Rizal and historiography in Southeast Asia

While the academic discourse on the redevelopment of maritime industries through the Philippine Rehabilitation Act of 1946 remains sparse, there is a substantial body of literature concerning postwar Southeast Asian nationalism and its relation to the Imperial Japanese invasion and occupation of the region throughout the war. Examining possible influences of Japanese Pan-Asianism enhances our understanding of postwar nationalism. Matthiessen depicted the Philippines as exceptionally resistant to Japan’s Pan-Asianism as embodied through the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere because of the influences of U.S. society and overall positive attitude toward the United States during the war (Matthiessen Reference Matthiesen2016: 6). Benedict Anderson emphasized the importance of overseas education in nineteenth-century Europe for those from the Philippines who played a vital role in the construction of a Filipino national identity. José Rizal, a Filipino poet and intellectual who arrived in Madrid in 1882, noted the immense grandeur and modernity of major European capitals in stark contrast with the status of Madrid as a less glamorous capital of a weaker power, which in turn caused him to question the legitimacy of Spanish authority in the Philippines (Anderson Reference Anderson1998: 198, 227–229). Perhaps while the strong spirit of resistance in the Philippines prevented Japan from gaining much popular support, elements of imperial propaganda seeped through to the populace. Determining how this seepage occurred may help cast light on the historical memory of the war and how it influenced society after the Japanese surrender. Furthermore, our understanding of Filipino nationalism may be enhanced by taking a similar approach as Anderson to education within a wartime Asian and postwar U.S. context rather than a European one.

The Filipino national identity from its inception required a narrative tentatively based on historical texts, but early nationalists had only Spanish primary sources to forge a new national identity. In August 1888, José Rizal committed himself to annotating Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, a historical text from the early days of Spanish colonialism from the perspective of the colonies’ former lieutenant general. Rizal argued that Spanish colonialism slowed the development of the Philippines rather than bringing civilization to it and its people (Ocampo Reference Ocampo1998: 184–187). The history, published in Mexico in 1609, attracted Rizal, as he determined it was rarer and more “objective” than more religious leaders’ spiritually oriented texts that frequently depicted miracles, and because Morga was an important colonial figure who was relatively sympathetic to indios (Ocampo Reference Ocampo1998: 188–190). Rizal presented a new national narrative for the Filipino people built off colonial texts but with a new twist that played to the emotions of the intended audience.

Rizal painted a picture of a paradise stolen by the Spanish colonialists who robbed the Filipino people of this idealized past. He depicted “ancient Filipinos” as having better practices than European civilization in certain aspects, such as greater gender equality (Aguilar Reference Aguilar2005: 611). However exaggerated Rizal’s claims were, particularly in regard to cannon-making at the level of European foundries and shipbuilding of proportions unrealistic for the time period, they illustrate the construction of a national mythology portraying a lost ancient civilization stolen by the Spaniards. Filipino schoolchildren, even during the American colonial period, learned of these national myths (Ocampo Reference Ocampo1998: 198–200). These Filipino nationalist narratives, created through the critiquing of colonial history, fostered resentment against the Spanish overlords and created a Filipino identity where little to none existed previously. The criticisms themselves did not substantively alter the colonial narrative itself but cast it in a more negative light and subverted it.

The construction of a Filipino identity took precedence over historical accuracy when it came to the writing of the Philippines and Filipino’s narrative. Constructing a Filipino racial identity proved challenging given the diversity of the people living within the archipelago, in addition to the lack of pre-Hispanic literature. The ilustrados, or urban dwellers in the Philippines, developed the notion of the “Filipino race” despite their usual mixed ethnic background, while the nationalist discourse often conflated racial identity with the nation. Rizal himself at his execution demanded to be referred to as “pure indio,” which was the word for people local to the archipelago, as opposed to “Chinese mestizo,” who were of both Chinese and indio ancestry (Aguilar Reference Aguilar2005: 630). In his historical discourse, Rizal pushed others to become Filipino patriots and have an “indio” worldview when writing Filipino history. His work was political propaganda as he manipulated evidence to fit his preconceived beliefs rather than carefully weighing the evidence to construct an argument or narrative. The influence of Rizal’s nationalism turned others’ scholarly criticism of his work into a perceived assault on the Filipino identity itself. He cast Spanish colonialists as having suppressed a primordial Filipino society and undermined their development (Ocampo Reference Ocampo1998: 207–208). The political point of the later developed nationalist teleology was ultimately the removal of Spanish authorities and those loyal to the Spanish crown from the Philippine archipelago and the creation of a national consciousness based on a collective sense of grievance and a mythic racial past that ignored or pasted over the diversity of the archipelago, remarkably similar to later Japanese narratives.

Imperial Japanese ideology and historical narratives

Imperial Japan legitimized its new empire in the war against the Allies through the glorification of a collective struggle against Great Britain and the United States. Shūmei Ōkawa, a prominent Japanese Pan-Asianist intellectual, intentionally employed sources from British and American perspectives rather than East Asian writers because he sought to force the Allies to discredit British and American authors rather than Asian ones (Ōkawa Reference Okawa1944: iii–iv). Ōkawa depicted history as an antagonism between the East and West, declaring war inevitable between East Asia and the Anglo-American nations. The war was a “holy mission” for Japan, the conclusion of which would birth an Asian Renaissance and new world order (1–2). The publishing of the English language translation of Ōkawa’s work roughly coincided with Japan’s renewed efforts of mass mobilization through the granting of “independence” to conquered territories to attain “liberation,” which required “the annihilation of the United States and [Great] Britain” (Benda, Irikura, & Kishi, Reference Benda, Irikura and Kishi1965: 258). Japanese imperial propaganda promoted divisions between Asian and Western peoples to facilitate Japan’s objectives during the war similarly to the literary strategies Rizal employed decades earlier. Disaggregating narrative influences of Rizal versus Japanese scholars in postwar historiography remains challenging because both revolved around ejecting Western powers, with Rizal focusing on Spain and Japan emphasizing the oppression by the United States and Great Britain. Ōkawa’s ideology by 1942 fit within a broader Pan-Asianist tradition in Japan that sought a war of liberation in Asia at the expense of Western powers. Ryōhei Uchida’s work years earlier contributed to the intellectual groundwork for Japan’s aggression in the war, fusing cosmological elements with a desire for a new order in Asia that liberated its people from the West’s oppression. Uchida desired to readopt the old ways lost to Western influence but generally limited himself to a Sinocentric focus and to Japanese national interests (Matthiesen, Reference Matthiesen2016: 30–32). Another scholar, Kenkichi Kodera, echoed similar sentiments for a Greater Asia by expanding from focusing on not just China and Korea but also expanding Japan’s dominion over the “yellow race,” along with arguing that Japan’s critical goal was “to rescue [East Asia] from the oppression of the white race” thereby uniting Asia as the final step for Greater Asianism (32–33). Kametarō Mitsukawa’s Stolen Asia in 1921 sought Japan’s liberation of peoples globally with cooperation from China and Korea (38). Ōkawa’s work fit within a broader trend of Japanese literature concerned with the liberation of Asia from Western dominance while also reinvigorating Asian culture at the expense of Western economic, cultural, and political influence.

Ōkawa and other Pan-Asianists placed the United States as an enemy in need of attack later than they did other major imperial powers in Asia. Ōkawa argued for avoiding war with the United States in its southward advance toward the British, Dutch, and French colonies in Southeast Asia while pushing for a resolution to the war in China. While he saw Japan as finally having the opportunity to liberate the Asian colonies from European domination, he pushed for increased trade ties with the United States as to maintain U.S. neutrality. Once the war began, his construction of “Anglo-American aggression” became preferable to “Western aggression” because of Germany being on Japan’s side (Aydin Reference Aydin2007: 171–173). Japanese foreign policy reflected these ideals under Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka, who sought to cultivate a friendship with the United States and end the war with China. Japan and China would create a Pacific Civilization and economic bloc on the western Pacific rim, while the United States would occupy the eastern rim (Lu Reference Lu2002: 173). Ōkawa’s Pan-Asianism prioritized the conquest of European colonies in Asia with a degree of pragmatism in the lead-up before formally preparing and engaging in a war with the United States and Great Britain.

Promoting cultural, spiritual, and even racial similarities of Asian peoples became an important aspect of Japanese propaganda during the Asia-Pacific War. Japan’s official adoption of the tenets of the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere in 1941 coincided with the promotion of exoteric notions of Pan-Asianism that promoted historical and cultural similarities between Japan and other Asian polities (Matthiesen, Reference Matthiesen2016: 61). The broader Pan-Asian discourse included legitimization of the conflict through spiritual over material objectives, with Masamichi Royama promoting awakening of collective consciousness as “the Orient awakes globally as the Orient” (Matthiesen, Reference Matthiesen2016: 63, 65). Ōkawa urged the unity and sovereignty of India, China, and Japan because of their commonality as the “Mongolian Race,” along with the common religious heritage of Buddhism and Confucianism. Chinese poems and literature greatly influenced Japanese culture (Ōkawa Reference Okawa1944: 120–129). Japanese propaganda emphasized the commonality of Asian peoples as a means to construct a new global political order in opposition to things deemed as material interests and Western values. While racially segregating the Pacific Rim became the political goal, the ultimate emotional objective for the historical propaganda prioritized the incitement of rage and thirst for revenge against Americans and Britons for centuries of oppression against Asians over the legitimization of Japan’s rule through the construction of a common identity based on religious, cultural, or ethnic similarities.

Japanese imperial education and cultural exchange

Japan’s ambitions as an imperial power during the interwar years and during the conflict itself required political legitimization and an overarching mission for war in Asia. A key aspect of this was to persuade not only the Japanese public of the nobility of the mission, but also the people living in territories the Japanese government sought to control or already governed, of the necessity of cooperation. This public relations offensive employed educational institutions and mass media to recruit and train a cadre of administrative officials for the new empire. New media additionally promoted a narrative to diminish the legitimacy of European and U.S. authority in Asia while supporting Japanese expansion. Japanese officials determined that educating those in conquered territories was necessary to pacify the empire, along with creating a new administrative body to govern these territories with promising local candidates. In addition to training programs in Japan itself, the government established public relations and recruitment programs in the territories already absorbed into the Japanese Empire.

As part of this, Ōkawa set up an educational institution in Japan in 1938 known as the Showa Language Institute (Shōwa Gogaku Kenkyujo), more popularly known as the Ōkawa School (Okawa Juku), which offered scholarships and stipends to students who would be contracted to work as government officials in Southeast Asia or elsewhere (Aydin Reference Aydin2007: 170). The curriculum of the schools reflected Ōkawa’s narratives on European colonialism, as he personally taught the course “History of Modern European Colonialism.” The school became renowned enough for Japanese generals to lecture at the school (171). It indoctrinated foreign and intelligence officers to struggle against oppression in Asia, though many became army conscripts in the war (Jaffe Reference Jaffe2014: 158–159). While the two institutions were distinct and had different student bodies, they likely had similar curriculum and promoted similar cultural and historical ideals.

Filipinos, similar to other Southeast Asians, endured such a Japanese propaganda campaign designed to turn them against the Allies. Japan’s mass media strategy differentiated between two different target audiences, with one being the intellectuals and the other being the masses. Given its importance to the war, Japanese propagandists held leadership positions from different ministries who coordinated through the Information Liaison Conference Committee. Within this committee, Major Tsuneishi Shigetsugu, who led the influential Eighth Section of the Army Headquarters, coordinated the Southern Armies propaganda (senden-han), which sought to promote Japan in the occupied territories, such as the Philippines (Nieuwenhof Reference Nieuwenhof1984: 162–163). Pan-Asianist propaganda exuded exoteric notions that emphasized a common cultural and racial background relative to that of the U.S. and Spanish colonizers of the territory, even as the administration of the Philippines was much more pragmatic, by relying on the old elites, the remaining Commonwealth administration, and the Roman Catholic Church to govern (Matthiesen, Reference Matthiesen2016: 181–183). Japanese broadcasted propaganda to Filipinos, including the young future cadets, as a key aspect of their war effort seeking to develop a Pan-Asian identity.

The Japanese occupational authorities also sent a select few Filipino students to Japan to study there to become future leaders. The Japanese foreign ministry established the Kokusai Gakuyūkai or International Students Institute in July 1942 in Tokyo and then transferred it to the Greater East Asia Ministry. The army and navy requested students be trained to assist occupation forces in Southeast Asia, resulting in around 20 Filipino youths being admitted to the program to become “future leaders” of the Philippines and to contribute to the “promotion of the construction of the Co-Prosperity Sphere” (Goodman Reference Goodman1962: 1–2). The Japanese Military Administration worked with Jorge B. Vargas, the then Chairman of the Philippine Executive Commission, to select the participants, some through examinations. Captured U.S. Armed Forces, Far East officers of Filipino extraction joined the program, along with sons of the Philippine elites, including some from Sulu and Mindanao. These also included college graduates and even instructors at Philippine Constabulary academies (Goodman Reference Goodman1962: 2–4). The students arrived in Tokyo on 19 July by train to a crowd of reporters and the public. Classes began by focusing on a wide range of topics, including Japanese religion, history, culture and language, along with field trips to various important places such as the Imperial Palace, Togo Shrine and Yasukuni Shrine (11–12). The Southeast Asian students within the program received ample opportunities to gain an understanding of Japanese culture and received the potential for advancement within the Japanese imperial system.

The students had varied feelings of their time in Japan as students. With the Japanese government announcing Philippine “independence” on October 7, 1943 to the Southeast Asian student groups, one of the Filipino students proclaimed, “Our group at school seems to be the jolliest” (de Asis Reference de Asis1979: 57). The joy of the Filipino students upon hearing that news suggested the program influenced how they developed their own sense of national identity over the long run. In hindsight, numerous alumni spoke well of the program, calling it “enriching,” “a profitable experience,” and “quite an opportunity” (Goodman Reference Goodman1962: 21–22). The program gave the students an opportunity to learn about Japanese culture and history during the war, which many found useful. Japanese propaganda emphasized the importance of separating from the United States and constructing a new national consciousness.

The United States Merchant Marine Academy and Filipino cadets

The US Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) served as the means of the United States government to train young midshipmen mainly to work in the US Merchant Marine as part of a New Deal Era policy to reinvigorate American shipping. The United States Merchant Marine lacked sufficient training and Richard McNulty recommended to his superiors that a nautical education system influenced by similar academies in Great Britain, Japan, the Netherlands and Brazil be adopted (Academic & Research Section 1946a: 13). Schooling for the US Merchant Marine Cadet Corps developed throughout the early 1940s as three main campuses arose, starting with the establishment of the San Mateo campus on August 15, 1942 (Academic & Research Section 1946b: 8–10). The Kings Point, New York campus, which formally opened on September 30, 1943, was the manifestation of years of effort for a federal maritime training program affiliated with the US Naval Reserve. The New York campus erected modern buildings with heat, water, and other services (Academic & Research Section 1946c: 10). As the Merchant Marine came under immense strain from Axis attacks, this training academy was a part of the United States’s effort to improve its logistical capabilities under emergency conditions.

The US Merchant Marine Academy had developed a unique curriculum and philosophy by the time of the arrival of the Filipino students. The cadet corps was designed for participants to become maritime officers in the Merchant Marine and have qualifications for the US Naval Reserve so they could work both onshore and at sea, within the maritime industry and as officers in the US military. Its proposed philosophy of education stated, “The constant aim is to graduate men with nautical competence, and with a general education, men who are well-fitted to cope with the moral, social, and spiritual challenges which confront them today, and who are eager to continue their development through life” (Middlebush et al. Reference Middlebush, Dodge, Davis, Finch and Payne1948: 9–10). The academy’s curriculum revolved around preparing young men to go to sea in a military or civilian capacity and work within the maritime industry.

The United States government, in the aftermath of the war, countered Asian nationalist ideals through reconstruction and education programs to promote positive relations between those devastated by years of war and the United States. In October 1946, Polaris, a US Merchant Marine Cadet Corps periodical, announced a plan for the corps to train 50 Filipino cadets sponsored by the US State Department as funded by US Public Law 370, passed by the 79th Congress. Major Manuel Q. Salientis, the military attaché operating out of the Philippine Embassy in the United States, acted as the go-between who supplied the exam questions for the entrance exam taken in the Philippines. Starting February 1, 1947, those who passed and joined the program commenced their new life at San Mateo, California’s US Merchant Marine Cadet Corps Basic School (Trombka, Reference Trombka1946; USMMA a). The arrival of the fresh cadets at the academy began an educational process that placed them in a radically different environment from their war-torn and newly independent country. In the process of completing the program, they received opportunities unavailable to those in similar conditions in the Philippines, such as the chance to directly tell their stories about the war to Americans in the United States.

The Filipino cadets at San Mateo transferred to the campus at Kings Point, New York, marking an important change for the cadets because the new campus gave them more opportunities to publish stories. The US Maritime Commission closed the San Mateo campus in June 1947 because of financial shortfalls and forced the cadets to transfer to Kings Point (Cruikshank & Kline Reference Cruikshank and Kline2008: 147). The Filipino cadets were among the transfers and considered “upper” fourth classmen because they had a few months experience over the incoming fourth classmen or plebes. Coming from more than 20 cities, towns, and villages in the Philippines, the Filipinos had educational backgrounds akin to their U.S. compatriots, with around 40% already having attended an undergraduate program. The overwhelming majority of the cadets, numbering around 70%, also had experience in fighting the Japanese during the Asia-Pacific War as guerrillas, with some cadets having already attained ranks of leadership, including one who was a captain in the Philippine Army (Renick Reference Renick1947: 15). The experience of the former guerrillas played a vital role in their writings for Polaris, with a captive audience of largely U.S. cadet-midshipmen and merchant mariners who had decidedly different experiences with the war than of a jungle guerrilla or insurgent. The Filipino cadets were already mature adults often with extensive education and combat experience, making challenging certain entrenched ideologies potentially difficult.

The Filipino cadets told their U.S. counterparts their stories from during the Japanese occupation and how they fought back against the aggressors or how they aided U.S. servicemen in their common struggle. Romulo Mercader Espaldon of Zamboanga served in the Philippine Army as an intelligence officer who collected information in the southern Philippines and northern Borneo related to Japanese ship movements. Florencio Reuto Garcia of Manila edited and distributed a resistance newspaper and later joined the Philippine Army. Danilo Poblete Vizmanos of Cavite observed Japanese ship movements in Manila Bay to assist U.S. submarines, while Leonardo Golea Bugayong of Pangasinan scouted for U.S. amphibious tractors and worked for the US Marine Corps as a parachute rigger (Renick Reference Renick1947: 15; USMMA b). These represented just a sampling of the wartime experiences of the Filipino cadets who arrived at Kings Point. They received the opportunity to share their experiences, already possessing the prerequisite language skills and education necessary to formulate a means to convey the horror and trauma of war in a magazine written for mariners.

Imperial Japan’s messaging regarding history during World War II contrasted greatly with the history curriculum of the United States Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) in the early postwar years. In history and literature classes, USMMA sought the inculcation of understanding the United States for “promoting good citizenship.” Cadet-midshipmen needed to learn about the United States’s naval and maritime history in particular as well as about the history of East Asia since 1815, among other regions, to help students understand the history of foreign relations with those regions. “Second class” or third-year students read The Growth of the American Republic by Samuel Eliot Morison and H. S. Commager, along with The Political and Cultural History of Europe, Volume II by H. M. Jones and E. L. Leisy (USMMA c). USMMA’s curriculum goals focused on using history to promote an understanding of citizenship in the United States, along with promoting an understanding of foreign regions along the lines of liberal political ideals and democratic values. This contrasted sharply with recent Japanese visions of history that promoted grievance and feelings of anger against other nations.

In contrast to Ōkawa’s views of history, Morison and Commager provided a take on U.S. relations with Asia in Growth of the American Republic, Vol. II akin to New Deal ideals. These books explored the history of U.S. overseas expansion and empire during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that included U.S. viewpoints opposing further annexations as betrayals of the anti-colonial cause of liberating Cuba from Spanish rule during the 1898 war. These historians also provided the reasoning behind the annexation of the Philippines from Spain despite the presence of such sentiments. U.S. officials commenced peace negotiations with Spain on October 1, 1898, which included U.S. demands for control of the Philippines despite presence of the “Visayan Republic” on Luzon, which Filipinos established as part of an effort to gain independence. Neither did the authors glorify the war against the Philippine forces, even comparing the actions of the US Armed Forces to Spain’s counter-insurgencies in Cuba. In terms of governance, however, they chronicled the developments in education, infrastructure, and representative governance. Under U.S. governance, the infant mortality rate dropped from 80% to 20% and many infectious diseases diminished. Even so, the authors deemed Philippine political and economic independence a “moral duty” for the United States, as the 1942 edition went to print before the Japanese occupation (Morison & Commager Reference Morison and Commager1942: 336–340). Morison and Commager’s history of US imperialism in the Philippines contrasted greatly with historical narratives produced by Ōkawa and like-minded scholars in Japan. Whereas the U.S. historiography of the U.S. occupation of the Philippines embodied the ideals of New Deal progressivism’s approach to history by emphasizing governmental interventionism and promoting gradual independence, the Japanese approach focused almost exclusively on the oppression wrought by the Western powers and how they inhibited the growth of Asian societies, which thereby required liberation through force.

While not formally part of the curriculum, Americans who have Contributed to the History and Traditions of the United States Merchant Marine exemplified the historical ideals of the academy, which published the small book in 1943 as part of promoting the history of the US Merchant Marine and the academy itself. The book is comprised of a series of small biographies of merchant mariners and those related to the maritime industry dating back to colonial times within the contemporary borders of the continental United States. The work embodied the liberal notions of important individuals of maritime history, which included Mary Patten, the only woman glorified within the work and for whom the academy named its infirmary (USMMA 1943: i–x, 129). Great figures from history provided a positive model for the young mariners to follow regardless of whether they elected to stay at sea or remain on land within the maritime industry. This biographic approach contrasted greatly with the ideals of Pan-Asian nationalism that downplayed the importance of the common individual as generally too insignificant, and doing so was potentially egotistical to require such focus and attention on these seafarers.

Ultimately, the historical curriculum and texts of USMMA proved ineffective in shaping the Filipino cadet’s narratives of the war published in Polaris. Possible reasons for such a failure include the Eurocentrism of many texts with historical figures limited to Euro-Americans or Europeans without focusing much on the perspectives of Asians and other groups. The intended audience for the curriculum were Americans, not foreign nationals. Furthermore, these student articles forwent the complexity of New Deal political narratives, which were in sharp contrast to the simplicity of Ōkawa’s historical narratives that emphasized victimhood and retribution, which better met the trauma endured by Filipinos who suffered immensely during the war and occupation. Perhaps the narrative framework of the Japanese wartime literature simply better reflected the feelings and beliefs of the USMMA Filipino cadets, who chronicled their wartime experiences to explain the horrors of war to a society relatively untouched by the devastation of the recent global conflagration with such little damage visiting U.S. shores. Rizal and Ōkawa’s narrative frameworks proved more popular as many Asians sought a radical transformation from a Western-dominated geopolitical system to something different.

USMMA Filipino cadet wartime reminisces

The Japanese Military Administration of the Philippines drew students from the Philippines’ prisoner-of-war camps, guerrilla bands, elite families, and Manila’s institutions of learning. Before their departure, the students learned Japanese and about the Japanese spirit or Nippon Seishin, from officers of the Japanese Military Administration who sought to make them “future leaders” of the Philippines. One student was formerly a guerrilla unit’s liaison officer, Benjamin Osias, who endured torture at Fort Santiago, but Colonel Ota of the Kempeitai garrison compelled him to take the examination for the International Student’s Institute, which he “passed with flying colors” despite not actually answering any of the questions.

One of the Filipino cadets, Pedromila Vallejo, Jr., lived in Japan during the war as a student of the International Student’s Institute (Kokusai Gakuyukai) in Tokyo as a means to study Japan and Japanese culture and to promote Pan-Asianism to Japan and other Asians (Vallejo Reference Vallejo1947: 11). Vallejo survived not only the invasion of the Philippines in 1941–1942, but also the blockade and bombardment of Japan. Vallejo declared that he had decided to join the International Student’s Institute to better understand the enemy (11). The Filipino students studying in Japan often actively opposed Japanese rule and either sought an education to wage war more effectively or found themselves forced into traveling there.

When Vallejo arrived in Tokyo in 1943 the city was still a major metropolis relatively untouched by the hardships of war, unlike Manila, which was suffering from active war and occupation. “Neon signs blazed in the night; everywhere the people were in a festive mood,” recalled Vallejo, who also recounted the army and navy competing with each other in displaying war loot from their victories (27). At the Kokusai Gakuyukai, students from the various conquered territories gathered, though they initially mistrusted each other, but as the groups learned that Japan intended the East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere more as a means to assist Japan rather than other Asians, various students formed their own groups until the Kempeitai forbode such meetings (27). Vallejo sets up the oppressors as jovial from the victories around the Pacific. However, as the curtain fell, the students brought to be the future leaders of their respective nations and territories constructed their own group identities on the basis of, at least in part, the collective sense of victimization by the Japanese Empire. While Vallejo and others fostered contempt for Japanese imperialism, they studied in Japan to learn their methods and gather intelligence about the empire.

Vallejo and his Filipino compatriots relished in Allied victories and raids over the Japanese as the tides of war turned. With the fall of Attu and Guadalcanal to American forces, Vallejo surmised, “the winds were favorable to our ears” (27). In the summer of 1943 while on leave from the Institute, Vallejo, Roman Catholic monks, and other foreigners celebrated the collapse of the Mussolini government in Italy. By the end of autumn, the Institute commenced a new “Japanizing” process that required the foreign students to split up by April 1944, with some groups remaining in the Tokyo Bay area and others, including Vallejo, heading to Kyushu Island (27–28). As the Allies advanced closer to Japan, the latter heralded a change in imperial policy where the Japanese state sacrificed national interests and risked state survival by granting independence to its overseas territories the sake of destroying European empires in Asia.

At Kurume, Kyushu, Vallejo, Ben Osias, and a slew of Filipinos, Burmese, Sumatrans, and Javanese received much press with their arrival though much of it included outright falsehoods. While officially they received special rations, in reality, they “had to make love to shy Jap damsels…” to obtain eggs, milk, and sometimes chickens (28). Ben Osias and Jose de Ungria both went to jail for investigating off-limits areas in Kumamoto and Kure, respectively. Further program modifications in the wake of student protests came after a meeting between the War Ministry, Education Ministry, and East Asia Ministry decreed the expulsion of those responsible for “subversive incitement” and called for the removal of “western” ideas from their minds (28). This ideology also played a role in the Philippines, as Jorge B. Vargas, a pro-Japanese propagandist, sought to “reorientalize” the Philippines using Rizal, particularly in his death and martyrdom, as a model for “racial dignity” and as a “symbol of the Filipino race” (Matthiesen Reference Matthiesen2016: 204). Vallejo, along with Alzona, Fatwan, Osias, and de Ungria, were deemed “problems” and found themselves placed in a program back in Tokyo they “did not find pleasant at all…” and kept separate from the rest of the student body (Vallejo Reference Vallejo1947: 28). Some foreign students fought back against the system using nonviolent tactics. In this way, they rejected the Japanese government’s policies and propaganda based on racial liberation theories designed to force the submission of Asians under Japanese dominion and separate them from the Americans.

The U.S. air raids on Tokyo and Japan writ largely provided Vallejo and company with positive news regardless of the danger to their own safety, as the bombs and inferno avenged their suffering from the war. He described the first B-29 air raid over Japan on June 16, 1944 as a “red-letter day” in which the bombing of Yawata compelled the students to sleep in the fields, while in Tokyo, the B-29 raids became daily occurrences, forcing evacuations and causing those who remained to bury their most prized possessions. The pine and paper constructed houses lit up in the deadly infernos. The raids became so regular that Japanese citizens adjusted their routines to accommodate them. Rationing of food became “worse and worse” and even clothing became hard to acquire. New clothes “practically disintegrated” quickly and the air raids’ “fires illuminated them [bombers] even better than the searchlights” (28–30). The May 25, 1945 air raid rendered Tokyo and Yokohama “hardly recognizable” after a raid with more airplanes than Vallejo was able to count (30). Such difficulties led to Japanese citizens scapegoating foreigners, with Germans getting stoned on March 10, 1945, thereby forcing foreigners away from bombed areas (28–30). Vallejo chronicled the devastation of the war brought to Japan in a manner unfavorable and unsympathetic to those living there. While understandable in the context, the work still embodied the grievance and revenge framework because he redirected such feelings meant for the United States toward Japan and lauded their wartime losses.

After finishing his studies at the Institute, Vallejo continued his stay in Japan, having already resigned to die as a Japanese soldier, but he still attempted to gather intelligence for the Allies before he died. Early in the stay, Japanese authorities brought in former US Army Forces, Far East veterans to Japan, who endured defeat and inhumane prisoner-of-war treatment, such as Elpidio Duque, also a leader of a small group of Filipinos, who relayed intelligence through guerrilla contacts to USAAF’s Fifth Air Force (27). Vallejo sought to imitate these toward the end of the war by joining the Japanese Military Academy to obtain a “treasure-house of information,” with Duque having already returned to the Philippines. While the exams were easy for him, his previous disciplinary record prevented him from entering the academy and Ambassador Vargas advised him to endure a probationary period before entering rather than go home because a previous would-be returnee supposedly died in a plane crash (30). Vargas was also the author of the aforementioned propagandistic piece on returning Filipinos to their Asian selves (DND). “Life at the Military Academy was tough,” according to Vallejo, who endured it with other foreign students studying there without adequate plumbing, heat, clothing, and other necessities (Vallejo Reference Vallejo1947: 30). Even when the U.S. Grumman aircraft strafed the campus, he “was genuinely glad” and cared not if he lived as he felt, surely, he would fall in the US invasion he foresaw in 1946 (32). Even in his attempt to make a contribution to the Allied war effort, Vallejo emulated the Japanese’s seeming indifference to death in the face of attack so common throughout the war. Vallejo’s story paradoxically mirrored the Japanese system he tried to undermine by reflecting resentment onto Japan instead of the Allies.

With the end of the war, Vallejo determined Japan deserved what it received. While he normally felt joy seeing Grumman aircraft attack the academy, his dysentery prevented him from doing so further. While in the hospital, Vallejo learned of the end of the war from his nurse, Take-chan, as U.S. planes dropped pamphlets announcing an end to the conflict (34). He recounted how Japanese from the lowly cadets to highest ranking officers committed suicide in the face of defeat, while the military burned records in a “roaring bonfire” (36). Vallejo stayed with a Nisei family stuck there during the war and worked in various positions with the U.S. military after the war (37). He even met a Sumatran survivor of the atomic bomb explosion at Hiroshima who detailed the experience, only to perish shortly thereafter. Upon leaving for Manila, he recalled a Biblical passage and determined, “Japan brought it upon herself, and she must suffer” (39).

Vallejo’s narrative subverted Japanese liberation propaganda by making Japan the oppressors instead of the Allies. He chronicled the grievances of the war, while often reveling in U.S. attacks even when his own life became threatened. His narrative was more closely associated with notions of vengeance, rarely portraying the Japanese in a positive manner, rather than with the sorts of narratives espoused by Progressive Era American historians that were at times self-critical. While the Japanese propaganda directed their ire against the Allies, those living under Japanese occupation had the ability to redirect their resentment toward the Japanese, probably because of the immense suffering brought on by the war. While it is possible that such grievances may have occurred without the propaganda campaigns itself, the essay does not mention much in the way of improving human rights or redeveloping either Japan or the Philippines after the war. Nor does Vallejo discuss the efforts toward justice or rebuilding Japan as a democratic society all that much.

Florencio Reuto Garcia of Manila also narrated brutal war experiences to Polaris emulating revenge narratives, but directed against a fellow Filipino (USMMA b). The war split loyalties within the Philippines, with one informant named “Temyo” obtaining influence over the Japanese through his membership in Makapili, an organization led by Benigo Ramos that sought to “rediscover” the Philippines’ “oriental” heritage in the service of Japan (Garcia Reference Garcia1950: 7; Matthiesen Reference Matthiesen2016: 190–191). “The Magic Eye,” a nickname given to the informant, reached the Japanese major without notice by the townspeople and offered his services in rooting out troublesome locals. Wearing a Jute sack with eye slits in a dark room with others paraded before him, he pointed out troublemakers for execution as standard practice in resistant towns. The line of suspects only saw his eyes as many begged for mercy from the informant and the Japanese Garcia Reference Garcia1950: 7). Temyo’s presence in the counter-insurgency as a Filipino informant belonging to an organization espousing anti-U.S. and ethno-nationalistic views displayed a degree of Japanese influence over the Philippines that countered pro-U.S. guerrilla activity.

Temyo employed his role as a Japanese informant not only to eliminate American sympathizers, but also personal rivals, earning the hatred of his neighbors. The first victim was the guerrilla recruiter who attempted to persuade him to join the insurgency. However, he also sent innocents to their doom, such as his rival for a woman’s affection and a Chinese merchant to whom he was indebted. While Temyo received a thick wad of pesos for his efforts, the condemned died of machine gun fire; save the Chinese “fat merchant,” who suffered death with the bayonet squad’s “soft sucking sounds of the steel which pierced his corpulent body,” the recruiter who died from firing squad, and others who perished from decapitation by sword (7). The narrative echoes Japanese propaganda by providing a chronology of grievance against the Japanese themselves. Certainly, other Filipinos seethed with revenge for this betrayal.

Temyo’s Filipino neighbors had their chance to avenge the deaths of their countrymen. Suspecting who the culprit was, five men shadowed him and compelled him to converse with them. Meeting with another group, the men compelled him to dig his own grave. Temyo pleaded his innocence but the jute stuck in his hair provided them with evidence of his guilt. In response, the informant pled for mercy because of his elderly mother who needed him and offered them his money to no avail as the men held him down as a “tall dark man” behind him unsheathed precipitously his bolo knife and stabbed him in his eyes, letting him suffer until another man used his bolo to finish him (24). Given the details of the story, it seems highly probable that Garcia was present at this execution. Ultimately, the story is one of revenge against a man who worked with the Japanese military at the expense of his fellow Filipinos for a combination of assisting them and himself.

In another article, Garcia recorded Filipino nationalist ideals as espoused by a Japanese ally in a skirmish. Garcia, in this article, described the feelings and weapons of combat in colorful language. He rode in a halftrack with his squad (Garcia Reference Garcia1949: 5). The sergeant gave the order to capture some far-off “dissidents” and in response, in second person, he describes willpower as functionally amoral but merely focused on survival. He described in tremendous detail the squad surrounding a hut in second person (25). The sergeant asked to enter the hut, only to be rebuffed, to which the squad demanded they surrender and offer information of Penduko, only for a gunfight to commence. During the lull in the fighting, as the suspect sought to escape, the sergeant conversed with him in an attempt to compel his compliance, but in return the man retorted:

After an additional speech, Penduko dies in the skirmish and “you” search his deceased body for anything of value and report back to the sergeant (28). The short story provided another example of how much of the war waged by pro-United States forces was against fellow Filipinos who espoused Japanese and Filipino nationalist liberation narratives about a stolen past by the West. Penduko’s speech offered a freedom distinct from that of liberalism and instead predicated on an ancient mythical primordial liberty that the Japanese invasion restored. He bemoaned the vengeance of the American sympathizers and their violence against the innocent. Notions of racial liberation ran within Philippine society even without the presence of Japanese soldiers to enforce it. Garcia shared Penduko’s narrative that mimicked Japanese propaganda rather than repurposing the Japanese narrative framework against its creators as Garcia and Vallejo had done.

Narratives about the personal experiences and histories of the Asia-Pacific War by USMMA Filipino cadets tended to contain or mimic the historical or quasi-historical narratives espoused by Filipino nationalists such as Rizal and Japanese imperialists such as Ōkawa by emphasizing notions of revenge or a stolen reality, in sharp contrast to the history curriculum taught by USMMA faculty, which emphasized contemporary liberal U.S. histories. Historians of Southeast Asia have consistently underestimated or downplayed the importance of Japanese nationalist narratives and memory in the postwar era. These histories played a vital role in how nascent nations viewed themselves and their former colonial overlords. Even if the writers loathed the Japanese, they frequently emulated their rhetorical methods in their struggle against them.

While Vallejo and Garcia’s war stories portrayed pro-U.S. views of the conflict, their articles generally lacked a promotion of liberal democratic ideals espoused by U.S. historians in their textbooks. While understandable given the context, their narrative style slightly undermined the mantra that “winners write the history” so often espoused. To the contrary, Japanese propagandists and educators were quite successful in planting the seeds for Ōkawa’s political vision, and even if not entirely successful in this endeavor, they at least pushed the Asia-Pacific region toward an interpretation of history more aligned with their own rather than that of 1930s and 1940s American progressivism. With the Philippines having been almost certainly the territory most favorable to the Allied cause in Southeast Asia during the war, its movement toward liberation narratives, with the rest of Japan’s formerly occupied territories mostly pushing in a similar direction, represents a catastrophic setback for the promotion of liberal democracy. In this sense, Japan’s push for the independence of Asian territories formerly under European control proved successful, though at a cataclysmic cost to the home islands and much of Asia. If a U.S. service academy failed to alter the narrative frameworks of individuals who fought alongside U.S. soldiers, what chance did the United States have with others around the world?

Vallejo and Garcia possessed vastly different experiences of the war and yet both used similar themes of vengeance against the Japanese military machine and its enablers. While their writing styles differed tremendously, they followed a similar pattern of becoming more similar to the Japanese they fought, with Vallejo joining the Japanese military to become an officer and Garcia hunting down political dissidents operating as insurgents akin to what he once was when the Japanese controlled the islands’ major cities. Perhaps the trauma of war proved too overwhelming of a force given the Philippines’s unprecedented amount of death and destruction experienced during the war, to the point where developing a historical narrative of the war built on something near to American liberalism was impossible. Their movement toward liberationism over liberalism presaged similar movements within academic historiography in the coming decades, in which much of the scholarship aligned itself with decolonial nationalism.