Bound by War: How the United States and the Philippines Built America’s First Pacific Century

good evening i'm trey johnson here at the kansas historical society i'm normally behind the camera for these programs but tonight i'll be filling in for our usual host mary madden thanks for joining us for our monthly virtual museum after hours program coming to you live from the kansas museum of history the program will be followed by a question and answer period so be sure to use the q a link at the bottom of your screen to ask questions you can also feel free to ask questions using the chat feature if you'd like tonight we are joined by dr christopher capozzola professor of history at mit author of the award-winning book uncle sam wants you he is also a co-curator of the volunteers americans joined world war 1 1914 to 1919 a traveling exhibition that originated at the national world war one museum and memorial to commemorate the centennial of the first world war he lives in boston massachusetts tonight's program bound by war how the united states and the philippines built america's first pacific century focuses on a little-known topic in american history the manila american cemetery located on 152 acres just a few miles outside the philippine capital memorializes 36 285 soldiers and sailors who fought and died under the american flag somewhere in the pacific during the second world war it is also on most days remarkably empty in the quiet moments that predominate on that manila hilltop the names of the dead tell a shared history of two nations bound by a century of war why do so few americans know about these thousands of men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country what began as a pacific moment in 1898 with the united states claiming the philippines as a colony became a pacific century and the soldiers of both nations built it together so please join me in welcoming dr christopher capozzola all right thank you trey for that for that introduction and thank you everyone for uh logging on this evening wherever you are joining from um i want to say a couple of words of thanks to um to lois hair to trey johnson to blair tarr to everyone at the kansas historical society and the kansas museum of history um thank you all for um for logging on and and for keeping these events going and look forward to all joining together in person um when these events begin and joining you all in topeka i'm going to talk for about 35 to 40 minutes this evening i'm going to be showing a lot of images and i encourage you to explore those i'm also going to just take a second right now um in the chat to share some links because in addition to writing this book i also have been working on a few museum projects and digital history projects and working with a volunteer group called the filipino veterans recognition and education program and which has developed some some digital resources so i'm going to share this now and i'll share the links again for people who may be logging on later feel free to look at that during the talk tonight if you're a multitasker or to save it for later particularly if there are any teachers on here or people doing homeschooling or people doing remote learning and these these resources can be very useful so thanks for that and then what i'm going to do now is just dive right in and share my screen and tell you a few things about this book so i'm going to tell the story of bound by war how the united states and the philippines built america's first pacific century and i want to do that by beginning where the book does and in fact where trey began in his uh in his explanation uh in his introduction just a few minutes ago and it begins in the manila american cemetery which if you ever have a chance to visit it you really must uh it is located just outside the philippine capital and as trey mentioned it memorializes 36 000 soldiers and sailors who were who fought and died under the american flag in the pacific during the second world war now this is an amazing place to visit here is to sort of exit the manila of the 21st century which is a city of skyscrapers a booming asian metropolis and to enter a very calm and peaceful uh sort of memorial space that um that sort of reminds us um and this is a view looking out from the cemetery toward manila bay of the sacrifices of soldiers and sailors from two nations it is a remarkable place and as as trey mentioned it is also remarkably empty the very first time i visited several years ago i was one of the only americans there and even in manila it is easy to overlook this place and that it is located on the former site of fort mckinley which was the headquarters of the u.s military in the philippines during the time that it was a u.s colony fort mckinley has long been closed turned over in 1949 to the armed forces of the philippines and more recently replaced by an upscale shopping center known simply as the fort but nevertheless in the the quieter moments and that predominate at the manila american cemetery we can actually hear the stories of the those pacific war dead not only their own stories but the story of a century of shared history of two nations bound by war and as the memorial shows the us military has been in the philippines for a very long time beginning in 1898 when the united states conquered this the former spanish colony and annexed it to the united states um with some military help from the in this case the 20th kansas volunteers who you see in this image here who are mustered into service in topeka in the very first days of may 1898 thinking that they would be fighting in a war against spain in the caribbean and who very soon found themselves fighting in a war against filipinos in asia and american soldiers remained in the philippines for decades um in the years from 1898 to 1946 um while the philippines was a colony and after independence in 1946 uh when the philippines has been an important american ally in asia now at the same time filipinos have been in the u.s armed forces for just as long among them this man jose calugas who was awarded the medal of honor for his service during the second world war beginning in 1899 and continuing to this day hundreds of thousands of filipinos and filipino americans have served under the american flag now the very first recruited in 1899 were the philippine scouts um modeled after the native amer the native american forces uh the indian scouts of the frontier american west and designed to suppress the philippine-american war and independence movement that emerged after america arrived in 1898. um you see two scouts here with their founder lieutenant matthew batson and the scouts also participated very importantly in the raids that led to the capture of the philippine revolutionary general emilio aguinaldo led in that force by brigadier general frederick funston who you see here in the center picture fundstone originally from iowa kansas now by the 1920s the scouts were america's colonial force um if the ordinary the regular sort of enlisted ranks exclusively filipino the officers exclusively white in the years after that however filipinos joined several other military formations in the philippines and in the continental united states beginning in the 1910s in particular thousands of filipinos joined the u.s navy nearly all of them surveying in bottom-rung positions as cooks and stewards the second world war was a real turning point both for uh for this history and for the story that i tell in the book uh some seven thousand filipino americans who were in the united states joined the first and second filipino regiments mostly from california and other western states more than 120 000 served in the philippine commonwealth army the doomed force that met the japanese invasion in 1942 and at least seventy thousand men and women fought in the guerrilla in the guerrilla armies that battled japanese occupation and assisted with american re-invasion and liberation i like to remind people that some 67 000 of the 76 000 men who were on the batten death march in 1942 were filipinos and nearly all of them waited until 2009 to receive equitable veterans benefits from the u.s government now equally overlooked are the philippine chapters of names in that are more familiar to american history as careers that were begun or advanced in the philippines often led to washington's corridors of power whether for william howard taft who you see here um on a poor suffering caribou um who was governor general of the philippines um in the early 20th century um or for the famous douglas macarthur who came and of course returned to the philippines or more recently for political leaders such and thinkers such as paul wolfowitz or political operatives such as paul manafort who you see on the bottom right among those who made their career in the philippines was a young abilene high school graduate who made his way to the u.s military academy by the name of dwight eisenhower who you see here on the left who spent much of the 1930s in the philippines as douglas macarthur's right-hand man in the design and training of that philippine commonwealth army that met the japanese in 1942 eisenhower of course then returned as president for a final visit to the philippines in 1960 and as you see commemorated in this philippine stamp on the right but there were also much less famous people who made their way to the philippines whose stories and lives came from the united states to the philippines and either remained there or returned many of them with ties to kansas on the left you see lafayette tillman who lived most of his life in kansas city missouri who served with the u.s volunteer infantry in their segregated regiments in the in the philippines and returned to become one of kansas city's first african-american police officers on the right much more recently martin and gracia burnham missionaries who worked in the southern philippines who suffered uh kidnapping and imprisonment for several years and gracious burnham miraculously survived that martin burnham unfortunately did not these stories span a century and they bring together the stories of very famous americans and almost unknown americans and the book doesn't just sort of tell their story it tries to turn that into a kind of a so what question that we answer what what is the book trying to figure out as we look at this shared history uh this two soldiers who met in hello in 1944 during the reinvasion the book has three aims first it aims to kind of restore this to history for those who forgot it who never learned it or though or to remind americans who have erased this history and its and its colonial aspects from our own historical textbooks and our shared narratives second the book seeks to view the united states from the pacific i very much described this as a pacific history showing that the united states has always been a pacific power and that the pacific century a phrase that will often appear as a description of the future of what the 21st century has in store for us is in fact actually a better description of the 20th century and that pacific century is not just a rhetorical strategy of u.s foreign policy but was always a lived experience that shaped migration work culture and family life for both americans and filipinos and then third the book aims to encourage us to think in new ways about the u.s armed forces and the impact of the military on modern american life to understand 20th century america i would suggest we need to understand the us military not only what it did on the battlefield as a fighting force but also as a generative force that transformed social relationships immigration patterns ideas about race and culture now the core aspects of this u.s philippine military relationship were in many ways set in place in 1898 and have remained that way ever since most books of history are stories of change and this is a story of continuity right of the ways in which these bonds were forged and then reforged over and over again in ways that have held these two countries together long after formal colonial control has ended and in part the military relationship didn't end and neither did filipino military service after independence in 1946 the philippines shifted from colony to ally um but the cold war soon began uh philippine troops as you see here um served in the u and the the shared uh sort of war in korea the philippines sent an expeditionary force that you see here called pep talk and the philippines also joined the u.s war in vietnam by sending the philippine civic action group most of whom were medics and construction engineers among others and war in asia meant that even with independence the two nations and their service personnel would continue to serve together in 1947 right after independence that a bilateral agreement between the two countries established that the terms that guaranteed the united states access to 23 military bases in the new nation among them clark air base and subic bay naval station and clark air base eventually growing to a population of some 50 000 airmen and civilian personnel uh four times the size of the district of columbia over in the 1960s during the vietnam war planes landed at clark from south vietnam sailors arrived at subik naval station for leave and a generation later operation enduring freedom which most of us understand or refer to as the war in afghanistan was of course a global war on terror that led to a substantial deployment of u.s forces in the southern philippines the largest sort of engagement outside of afghanistan for oef and as the war u.s began its war in iraq in 2003 filipinos also served in in the military there as well some 31 000 non-citizens wore the us military uniforms in 2003. 20 percent of those immigrant soldiers were filipinos more than from any other country in the world now through it all there are countless other filipinos and filipino-americans who never wore uniform but were nevertheless affected by the service of those who did all the people who worked with or for the us military civilian farmers or factory workers who produced food weapons or airplanes such as this sort of military aircraft worker in los angeles in world war ii spouses who kept families going during sailors long absences at sea and eventually as we'll see young protesters demanding equal treatment for aging veterans now for most of the 20th century service in the u.s armed forces offered the clearest path to immigration and to u.s citizenship for filipinos who wanted it it's not hard to see the traces of this on the american landscape some of the communities with the greatest number of filipino americans also happen to be u.s navy towns vallejo california which you see depicted here near mare island naval shipyard national city near san diego norfolk and virginia beach near hampton roads now in 2021 the united states counts some four million filipino americans one of the nation's fastest growing ethnic groups many trace their family histories to a father or an uncle in u.s military uniform and when they don't someone else's father or uncle often casts a shadow military service has provided filipinos a language of patriotism and sacrifice and one that allows them to make a claim on equality as americans immigrants and their children use those words not only to wage a struggle for world war ii veterans and their benefits but also to find them a place for themselves in america making their service part of america's military history making their protests and lawsuits part of its civil rights legacy handing down mindsets and memories of war and the military from one generation to the next now what i want to do now is switch and instead of giving you the sense of the whole book that spans from 1898 all the way until uh until the present i want to just take a very deep dive into one really important part of the book and one part of the story that i really hope that all americans know a broken promise stands at the heart of this history and it is a law called the recision act passed in 1946 which retroactively stripped some 200 000 filipino soldiers of their u.s naturalization rights and their veterans benefits the image you see here is not of the rescission act the image you see here is of manila in 1945 one of the most destroyed cities in the in the world in either theater of the second world war and i just show this to you to sort of remind you of the devastation and the impact of the war which was the context in which some of these policy decisions were made thousands of miles away in washington that would have an impact for generations to come now over the course of the next six decades veterans and their advocates challenged the recision act and the way that it stripped veterans of their rights and benefits they did this through courtroom arguments through petitions to government agencies through public protests and ultimately through legislative initiatives what i want to do is give you the history of the rescission act itself which i say is probably one of the most important laws in american history that you may never have heard of i want to tell you the promises that america made and how they came to be broken and then also how those promises came ultimately to be fulfilled so just to back up filipinos served under the american flag during the second world war in numerous formations as i kind of traced before but it was very clear whether you look at congressional laws signed by the president whether you look at executive orders issued by the u.s president or whether you look at field commands from from individuals such as general douglas macarthur it was very clear that filipino soldiers were eligible for naturalization as citizens and eligible for veterans benefits like other american soldiers after the war many of them turned to the nationality act of 1940 which promised non-citizen soldiers rapid naturalization as long as they filed their paperwork by december 31 1946 now the provisions of this law did not make any distinction about nationality and in fact around the world nearly 140 000 immigrant soldiers who served during world war ii from dozens of countries gained u.s citizenship under the terms of the nationality act of 1940. some of them were even filipinos as you see here in this image a judge on the left is administering the oath of citizenship to a group of philippine scouts who were who were stationed at fort dix in new jersey um so it you know so the law was available to filipinos but over the course of the war during the japanese occupation of course those who were fighting in the philippines had no access to it in the immediate aftermath of the war however and that they were eligible and many began to ask about it to acquire citizenship would have required sort of going filing your paperwork with the immigration and naturalization service the ins but that authority soon came under scrutiny and we we don't have a smoking gun in the archive i've looked for it for years i've tried to find it legal scholars have looked for it filipino veterans have looked for it but it seems pretty clear that officials in both the u.s and on the philippine side agreed that mass naturalization of filipino veterans might lead to large-scale immigration of filipino veterans to the united states people wanting to leave that devastation of manila for sort of booming economies in the united states and that this was a result that neither side neither government relished and as the u.s attorney general at the time tom clark said quote it would be a political embarrassment and a drain of manpower to have a mass exodus of young filipino ex-fighting men and women going to the united states on the eve of independence so soon clark and others developed a solution worthy of catch-22 that famous world war ii novel about military bureaucracy and so on september 13th 1945 and remember that's a date just days after japanese officers surrendered to the u.s aboard the uss missouri the u.s commissioner of immigration wrote to attorney general clark asking that the naturalization situation be handled by revoking the authority right and omitting to designate anyone else so basically in plain english what that means is that that one person from the ins who had the power to file the paperwork to make you a citizen was removed from the philippines and there was no one there to file paperwork that filipinos had a right to to claim now clark approved the maneuver we know he did that and by the end of october nearly 200 000 soldiers who marched under the american flag and had a legal right to claim u.s citizenship suddenly had nowhere to turn and no one who could file it for them there was a brief window in early 1946 when the ins office did reopen and about 4 000 filipino soldiers acquired u.s citizenship but the vast majority of them did not now this i would argue was a moment when not only naturalization and migration were blocked but also the basic rights of filipino soldiers who had marched next to american soldiers at bataan and guerrillas who had risked everything during the invasion and liberation this i would say was not america's finest tower now along with this came a second broken promise filipino veterans were going to be expensive with lifetime benefit costs for 200 000 veterans running possibly as high as 3.2 billion dollars so the man you see here arizona senator carl hayden drafted what would become known as the recision act which included a provision which was inserted following an off-the-record debate that says something like the following that service in the organized military forces of the philippines shall not be deemed to have been active military naval or air service for the purpose of conferring rights privileges or benefits upon any person so in plain english what that means filipino soldiers were not american soldiers at least when it came time to pay benefits the law thus blocked individual claims by filipino veterans who had served in the philippine army were in the guerrillas and just to make the long list of what uh what they lost through this law clear to you that means no gi bill no college loan no home mortgage no medical care no widows stipend not even a flag for the soldier's casket now this i would argue was not america's finest hour either now president harry truman understood what was going on he very much wanted to veto this bill but he was under enormous political pressure to balance the budget and to end the war to bring the troops home to keep costs down and so on february 18 1946 reluctantly he signed it but nevertheless he appended a signing statement in which he claimed that there existed quote a moral obligation of the united states to look after the welfare of philippine army veterans at the same time he assured our comrades in the philippines that the issue is receiving attention and is being expedited as much as possible and with that harry truman became the first of literally a dozen presidents to promise action on the filipino veterans issue not now but at some future date for filipino veterans and in fact for the united states the rescission act was not only a broken promise but unfinished business so let me fast forward to this picture taken in los angeles in of course macarthur park in 1997 where an extended vigil and protest and in fact a brief hunger strike by filipino world war ii veterans many of them well into their 70s 80s and 90s attempted to draw attention and to the to the rescission act the harms it had caused and the need for congressional action to undo it and it would take 63 years to undo the harm of the recision act and i tell that story in the sort of second half of the book looking not only at the military service of filipinos in korea and vietnam and iraq but also tracing the political history of filipino american veterans and their advocates a story that i think is a crucial part of america's civil rights heritage and if i had to explain sort of what why they were successful in 2009 and when they had not been successful in the years before i like to give people sort of five uh five examples right so first um the first big change that happened um came in the 1980s um with the the fall of ferdinand marcos regime in the philippines in the years before that the marcos administration had formed very close ties with world war ii veterans groups and claimed to really advocate and be the voice of veterans um in washington but despite marcus's uh sort of diplomatic efforts to win changes and bilateral relationships with washington and he never delivered the goods to the veterans themselves and in fact actually in many ways failed just as as much to meet their needs as the u.s did in adopting the rescission act once marcos was gone the veterans issue became sort of a non-partisan issue in the philippines right it became an issue around which both marco's supporters and marcus opponents could agree change needed to happen the timing of this um also coincides with the end of the cold war in 1989 and the closure of u.s military bases after 1991. they were closed through uh through a vote by the philippine senate to reject a treaty and that would have extended the leases um they were also closed by a natural disaster what you see here is an image of clark air base in the wake of the explosion of the volcano mount penitube in 1991 which effectively uh destroyed clark um for and and brought it to a very rapid uh closure um as part of the treaty negotiations now for decades um filipinos and phil had had sought the inclusion of filipino veterans benefits in foreign aid rather than as individual rights that they claimed in american courts and american congressional halls and but with the end of the cold war with the decrease in in foreign aid to the closure of bases that was no longer going to be another pa a path to power so filipino veterans and their advocates had to find another way right and so they started building on other forms of activism instead right and here we need to turn to two changes in political organizing particularly in the years after the 1960s with the emergence of what might be called an asian-american movement as immigrants from asia and their children and descendants many of whom had previously understand themselves to be part of one nationality and one linguistic heritage chinese japanese or filipino realized that in the united states they had more in common and could have more voice and more strength by organizing under the banner of asian american rather than of their national heritage and this coincides with the civil rights movements of the 1960s and the ethnic revival of the 1970s that brought immigration history and immigrant cultures and to the fore of an emerging multicultural american society now this happens all over the country but it all was most visible in california where filipino-american workers joined ufw grape strikes and where students participated in student strikes and as you see in this image a long battle between 1968 and 1981 to stop the destruction of san francisco's international hotel a rooming house in san francisco chinatown that served low-income aging filipino city residents and this effort sort of galvanizes this asian-american sort of movement so you have a kind of political movement happening on the streets but that's not really enough to get a law through congress and part of what you need are sort of allies on capitol hill and we start to see that over the course of the late 20th century by by the time the first asian americans start to sort of join congress in the 1950s and they are a distinct minority many of them have japanese and chinese american heritage but as the the demographics change you start to see shifts in congress as well following the immigration act of 1965 filipino populations in the u.s increased substantially reaching almost 2 million by the late 1980s and as i mentioned about 4 million today now they increasingly found voice in congress and long-serving figures such as daniel inouye who you see here a senator from hawaii and himself a wounded world war ii veteran representative patsy mink um also from hawaii senator daniel akaka representative norman mineta of california who formed the congressional asian pacific american caucus in 1994 as well as representatives who were not themselves asian american but who represented large asian american constituencies such as representative bob filner of san diego they started to pay increasing attention to their constituents concerns and in the 1990s started to hear more and more about filipino veterans and their their political and economic needs now they also over time started to develop a great deal of power as you see as senators and congressmen age and they they develop seniority they develop expertise and they develop capital that they can expand when they want to push a bill through but another key feature of this and another crucial turning point are some cultural shifts of the 80s and 90s um as american culture embraced the so-called greatest generation this world war ii generation and recognized both their citizenship and their their heroism but also recognizing that they needed to pay attention and to the wartime contribution of soldiers of color of immigrant soldiers of women that made a space for uh four filipino veterans um to sort of stake their claim this was all the more important given the shrinking population of world war ii veterans as they were aging in the 1990s right but by the time you get um to the the sit-ins at equity village in los angeles in 1997 dismissing the claims of filipino veterans just no longer aligned with american political culture regardless of political party and many people in the 90s started to ask themselves you know what why why have they waited so long right what has taken so long now there was a couple shifts along the way one turning point is in 1990 in the immigration and naturalization act there was a provision that granted most filipino veterans a two-year window opportunity to naturalize as u.s citizens and the image you see here is from a naturalization ceremony in los angeles in 1991 but that only really addressed the question of naturalization not of uh veterans benefits um and so the question of benefits remained um and protests continued um advocates like inuit mink and akaka repeatedly introduced legislation on capitol hill the va endorsed it as a necessary change but time and time again stalled in committee or on the floors of congress there were long-standing assumptions about the foreignness of filipino soldiers and hesitations about granting full equity as late as 2008 one north carolina senator objected to what he called quote aid for foreigners and warned that equity legislation would quote take money away from our veterans in this country despite the fact that filipino world war ii veterans were our veterans and most of them lived in this country and the big shift comes in 2009. um january 2009 brought a new constellation of forces obviously the worst economic crisis since the great depression but also the 111th congress which placed senator daniel in away in the chair seat of the senate committee on appropriations which means he controls the money and senator daniel akaka in charge of the senate committee on veterans affairs which means he controls veterans issues and together they along with many others succeeded in folding the proposed legislation for filipino veterans equity into the american recovery and reinvestment act era or the the recovery act which you may not have noticed that it includes a small provision in its many many hundreds of pages that authorized up to 198 million dollars to pay uh benefits to us to to filipino veterans who could document their service now um that said although the funds were allocated and and renewed and not all of them were actually distributed and of course the the challenge of reaching filipino veterans to to uh decades after the end of the war was substantial right many of them of course had passed away um but the best estimate from the congressional research service in 2009 was that there were between 15 and 18 000 surviving veterans of those original 200 000 who were probably eligible now the time had passed that also made it difficult to document guerrilla service or other forms of service or finding paperwork um in you know across the pacific meant that the va in the end released payments to about 12 000 filipino veterans in the wake of the 2009 legislation now nevertheless um it was and of course for many as we see here it was for many too too little too late um and so i you know i've been able to recognize and meet some of these veterans over the years many of them in their 90s even over 100 years old who continue to sort of fight and wait um for for this along the years and and it is inspiring to meet them and hear their stories but it is always a little bit bittersweet because we know that uh it is as as we say too little to end too late um but it had all the markings of a happy ending and there were moments of celebration and bringing this these broken promises uh to an end but on some level um i think that the best line comes from lillian goledo co-chair of the national alliance for filipino veterans equity who was i think more right than she realized when she described the 2009 equity victory as quote just yet another beginning now the filipino world war ii veterans and the thousands of those who remain with us will soon fade into history but the struggles uh that they embodied both on the battlefield and in the realm of politics and the enduring bonds that they formed between the united states and the philippines are sure to continue for at least a century to come thank you all right thank you so much chris that was amazing uh let's uh move on to some questions uh from ronald uh can you comment on the current position philippine perspective in regards to communist china's expansionism in the pacific um i i can i can give you sort of one one or two sort of opinions about this um but you know it's i um but no promises of great expertise but i do think that history can actually help us a lot as we think about this right um that uh the united states ever since the 1890s um has viewed asia from the philippines right it has either used the philippines as literally a base um to to view um you know whether it was the soviet union whether it was china whether it was japan even initially whether it was spain and i believe that that will continue to be the case and that that the military relationship between the us and the philippines is quite strong and we continue to be bound through uh sort of mutual defense treaty and that commits the united states to the defense of the philippines from uh outside attack and that would include outside attack on uh islands and shoals that are part of philippine territorial waters as recognized by the united nations although china contests those claims but both the united states the philippines and the united nations i think stand on fairly firm legal ground in that matter it is it is going to be a challenge for the philippines to live in the 21st century between the united states and china regardless of whether those those conflicts remain sort of peaceful or economic or or deteriorate um but uh but nevertheless the ties between the two countries are strong and they're strong not only because of foreign policy between the two nations um but because of foreign relations between the two people that um you know as i point out there are four million filipino americans and there are you know millions of americans who have uh traveled lived and made connections in the philippines uh building those connections and keeping those strong is a crucial task for the 21st century great answer we've got another one isn't something similar happening to the afghans who assisted american soldiers during the afghan war that is a great question and i really thank you for asking that because um if if nothing else um i hope that you know we can't necessarily sort of um you know fix the promises that that were broken for world war ii veterans who who passed away decades ago but we can at least not do it again um and i would include also in this um the experiences of hmong people from southeast asia who fought with and for the us military during the conflict in vietnam many of whom also have had sort of struggles being recognized for their service and their you know their sacrifices to the u.s military it is also absolutely the case um that many people in both iraq and afghanistan he's not necessarily served in u.s uniform but certainly served the u.s military mission in both of those countries and many of them particularly in public facing roles as translators and others in ways that sort of you know visibly committed them to the u.s military effort and who and to whom i think americans owe a great deal um now because they many of them did so without wearing us military uniforms we need to think more creatively about how we fulfill our debts to them how we sort of repay them for for what they have given us over the last 20 years and you know whether that sort of thinking about sort of about migration and naturalization paths whether that's thinking about benefits that don't look like veterans benefits but making sure that sort of their their work and labor are recognized if they worked as contractors you know though i think people need to as a society need to think creatively about that and one of the best ways to do that is to is to listen to them and to give them a space to speak not only about what they did for the united states um during the wars in iraq and afghanistan but also what they they need now um as the united states draws down from those conflicts thank you dr cappazola and uh thank you evelyn that was a fantastic question um from mary do young filipino american women and men enter u.s military service in any significant numbers today that is a great question and i uh i wish i had a really good answer and that the us armed forces generally don't sort of collect data sort of by by nationality or ethnicity at that rate um so i can't give you like a really precise and reliable number but i can certainly tell you that the answer to your question is yes certainly by some estimates that have been done more by sociologists and and and others even estimate that filipino americans are the ethnic group with the highest rate of military participation and part of that is that in the era of the all-volunteer force the the best predictor of whether you will join the us military is how many family members you have who have served in the us military and because filipino americans have long sort of multi-generational histories of this um you actually tend to see very high rates of enlistment and re-enlistment um and and as you point out in your in your note right this is um you know this is both both men and women right and of course this you know my book there are a lot more men in the beginning of the book but we certainly see filipino women um in the philippines serving during world war ii and filipino american women serving in in large numbers today awesome thank you um another question since the united states has left the site of the former clark air force base what are the remaining united states military bases in the philippines if any um so that's a good question uh and there's a there's a sort of the official legal answer and then there's the you know the real answer so um just to be clear um the u.s ultimately held before 1991 about 20 um sort of what we call facilities some of which would have been military or or you know air bases or naval stations some of which were much smaller communications stations etc um with the uh with the end of the treaty the bases closed in 1992 um but very soon thereafter in 1998 the u.s and the philippines signed something called the visiting forces agreement which allowed u.s forces to to visit and use philippine military facilities many of which were in fact the former u.s bases and now that has been sort of renewed in a new form called edsa the enhanced defense and cooperation agreement and which was hammered out um in uh hammered out during the obama administration and so uh and then sort of re-ratified in different ways under the trump administration um you know and i think it just shows there's a kind of bi bipartisan sort of commitment uh by the by the defense department um too you know to this relationship um but it essentially means that the u.s military forces many of them are operating in places that you know that their parents and grandparents would have would have visited in the 1960s or in the 1940s um so there are technically no u.s military bases there but u.s forces visit regularly and have commitments there thank you um let's see uh immediately after the rescission act was passed uh were there any vocal opponents uh politicians that that came out against us um there were um and uh there were of course some filipinos who criticized it and uh particularly um our you know this really sort of wonderful spokesman for uh filipinos was carlos romelo who was a journalist and from the philippines although he studied mostly in the united states he really sort of devoted himself to you know to the cause of filipino soldiers he had of course himself also served in the war in a press capacity and he spent decades trying to kind of build better relationships between the us and the philippines um and you know spoke out against the rescission act at the time um but you know he wasn't in the room and when the decision was made and you know he was filipinos were really closed out of that there were others particularly in the 1940s and 50s who were advocates of veterans issues two that i'd like to point out in from massachusetts edith norris rogers who's one of the only women in congress and whose husband had been in the service and she really kind of took on sort of veterans issues she described herself as the veteran's mother and she sort of had a very matronly sort of demeanor and she really fought hard for filipino veterans and and extended some limited benefits to them in the 1950s and along with that senator robert taft from ohio of course who had been born in the philippines um when when his father william howard taft was the governor there and taft also sort of advocated for the veterans but it was really um only in the you know in the 1980s and 90s um as uh as asian-american sort of congress members really sort of kind of took up took up the cause by that point veterans groups like the american legion dfw etc also really endorsed it and that was a crucial part of that too awesome thank you um a question i had uh after reading your book and during it um what led the revolutionary aguinaldo uh to be one of the first people to line up to buy u.s war bonds during the war how did how did that shift take place yeah that's a that's a fun question and uh you know we didn't talk about him too much tonight but uh emilio aguinaldo is a he shows up in the first few chapters of the book he was of course a dedicated nationalist who wanted sort of philippine freedom and was the leader of the of the philippine revolution that was fighting against spain right remember spain had colonized the philippines um you know basically starting in 1521 right 500 years ago when magellan first arrived right um and then all the way up until 1898. by the 1890s aguinaldo is leading a military campaign against uh against spain the us in fact actually initially tries to to arm and aid him thinking that you know the enemy of my enemy is my friend right um and so and it's of course not the first or the last time that the united states has sort of you know armed armed someone who then turns to fight against the united states agonaldo led the philippine government the philippine republic and that was declared in 1898 and was also the general of the philippine revolutionary army that took to the field against american forces first in sort of ground battles in 1899 and then in guerilla warfare that lasted sporadically until around 1903-45 basically although aguinaldo himself was captured in 1901 at that point aguinaldo sort of makes peace with the americans and realizes that he can live with them and in fact many filipinos made the same choices and hoped that um you know hoped that there that they could get as much as they could in some ways out out of the americans on a path to national independence um and freedom and that said aguinaldo you know was always put the philippines first he was a national patriot and it was his country and so when you know when the phil so although he supported america and you know sort of bought war bonds um to you know support the united states during world war one when japan comes in world war ii um he he welcomes them um for having kicked the americans out and very symbolically sort of raises uh you know raises a flag for the puppet philippine republic that japan declared during the war but then he changes again with independence and realizes in the cold war and that they know that communism was ultimately a threat to philippine national independence and so the irony of all is that he uh dies in the 1950s in the u.s veterans memorial hospital right as uh you know although a veteran on the other side but who sort of you know became became an ally thank you that was great um what role if any did senator dole play during the late 80s and through the 90s um that's a good question and um uh i have coveted to blame for not having a really good answer because um as i was explaining to trey there was some more research that i had hoped to do and here i'll just make a shout out to the collections of the kansas historical society which has some really good materials particularly from the the early period the 20th kansas um sort of volunteer infantry um but also others as well and i also hope to sort of get into senator dole's papers which are held at the dole institute at ku and and um my under you know basically uh there's a really kind of interesting backstory that happens in the 1980s between the reagan administration and the marcus regime as it becomes increasingly clear that the regime is um is you know teetering on the brink of collapse and and there were some who you know wanted to prop it up and some who felt um you know that we could that the united states could sort of convince mark the marcuses to leave peacefully and quietly and that that would be in that would you know that that reform was better than revolution right um and um you know most of that was happening within the reagan white house um you know as um secretary of state george schultz and and uh his assistant um paul wolfowitz were sort of the ones who wanted the marcuses to leave and and reagan himself as president actually you know really until the last few days really wanted marcos to stay and congress was not didn't play a huge role in that at the time other than senator paul laxalt who was a good friend of reagan who was the personal um sort of intermediary between the two presidents and dole himself plays a big role after 1986 after marcos leaves um the us develops a huge sort of um basically um aid package that is designed to reform the military mark the military under marcos had really become sort of corrupt and and not a sort of reliable force um in the cold war and also to sort of aid democracy initiatives um and dole along with senator kemp um or representative jack kemp sorry um you know play a key role in sort of shepherding that legislation through in 1980 i think 1987 88 around that what was uh public opinion like in the philippines about the marcos regime uh was he well liked um you know we don't have a we don't have a great answer to that question um because of course um you know although there there were you know the press was freer under in the philippines than it was under uh many other countries that experienced martial law or or dictatorship you know people were not free to say their minds and speak their peace of course many people supported marcos and he wouldn't have stayed in power as long as he did without that that support and without you know sort of the distribution of networks of of patronage and political protection that were crucial for that um so you know that the 1986 the people power revolution that overthrew marcos was obviously a popular revolution that demanded change um but it also reflected you know that there were real divisions in the country and we can see some of that in the more recent years and when you have seen the emergence of a certain kind of nostalgia um for uh for the marcos era and and for um for that sort of past period and that among essentially those who had supported the regime in the 70s and 80s well thank you so much uh this has been a wonderful presentation um i have learned a ton and i'm sure all of our our viewers have as well um dr cappazola sent some links uh you'll see them on the right-hand side i really would love it if everybody here bought his book bound by war it's fantastic it is so well researched you will learn more than a dozen things uh going through the book um looks like we've got one one last question and then we'll then we'll wrap it up how is mccarthy remembered today in the philippines uh macarthur i think um so i think we mean uh general douglas macarthur right i think that's uh give a brief story right which is of course there's two right his father general arthur macarthur was of course the first military governor of the philippines um not much remembered by either americans or filipinos and douglas macarthur by contrast um what is a you know sort of very widely remembered and and um how to put this i guess sort of grudgingly respected uh sort of figure um in the philippines that there is a sort of enormous understanding of his um of his commitment but you know and also um uh and also a respect for certain aspects that macarthur got right when no one else did um he insisted that philippines needed to be liberated at a time when franklin roosevelt and admiral thought that the philippines could be sort of hopped over and skipped on the road to a war against the homeland of japan um and also um you know even in the middle of the war douglas macarthur insisted on what he called equal pay for equal risk at the time that the war began filipino soldiers made half one half of what american soldiers made and douglas macarthur used his field command authority and to double their salaries and people sort of remember that um there is a sort of you know a subset of people who didn't think that and so of course during the war um the americans are sending in all kinds of propaganda and you know sort of food and medicine stamped with macarthur's famous line note i shall return and some of the rival gorilla groups would also sort of circulate their own propaganda and their own food and medicine boxes stamped with uh with his uh with his picture and their symbols and it said we never left and so you know it was a a sort of war for for those two minds but um you know it's pretty hard to go too many places without encountering a macarthur boulevard or the macarthur road or that sort of that sort of thing even you know 70 years later well thank thank you again dr cappazola um can't wait till you can make it out here in person uh i can't wait to get you some of those resources from the collections and uh give you a tour i look forward to it well i hope everyone has enjoyed tonight's presentation uh and will join us again uh friday june 11th when prisca barnes speaks on her book people pride and promise the story of the document sit-in america's first student-led lunch counter sit-in the kansas museum of history is scheduled to reopen next month in june so be sure to check our website kshs.org for up-to-date information and we can't wait to see you again in person so from all of us at museum after hours good night and thanks again

Channel: Kansas Historical Society

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Id: nAeUP0LsTBw

Length: 59min 38sec (3578 seconds)

Published: Sat May 15 2021