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July 4, 1998, Manila

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By: Bob Boyer

 

Born (1937) and raised in the Philadelphia area, I always found the Fourth of July to be a special celebration. The day took on extra signifi cance during World War Two. Imagine an eight-year-old in July of 1945, with uncles in the army and navy, waving fl ags and fi ring his cap gun (or hitting caps with a hammer on a stone).

Even so, one of my most vivid and enduring Fourth of July memories took place more than 8,000 miles from my current home in De Pere, Wisconsin. I was an Exchange Professor of English at the University of the Philippines Diliman (Manila). My Department Chair, Cora, was a leading member of an American Studies Association, which was sponsoring an event on Saturday, July 4, 1998. She took me along. I wrote about that day a few years later. Here is Part One of an excerpt.

“My reaction upon meeting Joe Rogers was probably not unusual for an American. I had joined a Fourth of July gathering at the Thomas Jefferson American Center, the cultural wing of the US embassy in downtown Manila. (Continues on )The US Information Services (USIS) and the American Studies Association of the Philippines (ASAP) were sponsoring the Barangay Theatre Guild in a dramatic reading of Eugene O’Neill’s play “Mourning Becomes Electra.” The Fourth of July at one time had been observed as the offi cial date of Philippine independence—in 1946, from the US—but was now a much-reduced occasion called Philippine-American Friendship Day. In fact, if it hadn’t fallen on a Saturday, I probably would have been teaching my class in Science Fiction at UP.

“As it was, USIS and ASAP were marking the occasion. They were also having a joint business or planning meeting before the play. A number of us who didn’t belong to either organization mingled while the groups met. When the meeting ended, everyone mixed companionably prior to the play. During the interlude I met one of the ASAP board members, Professor Natividad Crame-Rogers. One of her colleagues needed to consult with Naty, but as she left, Naty called her husband over to meet me.

“Hello, I’m Joe Rogers.” I stared at the speaker, not even trying to mask my surprise, in part because Joe was already chuckling at my reaction, clearly not put off by it. I smiled back and asked. “How did you come to have such an American-sounding name?” I asked. What I was really asking was, “OK, you are six feet tall and have an American name, but otherwise you are clearly Filipino. What’s the story? But I did not want to appear impolite. Joe knew it. He had had the same stated and implied questions from other Americans. He laughed and responded with a rich and entertaining narrative.

“Joe’s father was an American soldier sent to the Philippines during the Philippine American War (1899-1902), or, as President McKinley naively called it, the Philippine “Insurrection.” After the war, Mr. Rogers stayed in the Philippines, married a Filipina and helped raise a family of six children in the Manila area. Joe had a ready laugh and used it again as he told how his fi ve siblings were all fair complected, taking after their father, but how the American lineage, except for his height was undetectable in him. He alone took after his mother. In a sense, the joke was on his siblings, as Joe intimated, “I was able to move around during the Japanese occupation and help the guerrillas, but the others could hardly even leave the house without raising suspicion.”

“Before the outbreak of the war, Joe had joined the Philippine Army Air Corps and became a fi ghter pilot. In June of 1941, seeing the war against Japan in the offi ng, the Americans inducted the entire Philippine AirCorps into the USAFFE (United States Armed Forces Far East). “I was in Bataan with the USAFFE forces under General Wainwright when we surrendered to the Japanese,” he said. He was one of the many thousands of American and Philippine soldiers on the Bataan death march, an event that I discuss at some length in the previous chapter entitled “Bataan.”

“You were on the Bataan death march?” I interrupted in a tone of awe . . . . ”

And so concludes Part I of the excerpt. Part II will appear in this column in August. I decided to share this memory—and take a break from politics and pandemic— because of its importance. Joe Rogers’ story suggests to me the mystery, the signifi cance, and the closeness of the Philippine-American relationship.

As always I invite comments at Robert.boyer@snc.edu.

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