On Vox: Promises made to be broken

[starshadow_rivaulx]

Here's a piece about the Fall of Bataan:
http://snipurl.com/23vc3 [thewarriorlawyer_com]

My father, my mother's two brothers, and any number of my family's menfolk all served in the war. My uncle Sergio escaped the Death March, and while he was making his way home, my grandfather was passing eggs inscribed with uncle's name into the Capas camp in a desperate effort to find him. Because my uncles were USAFFE, and prime targets for the Japanese occupation forces.

My father fought as a guerilla in the Visayas, on the promise of US citizenship after war. Yeah, right. He got that precious blue passport nearly forty years after the fact, and after doing it the legal way, working as a parking lot attendant after having served as a company pilot for 22 years. The contrast is painful, isn't it? He didn't have to go through all that, of course. But it was a promise made, and we felt that if he was entitled to it under US law, why not go for it?

Promises made and yet unkept - that's what kept the defenders of Bataan and Corregidor on their mettle, the promise of mile-long convoys coming to back them up. And even when it became obvious that there would be no convoys, no reinforcements - they fought anyway. Fought because it was their duty, and perhaps there may have been a shard of hope that they would be proven wrong, that indeed help was on the way.

Promises made and yet unkept - that's what keeps those poor old Filipino veterans fighting Washington for the right to receive the pension and other benefits they were told they would get, if they would fight on the side of America back in the day.

The article quotes then Secretary of War Stimson as saying, "There are times when men have to die." That may be, but to send them to their deaths on the strength of false promises...there's something that hits me as wrong on any number of levels. The defenders of Bataan and Corregidor hung on with a determination that any beseiged soldier will understand.

Promises made, promises broken. Today will be a day of politicians invoking the spirit of Bataan in the same blithe way they use(d) for the spirit of EDSA. The Filipino people have seen enough over the course of history to be wary of promises...but still, there are those who believe that ours is a country worth saving. Believing, against the odds, just like those valiant freedom fighters.

Here's hoping our modern-day watchmen have a happier ending than those who fought in Bataan.

Originally posted on wallflowerwriter.vox.com

Comments

[xandri.livejournal.com]

Whoah.