Kaylee Daniel

The Ambivalent Relationship between the US Navy and the Philippines

Moving to San Diego as a teenager, I spent a lot of time around Naval personnel and their families.  The presence of large numbers of Filipino immigrants was a given; they were just there all the time.  If I thought about it at all it was from the gossipy, teenage point of view; they were well known for stealing “our guys.”  The fact was, no matter how much any of “us” may have tried to get to know “them,” assimilation ended with their marriages to white soldiers.   The barriers were all around us, from the major issues of language, to the issues that seemed major to us at the time; they dressed, looked, and acted much differently than us.  While we thought they were colorful and loud to the point of being cheap, I am sure they thought we were tall, blonde, and bland to the point of being colorless. 

As I got older I developed a strong sense of empathy for these women and their families; they were often here out of desperation and, while they were often unhappy in their marriages, they were not coming from a place where divorce was an option, at least not if they wanted to stay in the United States.   Over the years I heard their horror stories of life in the Philippines; a life that caused international military incidents when young girls, often only in their early teens, would sneak onto USN aircraft carriers and inevitably be discovered on what were then all male ships.   These “incidents” seemed unavoidable considering the circumstances; the most disturbing part to me was the fact that their parents often knew, and in fact sometimes forced, their daughters to try and take these journeys for the betterment of the family’s circumstances.  One can imagine, even not growing up in such close proximity with the military, what a life of 4-6 months out to sea on a ship filled with literally thousands of 18-22 year old men would be like for a young Filipino woman.  Thankfully, they rarely made it out of port, and when they did, they were soon discovered.  This is just one example of the fragile and ambivalent relationship between the United States military and the people of the Philippines during the time of our military presence there.  When discussing Filipino immigrant literature it occurred to me that, while pulling the military out of the Philippines was good for them in a political sense, from an economic standpoint it was probably detrimental.  I began to question the impact such a move would have on immigration from this country; after all, the naval bases were the meeting grounds where many Filipino brides met their grooms.  The question I want to answer is whether or not closing US bases in the Philippines had an effect on the number of immigrants from that country and whether or not that is seen as a positive or negative trend by the people in either country. 

Let me start out by saying that I expected to have no problem finding answers to my question but quickly found out that that was not to be the case.  The information is difficult to find at best, partially because the statistical information is embedded in immigration statistics and, as some of my classmates have noted, actual immigration information is very difficult to find as one has to weed through the advertisements for “help” with citizenship, and in my case, advertisements for mail order brides.  Furthermore, I hypothesized that I would find out that immigration would have dropped dramatically in the 13 years since the closing of bases in Subic Bay, and that prostitution in the area would have dropped at the same rate.   The few numbers I was able to find proved my first thought right, but I was way off about the second.  It would seem that we have left a permanent mark on their culture. 

The most interesting statistics I found concerning immigration from the Philippines were in a report entitled “We the Foreign Born” (Census Bureau).  To put the numbers simply:

• Naturalized US Citizens entering 1980-1989               322,375
• Not Naturalized entering 1980-1989                           129,430

The Navy pulls out in 1992

• Naturalized US Citizens entering 1990-2000               129,990
• Not Naturalized entering 1990-2000                           353-370

Interesting numbers when one looks closely and realizes that as a whole they have changed little.  The change is in the status of the immigrants.  Prior to the removal of the naval base a strong majority of immigrants were naturalized, most likely because they were married to US citizens.  Since the closing of the bases, the immigrants still come in almost the same numbers, but apparently it is harder to become nationalized.  I would have liked to see statistics showing how many of each of these groups were married to soldiers, and I am sure beyond any doubt that the military has these numbers, but they are probably buried somewhere out of the reach of civilian research. 

It is far easier to find articles and research dealing with prostitution in the Philippines and the USN’s impact on this.  It appears that although the government in the Philippines was anxious for the military to leave, the civilians were less enthusiastic about it.  Their reasons were heartbreaking to me.  Slews of articles interviewing young women from the Philippines wondering how they would survive without the money they made “servicing” the US military men (for between 10 and 15 dollars a piece).  They talked of repeated promises of marriage and support and how they were now of an age considered too old by local men, too old by the way for marriage or for prostitution.  Many of them had numerous illegitimate children born of American soldiers.  The officers on the bases had always made at least token efforts at encouraging the men to support their offspring, after all, they had a stake in maintaining local relationships, but with the bases closing, that avenue of support would likely disappear. 

Ironically, the closing of the base did not help in diminishing prostitution in the Philippines; rather it has made it even more of dead-end for the locals.  Government officials instituted plans to turn the naval base into an industrial complex that would replace the lost revenue.  From the government’s point of view, it has done just that.  From a civilian point of view, it has been a disaster.  The bars and brothels are still thriving, but now it is a multinational population that invades their city and they are now facing problems of their women simply disappearing, never to be seen again.  Apparently they preferred the regulated lives of the US military men who could not easily kill or kidnap the prostitutes that filled the night clubs, and who were more likely to save them through marriage and immigration to the US. 

I come away from this not sure if I answered my question or not.  Certainly I can interpret the immigration numbers in favor of my original hypothesis that the military presence in the Philippines positively impacted legal immigration from that country.  However, beyond that, the deeper I look, the more questions I find myself asking.  Now, I have to wonder if we should not be looking at what we can do to fix some of the problems we left behind, and, more specifically, what we should be doing about the literally thousands of children left behind that are the offspring of American citizens; hardly a legacy to be proud of. 

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