One element of the treaty that ended
the Spanish-American War in 1898 was a twenty-million-dollar payment from the United
States to Spain in exchange for the Philippines. This began the American colonial period,
which lasted until the archipelago was granted its independence after the Second World War.
The Filipinos had initially seen the Americans as aiding them in their independence from Spain,
but the Americans did not see things this way. For them, it was an opportunity, as President William
McKinley put it, “to uplift and civilize and Christianize them.” In August 1898, the Americans
established a military government at Manila. With this self-created authority, they set up local
governments, including schools and courts, with the American model. While this
was being set up by the Americans, the Philippine revolutionary government, which
had formed during the Spanish-American War, held elections to seat an assembly, whose purpose
was to write a constitution for their new state. This founding document was adopted and set to
go into effect on 21 January 1899, creating the First Philippine Republic. On 4 January, however,
the United States issued a proclamation stating that the Spanish having ceded the Philippines
to them meant that American military rule was to go into effect over the whole archipelago
immediately. This undermined the new government and its president, Emilio Aguinaldo, issued a
response that reaffirmed the independence of the Philippines and asserted their right to defend
themselves. Open warfare began on 4 February 1899, with an American assault on San Juan.
Aguinaldo’s government issued a declaration of war against the United States on 2 June 1899.
The Filipinos were not equipped for traditional warfare against a modern state; most of them
did not even have guns but were working with bows and arrows and spears. After a few months
of this, they shifted to guerilla tactics, with the idea of inflicting constant losses
rather than trying to overtake them entirely. This prompted an American shift to methods for
fighting an internal rebellion, which included the use of camps to collect civilians with the
idea of segregating them, ostensibly to protect them from the guerillas. They also had camps for
prisoners of war, which were not well supplied. Disease ran rampant in these camps, causing
more Filipino deaths than the warfare itself. The insurgency continued through the next year,
prompting a declaration of martial law by General Arthur MacArthur on 20 December 1900. At the same
time, an American Commission headed by future president William Howard Taft began designing
and enacting a government. Positions in local governments and the newly developed civil service
were used, to some effect, to persuade resistance leaders away from their anti-American efforts.
Hostilities were greatly reduced when President Aguinaldo was captured in March 1901. On 19 April,
he officially surrendered and swore allegiance to the United States. He called on his people to
lay down their weapons, but some local leaders, like Miguel Malvar and Vincente Lukban, continued
the fighting until April 1902. Isolated pockets of resistance carried on intermittently until 1913.
This war cost more in people and materials for the United States than had the Spanish-American War.
The Filipinos lost at least 200,000 civilians from diseases like cholera and dysentery, as well as
famine. The US had implemented a scorched-earth policy in the places they hoped to root out the
guerilla groups and were not shy about using extreme methods to get information from prisoners.
The Philippine fighters also used brutal tactics against the Americans they captured.
After the war, the Philippines were put under a type of territorial government
administered by and answerable to the United States, called the Insular Government. This
administration’s purpose was to shepherd the Philippines into independence. Elections were
held for an assembly in 1907, which served as a lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the
US-appointed Philippine Commission serving as the upper house. The assembly passed resolutions
annually calling for Philippine independence. In 1916, the Philippine Autonomy
Act, also known as the Jones Law, was put into effect. It replaced the Philippine
Commission in their legislature with an elected senate and stated unequivocally that the American
policy was for Philippine independence, though without a timeframe for when it would happen.
Any activities around independence were put on hold during World War I. After the war, however,
a Philippine delegation came to the US to present their case directly in Washington. President
Woodrow Wilson was sufficiently impressed to state that they were ready for independence in
his farewell address in 1921, but his successors, apparently, disagreed. President Warren
Harding sent a delegation to investigate, and it returned that they were not ready for
independence, though that was widely disputed. It was not until January 1933 that the United
States government allowed for a timeline for Philippine independence. This was established by
the Philippine Independence Act in 1934, which gave guidelines for the writing of a constitution
and establishing a commonwealth. Under this Act, the Philippines would become independent on
4 July following the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the Commonwealth. The new
Philippine constitution went into effect on 15 November 1935; meaning the country was to
be released from US oversight on 4 July 1946. The new government set to work with ambitious
plans, many of which were left unfulfilled due to the Great Depression and the uncertainty
surrounding the local political and military circumstances due to Japan’s recent
alliance with Germany and its ongoing invasion of China. The concerns about Japan were
well-founded, as the Empire’s attack on the US Naval Base at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 was
accompanied by an attack on the Philippines. This brought the Philippines into the war, with their
army being integrated into the US Army Forces Far East. The American military in the archipelago was
under the control of General Douglas MacArthur, the son of Arthur MacArthur who had been the
military governor of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. In order to prevent its
destruction, the city of Manila was declared open, and it was taken by the Japanese on 2 January
1942. Smuggled out with General MacArthur and his staff and family, the Philippine President and
Vice President, Manuel L Quezon and Sergio Osmeña, set up a government-in-exile in Washington, D.C.
The Japanese set up a puppet government called the Philippine Executive Commission, whose purpose was
to oversee the transition of the Philippines to an independent state. Some Filipinos saw more
potential in actually gaining independence via the Japanese than via the Americans,
but most were pushing back against either, in favor of genuine independence.
In the initial Japanese invasion, poor preparation meant the American planes were
destroyed on the ground, meaning they were not available to protect the US Army and Naval forces
from Japanese attack. The American and Filipino soldiers were forced to retreat south as far as
they could go, stopping at Corregidor Island and surrendering there. This prompted one of the
most infamous events of the war: the Bataan Death March. Because of this, they had no means
to transfer the 75,000 men to a camp 65 miles/105 km north other than via a march. This was done
with little thought to the prisoners’ needs, including food, shelter, or medical care. Because
the Japanese didn’t believe in surrender, they saw no value in the men and treated them accordingly.
The numbers vary widely, but it is estimated that approximately 600 Americans and as many as 15,000
Filipinos did not reach the camp. This would later be avenged by American paratroopers
and special forces units who rescued the prisoners and retook Corregidor in February 1945.
The Japanese did anything they could to dehumanize the Filipinos, making for a particularly
brutal occupation. Forced labor was common, including forcing women, children, and some men
into slavery as “comfort women” for the Japanese soldiers. The actions of the occupiers
prompted a fierce backlash in the form of an underground resistance movement. This
resistance was organized as isolated guerilla cells scattered throughout the archipelago. By
the end of the war, nearly 300,000 Filipinos were directly involved in guerilla activities,
with an unknown number supporting them. In October 1944, the Americans returned to the
Philippines under General MacArthur. In the intervening years, the Philippine guerillas
had destroyed a great deal of the Japanese control and were able to provide intelligence
and work alongside the Americans. This was after a protracted argument between the Army and
Navy about whether the archipelago needed to be liberated by the Americans at all. Due to his own
and his father’s involvement with the Philippines, MacArthur felt a personal need to
assure the commonwealth’s liberation. The major push to retake the islands was the
Battle of Leyte Gulf, on the 23 – 26 October 1944, which is still known as the largest naval battle
in history. The main Allied fleet, consisting of the heavy American aircraft carriers,
fast battleships, and most modern escorts, was commanded by Admiral William Halsey. They were
on the eastern side of the Philippine Islands, where they saw Japanese carriers coming from Japan
with the apparent intent of attacking the invasion fleet. As soon as they knew they were seen, they
turned back, with the Americans racing behind them, away from the Philippines. At the same
time, a fleet of Japanese battleships and heavy cruisers, under the leadership of Admiral Kurita
Takeo, came from the Dutch East Indies toward the American invasion fleet on the western side of
the islands. This was the primary Japanese strike group, not the fleet after which Halsey chased.
They ran into a line of American submarines, which attacked, damaging and sinking some of the ships.
They called for help, prompting American planes to be launched from nearby aircraft carriers.
The Japanese super battleship Musashi was sunk, after which the Japanese turned around. The
Americans thought they were retreating, but they turned back around as soon as the American
attacks stopped. They attacked the American destroyers and aircraft carriers, who fought
back so fiercely, some sacrificing themselves, that Kurita thought the entire American fleet
was in front of him. He turned around again, not realizing he was in a better position.
On the same night, a third Japanese group encountered the older American ships at the
Surigao Strait, which had been placed to provide bombardment to support the invasion.
Using their radar, they were able to destroy most of the Japanese ships before they were
aware Americans were in the Strait. Because some of these were ships from Pearl Harbor which
had been restored, this is thought of as avenging that attack. This was the last battleship
vs. battleship engagement in history... The Americans took Manila back beginning on
3 February 1945, conducting an exhausting street-by-street battle that lasted until 3 March.
Some of the heaviest fighting actually happened in the baseball stadium, where the Japanese used
the dugouts like bunkers. The civilian population of Manila got caught in the middle of the battle
and was prevented from leaving by the Japanese, meaning tens of thousands were killed.
Fighting continued in the islands until the Japanese surrender on 2 September 1945.
Just a few months later, on 15 November 1945, the Philippine Commonwealth celebrated
its tenth anniversary. Preparations began for official independence, which was
granted with much ceremony on 4 July 1946…
