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Post by EXO on Dec 4, 2015 17:15:24 GMT 8
I came upon the issue of the 1948 Amnesty of Japanese Collaborationists when I was researching my paper "The Battle of Manila - Of Memes and Memists" There never was a reckoning for those who aided the Japanese in the intimidation (and in many cases, murder) of those who fought against the Japanese, as the legislature, whose responsibility it was to make laws, had numerous members whose conduct could never have stood fair scrutiny. They thus effected for themselves an Amnesty. Essentially, by terminating the prosecutions of those who had aided and abetted the Japanese throughout the war, the Amnesty of 1948 had a great number of effects beyond the criminals creating laws that allowed them to escape repercussions. The cessation of the prosecutions appears to have prevented a reasoned historical analysis in the Philippines of whether readiness to collaborate (i.e. to extol that the ends justify the means) was at least a partial contributor to the social malaise of corruption that has hung around the collar of contemporary Filipino life post war. Forgiving and forgetting may be considered desirable social and religious virtues, but the examination of History requires remembrance and judgment. Too much of a virtue can become a vice, and the Amnesty of 1948 has transmitted the wrong image down through the generations - that ignorance of history can be bliss, and justified too. The Amnesty established the futility of opposing the overlords of the sword, and of sacrificing one's blood and treasure for the ultimate benefit of one's motherland. Amnesty gave a forgiveness to collaborators who had conceded no sin, had expressed no contrition and who had performed no penance. The lesson of Amnesty was that self-sacrifice to oppose an invader was for simple people, and that survival, self-enrichment, and collaboration were justifiable. The ends not only justified the means for the collaborationists, amnesty glorified them. There had been debate, but those who had been guerrillas didn't have the political power, or the money. The collaborationists had both, and they had the motive to cover up their past. They had the money and the weapons to form their own militias, and they had the power to stake out their own fiefdoms. I liken it to a huge, noxious lump being swept under the carpet in 1948, and which has stayed there ever since, preventing an accurate assessment of history. As Mel Brooks would say, "It's good to be King!" To the background reading, I now add another document which analyses the effect of the Amnesty. It is a declassified Secret CIA report entitled POSSIBLE DEVELOPMENTS RESULTING FROM THE GRANTING OF AMNESTY TO ACCUSED COLLABORATORS IN THE PHILIPPINES It foreshadowed much which came to pass. It came to me via John Del Gallego (of the WWII in the Philippines Facebook Group) who found it "most disturbing" that guerrillas were at that time being hauled to court by war-time collaborators for acts committed against the collaborators.
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Post by joeconnor53 on Dec 5, 2015 7:31:22 GMT 8
Thank you for posting this, EXO. Hopefully, we can get a good discussion going:
1. We Americans have to be careful about being too critical. After all, we took in Werner Von Braun and other Nazi scientists after the war because it was in our national self-interest to do so despite what they had done during the war. Also, after our Civil War, we didn't prosecute people like Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee for treason.
2. We had little luck in prosecuting our collaborator, John David Provoo. He was convicted of treason (despite Gen. Wainwright testifying on his behalf) but his conviction was overturned on appeal for trial error. A re-trial was barred on speedy-trial grounds.
3. What happened to the guerrillas who were being prosecuted after the war for their war-time acts? I hadn't heard about that before, and it's pretty shocking. It's unconscionable that the Philippine government would forgive the collaborators but go after those who had actually fought for their country.
4. I don't have American Caesar in front of me, but I believe that Manchester deals with MacArthur giving his seal of approval to some of the war-time collaborators. The report that you linked to gives one example: Roxas after his capture.
5. Didn't a lot of the VIP collaborators have the same story: Quezon spoke to them before he was evacuated from the Philippines and asked them to pretend to collaborate so they could protect the Philippine people? These conversations were, of course, always said to be one on one, so there were no witnesses, and Quezon died before the end of the war, so he could not confirm or deny these claims.
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Post by cbuehler on Dec 5, 2015 12:47:15 GMT 8
Well, a can of worms has been opened here, to which I personally have long been afraid to address, and frankly still am. This is subject that I have spent many years of study both by book and by interviewing Filipinos who experienced the "Panahon ng Hapon" themselves. The subject is exceptionally complex and is a perfect example of history as not being black and white, but shades of gray. My own conclusions on this subject may be be viewed as somewhat radical for the tastes of many, and I remain reluctant to express them on a public forum such as this, but suffice to say that The Philippines may not have been as entirely antagonistic towards the Japanese effort as is typically presented. I might recommend reading Philippine collaboration in world war II by David Joel Steinberg, published in the Philippines by arrangement with the Michigan University Press, Copyright the U of M 1967, library of Congress No, 66-17017 This may be an extremely hard to find publication, but it piqued my interest in the subject and if it can be found, I am sure it will do the same for others. While we are on such a controversial subject, I might add that much of the Guerilla activities in the PI during the war are also open to scrutiny for those interested.
CB
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Post by EXO on Dec 5, 2015 13:15:26 GMT 8
Joe,
All of your points are quite correct. It's difficult to discuss the topic as there is so little written in the books about what went on.
Of course, a number of VIP collaborators who didn't speak with Quezon (or MacArthur) later claimed that they had done so. I am not as up to speed on them as I was last year, but here's a text I found on my computer, which might be of interest. It is an extract of a letter 22 January 1945 from Chick Parsons to his wife. Parsons is referring to a family friend, Tomas "Tommy" Confessor who was a notable guerrilla throughout. He has just been on a PBY flight to Panay to pick up Confessor, to get him away from guerrilla leader Macario Peralta. En route back to base, the two had time to talk. The subject of the collaborators came up. The quoted excerpt is devoted to this subject.
One of the points I tried to make in my paper was that here in the Philippines, the word Makipili is still a pretty dangerous allegation, in that if you accuse the wrong fellow, it can hurt you. Historians are passively-agressively intimidated to the extent that they'd rather mention the Makipili in the abstract, rather than name names. (Some historians prefer not to mention the Makipili at all, or just in passing, as if they were inconsequential. T The Makipili were more than just stray individuals with bags on their heads with eye-holes cut. They included big-time political operators and profiteers for the Japanese. During the Battle of Manila, it was the Makipili who helped light the fires, they who guided the Japanese to seek out helpless individuals and families, and they who eliminated their personal and business enemies. Yet there is very little which has survived about the prominent people of prominent families, because those families are still prominent, and powerful.
I have heard of an instance* where a political person claimed that MacArthur had given him authority to deal with the Japanese "so he could protect the Philippine people" and in the margin of the page was written, in MacArthur's handwriting, "NOT TRUE".
One must also note that in the early part of the war, the Japanese had not treated the Filipinos anywhere near as abominably as they would start to treat them once Yamashita arrived to tighten things up. There were people even APPLYING to be interned at University of Santo Tomas Internment Camp, so reasonable was it in the very early times. The Japanese had treated the Chinese community in the Philippines consistently -shockingly throughout, which explained why the Chinese essentially became the more effective source of opposition. Essentially, it wasn't until Yamashita arrived that Filipinos started dying of sickness and hunger in the streets, so where were all those "authorized collaborationists" then? Using their war profits to acquire food for the starving, or shelter for the sick?
So essentially, the war created an entire socio-economic group who were entirely without conscience, and who were thus favored, by the Amnesty, into a continuity of political power, a power which they never relinquished. There was never a reckoning, and it thus was that there has grown a sizable group of people in important who consider themselves beyond the law. The ends justify any means. Integrity and honesty is for chumps, the chumps who lived in the hills and had the Japanese chasing and killing them and their relatives. For the smart collaborators, it was "guns, goons and gold" then, and Swiss bank accounts today.
recommended reading: Kullaborator (sp?) by Agusto De Viana.
(Note from Peter Parsons: Ding Roces in his Looking for Lilling book, has a most poignant expression of his feelings to those who collaborated, including Pres Laurel. He also reports in that book how his own dad went to his old friend Laurel asking for help and was told by Laurel that he could not help because Lilling was really a guerrilla!!!)
Lest anyone who doesn't know me personally misunderstand, I am quite a good friend of the Japanese of today.
____________
* The original document is a report on Laurel by Chick Parsons to MacArthur, and is now archived in the MacArthur Memorial.
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Post by joeconnor53 on Dec 5, 2015 21:45:21 GMT 8
I wonder how the situation in the Philippines with respect to collaborators compared to the situation in Europe. We've all seen the post-liberation photos of resistance fighters shaving the heads of women who slept with German soldiers, but what happened to those who served in the Nazi puppet governments? For what it's worth, here's MacArthur's post-war report on guerrilla activities in the Philippines. In it, he gives absolution to Roxas. MacArthur Report
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Post by EXO on Dec 5, 2015 23:17:12 GMT 8
There were many "direct actions" against the low-level collaborators. Some failed, and the collaborators retained the regional ascendancy they had attained under the guise of fighting the Japanese. In some provinces, guerrilla bands were never anything better than outlaws with guns, and they continued their extortion of the lesser citizenry. On more than one occasion, there were gunfights between guerrillas and the US forces.
(In many respects, that statement could have been in yesterday's Inquirer. The US has a largely undisclosed "effort" in Mindinao and further south.)
Essentially, when the Japanese tipping point was reached, it became a free-for-all, where guns were the power, and good conscience had no place. Winner take all.
We must consider ourselves indebted to MacArthur's people for that report. Had the "OTHERS" been left to record what happened at that point in time, it never would have been written. All historical inconveniences would have been swept under a giant carpet of ignorance, as the lesson was that the ends justify any means here, the truth be buggered.
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Post by cbuehler on Dec 6, 2015 1:07:56 GMT 8
A few quick points here topics here: The reason Yamashita was sent to the PI was the return of the US. The "fence sitters" now saw what was imminent and the country as a whole started to turn on the Japanese, making the job of the Executive Commission and the subsequent Second Republic impossible. We need to also be aware that the Japanese initially wanted to undue the Oligarchy that ran the Philippines ( and still does ), but decided not to for many of the SAME REASONS as MacArthur and others the US had. The Japanese military was essentially under siege by late 1944 and virtually any civilian could be a danger to them. Indeed often they were, with murders of individual soldiers off duty and ambushes out from anywhere. General Kuroda was not a fighting man and by all accounts quite innocuous and relatively liberal in his dealings with the appointed government, thus the appointment of Yamashita. For myself, I am not quite with our esteemed EXO with regard to Yamashita, but I am keeping and open mind! I will elaborate some more on these matters when time permits.
CB
CB
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Post by Karl Welteke on Dec 12, 2015 19:28:46 GMT 8
VERY RARE JAPANESE OCCUPATION DOCUMENTS FROM 1944 Cbuehler has sent me copies of four rare Japanese occupation documents that were issued in 1944. He asked me to upload them into this thread and he will comment about them later. These documents were issued in the town of Camiling, in the NW section of the Tarlac Province. Interestingly, Brigadier Carlos Romulo (he has many other titles, a Filipino Hero) is from that town W472 Japanese Occupation document, 1944 from cbuehler who is a member in this forum. W473 Japanese Occupation document, 1944 from cbuehler who is a member in this forum. W474 Japanese Occupation document, 1944 from cbuehler who is a member in this forum. W475 Japanese Occupation document, 1944 from cbuehler who is a member in this forum.
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Post by cbuehler on Dec 13, 2015 0:17:33 GMT 8
Thanks much to Karl for posting my pics! Here is a document from my collection of Japanese period relics, and one of the rarest items I have. Items such as this did not survive for obvious reasons, although many other relics such as identity patches and armbands provided to Filipino supporters of the Japanese did in relatively larger quantities. To the subject: One Mariano Abad from Camiling Tarlac. Not only was this the town of Romulo, but the province itself is also the home of the Aquino family as well. The President's namesake grandfather was Director General of the Kapisanan ng Paglilingkod sa Bagong Pilipinas (Kalibapi), the sole political party sponsored by the Japanese Military Administration. Apparently it was a family affair for the Abad family, as Mariano's brother was also a Japanese agent who was tried and convicted in 1947, the transcript of which is here www.lawphil.net/judjuris/juri1947/jul1947/gr_l-430_1947.htmlMariano was the more important one and I presume he did not survive the war (we can guess what happened to him...) as his brother did to face the consequences. Virtually every town in the Philippines had many men such as these, the more notorious of which were dealt with by the Guerillas summarily during the battles of the Liberation. Others sometimes were brought to trial after the war, while still others, mainly of wealth and influence. managed to sweep everything under the rug. While there were many who rode with the Japanese for their own personal gain, revenge etc., and caused great harm, there were also those who genuinely believed that the Japanese cause was to the benefit of the Philippines. Although now known to be mistaken, I for one cannot hold such people to any wrong. CB PS. I might add there was often truth in the Japanese statement statement of "maintanence of law and order". All too many Guerilla units were nothing but bandits and gangs that frequently terrorized towns and killed civilians and it happened more than once that the Japanese military actually benefited some towns in this manner. It also happened more than once that the Japanese military stood back and watched while rival "Guerilla" banditos fought it out amongst themselves. MacArthur and his command were well aware of this, thus the vetting of Guerillas after the war.
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Post by okla on Dec 15, 2015 22:18:37 GMT 8
Hey Guys....It would appear that some of these so called "Guerilla" groups might be akin to many of the "Bushwhacker" organizations that were rampant in Border States, such as Missouri, during the American Civil War. They weren't so much fighting for good ole'Dixie, but were, in reality, "in it" for themselves, taking advantage of the chaotic local situations. Basically they were common "Outlaws", not Soldiers of the South. Just sayin'
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