Reflections: World War II

WHOOMP!

The noise and a sudden jolt shook the two men in the PBY seaplane cockpit. They look around trying to understand what had happened. Then they saw it. Water seeped up through the floor of seaplane’s flight deck.

“We hit something,” the pilot shouted. “Must have made a hole in the nose! Water’s coming in! We got to get back to the bank!”

The pilot pulled the throttle gently back to slow the engine speed. They’d been trying to take off. Then as the nose settled-and more water came. The pilot pushed the throttle forward to gain enough speed to try to keep the nose-and its hole-above the lake surface.

“Just pray we make it back,” the pilot said anxiously.

Morris W. Hancock and the pilot came to be on this US Navy seaplane by pure luck. Hancock had been on the crew of one of the last PT boat’s to escape as American and Philippine forces crumbled before advancing Japanese forces around Manila.. Now they were trying to escape in a seaplane from the Philippine island of Mindanao.

Hancock’s PT boat squadron and its exploits in the Philippines were written about in the book by William Allen White that later became the movie staring Robert Montgomery and John Wayne, “They Were Expendable.”

I chanced to meet Hancock one day in the spring of 1969. I’d always liked the book and the movie, and one night I wondered if any of the PT boat squadron’s sailors might have been from Indiana. Sure enough, in looking through the list of all the crew in the back of the book, I found: Morris W. Hancock, Southport, Indiana.

Southport was near Indianapolis, maybe 40 miles away from where I worked at the “Bloomington Courier-Tribune” newspaper in Bloomington, Indiana. I called the telephone operator (you did that in those days before computers) felt lucky to hear he had a telephone number and called. Sure enough, he was the one who’d been with the PT boats in the Philippines, and he readily agreed to an interview. The next afternoon I was at his home.

Hancock was as friendly and likable, and he enjoyed talking about being a sailor in the U.S. Navy and his service on the PT boats. He was retired from the Navy when I met him, as a small sign at the front of his house told: “Morris W. Hancock, LTJG (lieutenant junior grade) U.S. Navy Ret.”

It is probably 40 years ago now since my interview with him, and I long ago lost the “clip” of the story I wrote about him. So, this will not cover the entire story, but what I remember of the interview is fun to recall and

American Anti-terrorist Campaigns 1908 – 2008

The capture of badly wounded Papa Faustino Ablen, his subsequent recovery, trial for brigandage (thievery, abduction, extortion, etc.,) and his execution in August of 1907 broke the back of the Dios-Dios Pulahanes as a major insurgency.
His principal sub-chiefs, Felipe Ydos, Espiridion Rota, Afroniano Fernandez and other sub-chiefs were also hanged. Lesser officers were sentenced to long prison terms. Recruits received lesser punishments.
Many Pulahan members from Leyte and Samar, to put some distance between themselves and their former enemies they had preyed upon, moved to Mindanao. They continued to live in small remote communes and to practice their apocalyptic beliefs of the “golden heaven” they’d seen in Ablen’s dagger handle.
Continuing government harassment resulted in more conflicts such as the 1924 Colorum Uprising in Surigao. To this year 2008, the influence of the Pulahanes is still found in Christian sects throughout Mindanao.1.
Millenarianism took root in the Philippines as a result of oppressive Spanish policies during the colonial period. The Dios-Dios movement was really driven by a desire to radically change their society. They awaited the appearance of the “great city” they saw in Ablen’s bolo handle, the resurrection of the dead, the victory over their enemies through their magical prayers and amulets. At first they just withdrew to their mountain retreats and lived passively.

When America defeated Spain in the Spanish American War, the Pulahanes helped the Philippine insurgency under Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy in the anti-colonial American struggle. But after Aguinaldo surrendered they continued their insurgency until the capture of Faustino Ablen. They targeted not only Americans but also their fellow Filipinos who had been their enemies before the Americans came. It is interesting to note that the Pulahanes, as a group never (to this day) surrendered.2.

America’s Future – The Terrorist Threat In The Late 20th And Early 21st Centuries
Newspaper and television reports continue to allude to Al Qaeda Terrorist cells in the United States. Some accounts center them in radical Islamic Mosques led by Fundamentalist Imams like the Mosques in Los Angeles and San Diego among others. Islamic terrorism is a serious threat not only to American and West European values but also to the rest of the Islamic World, most of which do not hold Fundamentalist radical views but are terrified (with some exceptions) to take a public stand against the Al Qaeda and Taliban brand of Islam because Islamic terrorists have demonstrated in Iraq and Afghanistan that they do not hesitate to blow up fellow Muslims who do not support their radical beliefs.
As many as seventy-seven thousand terrorist targets, are currently listed, with our seaport areas having major vulnerability.
Reform of our terrorist-fighting infrastructure is an urgent ongoing endeavor in which both candidates for President in the fall of 2008 endorse though each of them has his own specific plan that differs from the other candidates plan.

Conclusion

The American Anti-Terrorist Campaign of the first eight years of the twenty-first century came gradually. It received its most significant “push” with the bombing of the twin towers in New York City in September 2001.
This time we have groups like the Taliban and Al Qaeda. They too have their charismatic leaders, principal of whom is Osama Bin Laden.
Bin Laden is similar to Aguinaldo and Ablen in several ways. He wants to “free” his people who are Conservative, Fundamentalist Muslims, to preserve their way of life and culture, from the “infidels” who collectively are non-Muslim or what he considers to be liberal Muslims who have betrayed their faith.
Bin Laden also has the support of many Muslims, both the elite and wealthy as well as ordinary persons of modest means.
Like Ablen, Bin Laden promises his people who give their lives for the cause a glorious life in heaven.
But there the similarity between the American Anti-Terrorist campaigns of 1900-1902, and 1903-07 in the Philippines, and the 2001-2008 (and still ongoing) end.
The current Anti-Terrorist Campaign is much broader in scope and intensity. Unlike Aguinaldo and Ablen whose focus was to “free” the Philippines from the American invaders, Bin Laden wants freedom from all non-Muslim political and religious ideas and to impose his version of Islam on the entire world.
Many more people have been and are being killed. Many more nations are involved. It is really a clash of cultures, radically different ways of life. It is a struggle, the end of which, no one can accurately predict.
The current struggle grows increasingly more and more worldwide, and no one has yet found the way to end it and restore peace.
We are in the midst of another American led Anti-Terrorist Campaign but this one is a world-changing event in human history!

Endnotes
1. Page 42, George Emmanuel R. Borrinaga, The Pulahan Movement in Leyte, unpublished paper delivered as a lecture at the University of San Carlos, Cebu City, Philippine Islands, 2008.
2. Borrinaga, op.cit., pp. 43-44.

Slavery in the Philippines Sulu Sultanate

The Social Impact of Slavery in the Sulu Sultanate

Introduction

With the introduction of western colonial power in South-East Asia in the end of the eighteen century an increasingly demand of products and raw materials was sought after in the ever growing markets of the region and Europe. The Sulu Sultanate that was located in the Southern Philippines between Mindanao and Borneo had long been sea trading its local produce with neighbours other and trading partners as far away as China. The Sultanate with its favourable location for trade in all directions encountered an economic boom and grew its commercial power and influence rapidly. The Sulu trade was well established but all to a limited scale, something that changed dramatically with the growth of trade that in turn created consequences for the whole society. The region had long been home been home for traders and slave raiders, but due to the positive changes in the economy a labour vacuum was created. This vacuum did in turn open a new but much larger market for the slave traders and raiders, especially in a region where ones personal wealth was judged by how many slaves and servants one could support and own. To maintain and uphold this economy manpower was needed; manpower the region itself unfortunately had very limited resources of. The region was sparsely populated with great recourses so there was a shortage of labourers to gather the wealth, and the solution to this dilemma was by increase the usage of slaves. Slavery in Asian context of the time was very different from the western view of the same thing and there were two types of slaves in Sulu: bondage slaves, and debt slaves. The bondage slaves were brought back by the Sultans ships as well as private entrepreneurs during their raids and were forced into slavery. The debt slaves were people owing assets to others which they paid back with labour. This essay looks upon the reasons and demand for having slaves, how they became to be slaves, and life outlook of the slaves in the Sulu Sultanate. This essay will look at the different aspects of how the slaves and slavery was undertaken in the Sulu sultanate in the end of the eighteen century as well as their influence on the economy and daily life of the people of Sulu.

The Sulu archipelago is located in the Southern Philippines between Mindanao and Borneo. The archipelago consists of some 900 island of volcanic and coral origin and covers an area of 2,688 sq km.