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LITR
5831 World / Multicultural Literature: |
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Hanna
Mak
14
June 2016
Filipino Vets of WWII: A War of Attrition
Throughout the involvement of the United States in World War II,
Americans experienced a surge of national solidarity through their struggle,
necessarily accompanied by often unprecedented opportunities which served as
‘proving grounds’ for women, minorities, and immigrant communities. Although
many of these equalizing opportunities were often either withdrawn or forgotten
immediately after the war’s end, our society tends to have a way of catching up.
With the passage of time, the official, state-endorsed collective consciousness
becomes capable of carving out a space of overdue honor for these previously
buried memories of service. Time often erases the perceived danger of too-sudden
progress; with such a danger removed, we Americans collectively feel good when
our modern Congress finally moves to recognize these servicemen and women whose
own government denied them. However, while modern American history lessons often
now include a unit which at least briefly addresses the Women Airforce Service
Pilots, Navajo Code Talkers, African-American Tuskegee Airmen, and the highly
decorated Japanese-American servicemen, the role of the Filipino and the
Filipino-American community in the war effort is one that has often been
overlooked. Alongside this national lapse of historical memory is a more
material lapse on the government’s end: the long-delayed fulfillment of an
important presidential promise.
In
1941, the United States government suspected that a war with Japan was imminent,
and yet the army presence in its then-commonwealth of the Philippines was tiny
and ill-equipped, having been sorely neglected in the territory’s gradual
transition towards full independence. As a result, in the months before Pearl
Harbor, President Roosevelt extended the offer of guaranteed American
citizenship, pensions, and full veteran’s benefits to any Filipino man who
would take up arms under the American flag. Filipinos were considered temporary
nationals of the U.S. during this transitional period, and could travel and live
on the mainland with no restrictions, as well as apply for citizenship as
resident foreigners; this guarantee of Roosevelt’s was icing on the cake for
many Filipinos who already aimed to defend their homeland from Imperial Japanese
hostilities. Filipino-Americans who joined up—that is, those nationals who
were already living and working in the continental U.S.—were granted
immediate citizenship. In fact, many reported having literally been sworn in on
the spot, without prior paperwork of any kind. On the other hand, the Filipinos
who signed up from within their home
country would have to wait for their promised citizenship—not merely until the
war’s end, but until the early 1990s. Almost directly after the war, President
Truman’s Rescission Act of 1946 revoked all of the wartime promises made by
President Roosevelt, leaving Filipino veterans—American citizens and
non-citizens alike—holding a near-empty bag, later often forced to rely solely
on their meager and unreliable veteran’s pension from the Philippine government
to support them in their old age.
Some
historians, veterans, and activists seem to account for this slight with the
disastrous outcome of the war effort in the Philippines. Ultimately, while the
U.S. Armed Forces and the Commonwealth Army merged to create the U.S. Army
Forces in the Far East, allowing Filipino and American troops to fight
side-by-side, the USAFFE was sorely underequipped and unprepared, eventually
surrendering the Philippines to the Japanese in one of the largest American
military defeats in history. Many soldiers refused to surrender, forming
organized guerilla units that continued to operate throughout the war’s
duration. However, captured American and Filipino prisoners were led on a forced
sixty-mile “Death March” from Bataan, in which somewhere between five and eleven
thousand soldiers perished. Cecilia Gaerlan, founder of the Bataan Legacy
Historical Society, commented that “the Bataan Death March has never, ever been
part of the history curriculum in American schools,” and she also laments its
neglect in Filipino curriculum. Ultimately, the modern day economy of the
Philippines is dependent on the Japanese and Americans; Gaerlan, like many
others, points both to this economic dependency and also the shame of Bataan’s
surrender for each nation’s chronic forgetfulness of the event. However, while
these are both likely factors in the American government’s rescission, the far
more prominent motivator may have been that the act was originally intended to
prevent a massive tide of Filipino immigration into the United States; one third
of eligible Filipino veterans applied and were granted citizenship before 1946,
indicative of the large numbers that would likely attempt to follow after the
war’s end. If the Rescission Act was intended to prevent a mass immigration of
Filipinos to the United States, the related events in 1990 become all the more
ironic.
Beginning in the mid-1960s, Filipino WWII veterans fought to regain the
immigration privileges that they had been promised. It was only the late 1980s
and early 90s, however, in which three congressmen sponsored a bill to finally
allow elderly Filipino veterans their much-delayed promise of citizenship,
arguing to Congress for the bill’s safety: “It is unlikely that many of these
veterans will choose to move to America in the twilight of their lives.” In this
sense, the American government’s denial of citizenship to these veterans was
essentially a war of attrition—but apparently one that did not last
quite long enough to achieve their
ends of exclusion. Entirely contrary to the expectations of the congressmen,
thousands of surviving Filipino WWII veterans poured into the United States;
unfortunately, however, on the attainment of naturalization and citizenship for
these veterans and their spouses, the issue soon became one of their
impoverishment and suffering within their new home. While they and their wives
were granted citizenship, their benefits were still largely denied, and they
were also forced to leave their children behind. Rather than coming to America
with their entire nuclear family at the war’s close—as many had originally
planned—at the end of this war of attrition, their children were already
grown, and therefore were no longer covered under their parents’ newly-restored
immigration privileges.
Under
the current administration, however, a temporary solution has been offered for
this problem. As of June 8, 2016, the Filipino World War II Veterans Parole
Program allows the families of veterans’ grown children to live and work in the
U.S., in order to provide emotional and financial support for their aging
parents. Although these families must re-apply for parole after a period of
three years, as Daniel Cosgrove, spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services suggests, the program would at least “allow the veteran to spend his or
her remaining years with the loved one.” While perhaps this is, in many
respects, an embarrassingly small and late victory in exchange for the
often-gristly wartime experiences of these immigrant veterans, the first group
of family members are expected to
arrive within this year, bringing with them much-needed emotional relief.
Web
Links:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/macarthur/sfeature/bataan_filipino.html
http://www.cpas.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/pub/PAS6_Nakano_133-58.pdf
http://priceonomics.com/how-filipino-soldiers-were-written-out-of-the/
https://www.army.mil/article/165991/65th_Infantry_Regiment_receives_Congressional_Gold_Medal/
