast in the town of Balangiga, at the southern coast of Samar Island. That event, described as the "worst single defeat" of the U.S. military in the Philippines, became known to history as the "Balangiga Massacre."

The natives fought to resist the destruction or confiscation of the townspeople’s food stocks, and to free about 80 male residents who had been rounded up for forced labor and detained for days in overcrowded conditions with little food and water.

The massacred troops were members of the elite Company C of the Ninth U.S. Infantry Regiment, who were stationed in Balangiga to keep its small port closed and prevent any trading. Their mission was intended to deprive the Filipino revolutionary forces of supplies during the Philippine-American War, which had spread to the Visayas.

The attacking force, coordinated by Valeriano Abanador, the local chief of police, comprised of around 500 men representing virtually all families of Balangiga, which outlying villages then included the present towns of Lawaan and Giporlos, and of Quinapundan, a town served by the priest in Balangiga. Many of them were disguised as church-going women. A few of their leaders, notably Captain Eugenio S. Daza, were revolutionary officers under the command of Brigadier-General Vicente R. Lukban, the politico-military governor of Samar appointed by President Emilio Aguinaldo.

The attack was signaled by the ringing of Balangiga's church bell. This same bell was taken the day after the attack by American reinforcement troops from Basey town and brought by the Balangiga survivors to the United States as their war booty. Considered one of the worst defeats in American military history, the Filipino victory in Balangiga was followed by a shameful episode that would be replicated in sensational but smaller scale massacres of Asians by Americans soldiers in No Gun Ri, Korea in 1950 and My Lai, Vietnam, in 1968.

The U.S. military authorities retaliated with a "kill and burn" policy to take back Samar, deliberately equating a victorious town with an entire island, from Oct. 1901 to March 1902. The policy was enforced by Brigadier-General Jacob H. Smith, of the U.S. Army, with the participation of a special battalion of U.S. Marines.

The entire campaign resulted in the disappearance of some 50,000 people, the minimum increment of Samar’s population between 1896 and 1903. (11) It also caused massive destruction of the people's economic base in terms of burned houses and food stocks, destroyed native boats, killed carabaos, etc. Among the human loss were numerous civilian men, women, and children 10 years old and above, who were reported killed during combat operations to reduce Samar into a "howling wilderness."

The Filipino victory in Balangiga and the American atrocities in its aftermath were taboo topics for discussion during the American colonial years. And the people of Balangiga themselves could not officially celebrate their forebears' testament to freedom until 1989, when the first Balangiga Encounter Day was officially celebrated.

Today, the Balangiga Massacre remains a largely forgotten episode of a forgotten war. Even the spate of publicity around the two "Bells of Balangiga" at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, whose return from the U.S. in time for the June 12 Philippine Centennial celebration was requested by the Philippine government, barely stirred the Filipinos from their collective amnesia.

Incidentally, I have found proof that none of the two bells in Wyoming were probably rung during the attack against the Americans in Balangiga. The real bell of Balangiga appears to be the one in the possession of the U.S. Ninth Infantry Regiment, now assigned in Korea. (12)

Anyway, Balangiga was not only a battlefield. It also appeared to be the setting of a speculative and inferential love story between an American soldier and a native woman.

Late last year, I was sent an early draft of the script for a planned new movie about Balangiga. After reading the material, I found out that the two characters in the love story that was thrown in were fictional. Since I was very much concerned about the historicity of the Balangiga story, but also aware of the artistic demands of a movie, I surmised that there must a historic love story somewhere in that conflict. I found shortly the probable female character in a paper presented by Prof. Glenda Bonifacio at the national conference of the Philippine National Historical Society that was held here. (13)

Prof. Bonifacio wrote about Casiana Nacionales, also known as Geronima, the lone woman privy to the native plot against the Americans in Balangiga. A lay prayer leader in the church and a relative of the major plotters, she was tasked to deliver additional bolos to more than 10 still unarmed attackers inside the Balangiga church a few hours before the fighting. This she allegedly did by hiding the items under her wide skirt.

According to accounts of living relatives, Casiana was attractive and good-looking. Yet she never married. Indeed, she died a spinster, in her old age.

But it was not these details about Casiana's life that caught my attention. It was something else. One was her apparent familiarity with a "Sergeant Benton" in the American camp in Balangiga. The other was a recurring nightmare throughout her life, when she would wake up in the middle of night and inquire from awakened members of the household if they saw a Caucasian male by the door of her room.

Of course, there was a soldier whose name sounded like "Sergeant Benton." His name was Sergeant Frank Betron, from Albany, New York. Family tradition tells that Betron was warned about the attack by a Filipino informer. He relayed the information to his superior officers, but he was ignored. (14)

During the actual fighting, Betron suffered a gunshot wound through his right thigh. Some observers suspected this was inflicted by friendly fire. After the native attack was repulsed and the attackers had retreated, Betron found himself the most senior non-commissioned officer alive after the regular officers had been killed. It was he who led the daring escape of the American survivors aboard several native bancas towards the nearest headquarters in Basey.

After his discharge from the U.S. Army, Betron did not go home to the United States. Instead, he found a Filipina wife and settled in the Philippines. He was known to have resided in Batangas, then in Cebu, and finally in Nasipit, Agusan del Norte, where a son named Mike is believed to be still residing.

A romantic relation between Betron and Casiana Nacionales can be inferred from available documentary sources and oral tradition. Orphaned early in life, Betron probably found in Casiana's family, whose house was just across his barracks, the family he never had. Before finding another Filipina for a wife, Betron probably tried and failed to locate Casiana, who in turn probably longed for him, even in her nightmares. If this speculation is true, then we have another tragic love story involving virtual enemies that was doomed by war in our region.

Speaking of nightmares, there was another American soldier who relived the horrors of Balangiga throughout his life. His name was Private Adolph Gamlin, the first soldier to be attacked during the fighting. He was struck from behind by Capitan Valeriano Abanador and suffered severe head wounds. He was not killed in Balangiga, although his sprawled figure near Abanador had been memorialized in various art works. (15)

Pvt. Gamlin's story landed in the news last year after the visit to Balangiga of his daughter, Jean Gamlin Wall, whom I earlier invited as keynote speaker at the U.P. National Symposium of the Balangiga Attack of 1901 that I convened on Sept. 26, 1998. She visited Balangiga, the scene of her father's nightmares, to offer a wreath on behalf of the American and Filipino victims on the occasion of the 97th Balangiga Encounter Day. Her trip was sponsored by Michael Sellers, producer of the movie Goodbye America. She was accompanied to our region by Bob Couttie, a Subic-based British expatriate and screenwriter who administered the Balangiga website in the Internet. (16)

According to Jean Wall, who is now about 70 years old, Balangiga haunted her father for the rest of his life. Recalling her childhood and youth, she remembered well how her mother, Gamlin's second wife, regularly had to comfort him and how the family had to learn to cope with his frequent return to the terrors of Balangiga. Indeed, in the night before he died at the age of 91, he woke up yelling "they're coming, they're coming," repeating the same warning he probably gave his comrades 70 years earlier.

Jean Wall's counterpart keynote speaker on the Filipino descendant's side was Engineer Ted Amano, president of the Manila-based An Balangigan-on, Inc. He is a great-grandson of Mariano Valdenor who had also clashed with and inflicted some of the wounds of Pvt. Gamlin. Valdenor, Abanador's second in command, was described in both Filipino and American accounts as armed with a long bolo on one hand and a knife on the other. (17)

For bringing two descendants of former enemies together in one forum, I hope I had initiated a process of peace and reconciliation for the Balangiga event almost a century ago. The process had to start at the person-to-person level, involving direct descendants, because external groups, institutions, and even entire sectors of the U.S. and Philippine governments seem to prefer that Americans and Filipinos continue to remain at odds over the legacy of Balangiga.

Jean Wall and Engr. Amano performed a ritual embrace of reconciliation during the symposium last year. I wish that gesture would go a long way.

Jean Wall continues to cherish the memories of her sentimental visit to Balangiga. Related to the commemoration of the 98th Balangiga Encounter Day this year, I was requested an interview by a local radio station. This I happily obliged. But I ended up giving two interviews. During the second session, I read the message of Jean Wall for the Balangiga celebrants, which she relayed through e-mail. This was what she wrote:

"I feel that we have come a long way to bridge the gap and share in enlightenment the tragedy of Balangiga for both sides, even though there are still many who choose not to accept certain facts that are becoming more conclusive with each passing year. The interest that certain individuals on both sides have taken in this long ago incident has produced so much more in knowledge of the matter that heretofore had never surfaced. And I feel that in some small way I have been a contributor.

"I have had my many Filipino friends in mind the last week with the upcoming anniversary of the 'encounter,' a word I learned to use from my visit that you much prefer to use instead of 'massacre.'

"I was so fortunate to have been given the opportunity to follow in my father's footsteps and return to Balangiga, a journey that I strongly feel he would have wished to take in his later years but was never afforded him due to both financial and health reasons. I am sure he was with me when I walked among the townspeople in their celebration parade and placed a wreath on your memorial in Balangiga to those on both sides who gave so much for their countries and way of life. He would walk among you without malice in his heart, with sad memories, I am sure, but knowing that we have made great strides in understanding, each the other, and in doing so a reconciliation of past differences can occur within the present generation.

"To each one of us who are direct descendants of the participants of the Balangiga encounter, the anniversary each year can serve as a reminder of the heroic deeds of our forefathers and we can be proud to carry the banners for them into the next generation. The celebration in Balangiga each year serves to remind her people not to forget this incident in their history, and I felt so honored to have been invited to participate. I will never forget the warm welcome I received wherever I went, the hand of friendship that was always extended. And to all of those people who I will always hold dear to my heart, I want to send a special message to remember the reason and circumstance that brought us together and that, God willing, we will once again reunite in this day of remembrance.

"I am looking forward to returning to Balangiga to celebrate the 100th anniversary with you in 2001 for we have yet to learn so much of one another, and I am committed to that understanding in the time left to me. I will hear the bell toll the morning of September the 28th., for my father, and for your fathers and grandfathers.

"Jean Gamlin Wall,
daughter of Pvt. Adolph Gamlin,
survivor of the Balangiga 'Massacre'."

In another e-mail, Jean Wall informed me that last Sept. 28, veterans groups in Cheyenne, Wyoming, performed a wreath-laying ceremony to honor the American victims in Balangiga in front of the Balangiga Memorial at the F.E. Warren Air Force Base. In her reckoning, this was the first ever ceremony of such kind to have been held on U.S. soil in nearly a century. (18)

I cannot yet foresee the implications of this gesture of the influential U.S. veterans. I can only hope that by the time the centennial of the Balangiga Massacre is commemorated two years from now, the thorny issues that continue to divide the American and Filipino official factions have been resolved and reconciled. I also hope that the church bell of Balangiga would have been returned, ringing in freedom in the place where it rightfully belongs.

Thank you and good day.

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