Philippines Background

Independence May Now Have to Wait a Few Years

fpHE Jap dream of a Co-prosperity Sphere, as far as the Philippines are concerned, has almost run its brief course. After the Japs over ran the group in 1942, they set about organising a Filipino puppet Govern ment, with some measure of success.

But Jap methods defeated Jap ends.

In those first few months after they had driven MacArthur out to Aus tralia, the Japanese deliberately wrecked everything that was dimly related to the past regime. Records were torn up or lost, and every move able commodity from refrigerators to

Manila’s tram-cars was carted off to Japan. Life as the Filipinos had known it, certainly came to an abrupt end; but their Jap masters found it extremely difficult to get things mov ing again, even with Nipponese iron mit methods, and it was reported earlier this year that transportation and trade in the Philippines had vir tually come to a standstill.

The Commonwealth of the Philip pines—7,083 islands, thousands of them small, unnamed, whose total land area is 114,400 square miles (slightly smaller in area than Great Britain and Ireland) with its popu lation of 16,000,000, and its vast potential wealth would have been the answer to Japan’s prayer, had Japan been patient. As a prize for any am bitious nation it had only the Netherlands East Indies to better it.

It has a definite wet and dry season, although the wet is more prolonged in some islands than in others, and a climate that is tropical but easy to take. The islands lie close-packed between 4.45 degrees to 21.07 degrees north latitude—roughly 1,150 miles from north to south. Within the group come all stages of progress and all manner of men: the modern cities of Manila and Cebu—Manila, on Luzon Island, has almost three quarters of a million of a population; wild tribes in the interior of the larger islands; the Sultan t>f Sulu and the Mohammedan Moros; the pirates off Mindanao; the headhunters within —all are apparently unrelated factors in the Philippines Commonwealth.

Magellan on his ill-fated round the-world voyage of discovery reached the Philippines in 1521 and anchored at a small island near Surigao. Two important men from northern Min danao came out to visit him, thus establishing first relations with Spain.

Magellan then went on to Cebu and later Mactan, where his ardent desire to pluck heathen brands from the burning led to his murder at the hands of local natives.

Spain started her first Philippine colony on Cebu in 1565; for a brief period in 1762-63, Manila was sur rendered to the British, but otherwise for over 300 years—until, in fact, Admiral Dewey, USN, sank the Spanish Fleet at Manila in 1898, and brought the Spanish-American war to a close—the whole group was dominated by Spain.

Most of the inhabitants of the Philippines are Christianised—Roman Catholicism being dominant as is to be expected from early and long Spanish influence. About 400,000 Moslems, the Moros, live on Min danao. They were Moslems, due it is thought to some early Arab infiltra tion, long before Magellan set sail from Spain*, and the Spaniards spent three hundred years trying to subdue and convert these people. The Ameri

cans almost pacified them, but they are still a war-like force to be reckoned with. It was the Morqs who were most opposed to full Philippine independence —on the grounds that they would then be wholly at the mercy of the Filipinos whom they re gard as their traditional enemies.

LUZON is the largest of the Philip pine Islands. Railways and fine motor roads link Manila, the capital, with many outlying districts, although some of the eastern portion of the island was still unexplored at the outbreak of the Pacific war. Dense hardwood forests cover the mountain slopes; rice is grown on the hills by semi-wild pagan tribes; iron is mined extensively in the south-east —all iron formerly was sold to Japan; in the rocky Benguet Valley, not far from the summer capital of Baguio there is gold as rich as any that made Cali fornia famous in its hey-day. Gold has been mined and washed in these streams of Luzon for hundreds of years—certainly before the time of Magellan.

Small Negros Island, near the cen tre of the group, grew more than 75 per cent, of the group’s total sugar crop of one million tons. The United States took virtually all of the ex portable sugar.

Panay and Cebu are poor over crowded islands; from them over two hundred thousand workers used to go annually to Negros during the sugar season.

Mindoro, where the Allies landed on December 15, after a daring passage through the Mindanao Sea and the northern arm of the Sulu Sea, is a small island separated from Luzon by the Verde Island Strait—miles wide at the narrowest point. Unlike Leyte, which is exposed to typhoons and is exceedingly wet at this season, Mindoro’s wet is over and will not begin again until next May. The area around San Jose, where the Ameri cans have established their beach head, is about 60 feet above sea level and barren in comparison with the jungle conditions in which the Ameri cans have previously fought their Philippines campaign.

The large, potentially rich, island of Mindanao, southern-most of the group, offers larger opportunities of exploitation than the other islands.

It is thinly populated and the Philip pines Government encouraged migra tion and land settlement there.

Filipinos in crowded Luzon, Cebu and Panay were urged to go to this new Promised Land to take up holdings and, with Government aid, help develop the country.

For decades, upper-class Filipinos and Spaniards have worked the rich sea-coast lands, but lack of roads and fear of the Moros who looked upon this Christian invasion with hostility, has left the interior almost un explored.

Hemp, which goes to make the famous Manila rope, is Mindanao’s most valuable crop. Japanese grew most of it. Mindanao accommodated

about 20,000 of the Philippines’ 29,000 japs.

Most of the hemp growing was done in Davao Province, and Davao city, an island metropolis of 100,000 people, was a little Tokio. This Jap colonisation of the Philippines began about the end of World War I, when most of the Americans who had formerly owned plantations and farms sold out to the incoming Nipponese. The Japs built a luxurious consulate building in the town and all else in Davao was developed to a similar pattern.

The newspapers were printed in Japanese; 90 per cent, of the goods sold were of Japanese origin. Even where firms were outwardly Filipino, they were backed by Japanese capital, But the Japs did not stop at hemp.

They built fish canneries, roads, bridges, sawmills; brought in scientific skill and much capital and paid millions of pesos to the Government by way of taxes, Good gold was minded in Mindanao by American interests, who also oper ated sawmills. The Goodyear Tyre & Rubber Co. had extensive plan tations near Zamboanga, where 600,000 trees were in production in 1941. Americans also brought pine apple culture from California and Hawaii. The California Packing Cor poration had a large pineapple plan tation in northern Mindanao; crops worth millions were left to rot when invasion came and all buildings were destroyed.

The coconut tree flourishes every

where on the islands. The Philip pines was the world’s largest pro ducer of copra—a large proportion of it was milled in the Commonwealth itself.

AMERICAN capital never ventured into the Philippines on any large

scale—American Big Business was aware that the Government policy was, first, last and always, a case of “Philippines for the Filipinos.”

American contractors built railways and tramways and electric generating plants, but there were no more than 8,000 Americans in the islands to be caught by the invasion of 1942. Ex cept for a few mining men, salesmen, engineers, office workers for Pan American Airways and others of that ilk, there had been no American migration to the group in recent years. Up until 1932, thousands of American civil servants had seen duty there, but by 1939, there were only 116 Americans in the Philippine Public

Service compared with 55,105 Fili pinos.

America took the greatest propor tion of Philippines exports, sold them the goods they wanted, but left the development of this vast area to the Filipinos to do with as they wished.

It has been said that the Japanese, since 1918, with their hemp research and scientific plantation methods did more to increase Philippines produc tion than American interests have ever done.

But in education and health mea sures the story is quite different.

Hundreds of male and female teachers have gone out from America to teach in the Philippines. These— pioneers in the truest sense—took up posts anywhere from metropolitan Manila to the isolation of the moun tains of Mindanao. English was fast becoming the universal language when the Japs struck; it was the official language of the Legislature, although members could and did argue in their own tribal tongues if they wished; leading newspapers and magazines were printed in it. It was estimated in 1941 that 1,940,792 pupils attended 12,083 public schools through out the Commonwealth.

Manila has the distinction of hav ing had a University 25 years before America’s Harvard was founded: the University of Santo Thomas, founded in 1611. Before the war there were eight Universities in the islands, the most important being the State-sup ported University of Manila, with branches at Banguio and Cebu and an annual enrolment of 6,500.

The office of Adult Education, set up in 1936, teaches gardening, home making, sanitation, etc., and is de signed to improve the social condition of the people.

American doctors cleaned up Manila, purified its drinking water, stamped out epidemics of plague, cholera, smallpox and other deadly diseases, wherever they found them.

Before the war, Filipino medical men and sanitary experts were carrying on this work.

THE Philippines were promised full independence from America in 1946. Whether this will now happen according to plan remains to be seen.

Although many prominent Filipinos, including the late Manuel Quezon, worked life-long for independence, even before the Pacific war, there was evidence as the fateful year ap proached, that many of these men realised that total economic sever ance from the United States would not be altogether to the advantage of the islands. America took almost all of their exports of copra, sugar, em broideries, desiccated coconut, and about fifty per cent, of their cordage and tobacco manufactures. All had unrestricted entry into the States. If America, before the war, had with drawn absolutely from the islands, it is obvious now that before long the Japs would have walked in—they were already well established in most of the key industries.

In the post-war world it is certain

that America will want bases in the Philippines; and so much recon struction work will need to be done, it is doubtful, even should the islands be completely liberated within the coming year, if the Filipinos will now be ready, or even willing, to accept complete independence in 1946.