No real ending yet to search for Bicol patriot’s remains
VINZONS, Camarines Norte—Bicol’s freedom fighter, Wenceslao Q. Vinzons, was executed by Japanese soldiers in 1942 while World War II was raging in the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, but his remains have yet to be found, according to the National Historical Institute.
His youngest and only surviving daughter, Ranavalona Carolina Vinzons-Gaite, believes that the human skeleton retrieved one rainy day in August 1972 from an old cemetery in the town of Indan in Camarines Norte is his. Ranavalona escaped death from the same soldiers that killed her father, pregnant mother, grandfather, aunt, brother and sister.
Indan was later renamed Vinzons in honor of the guerrilla leader, governor of Camarines Norte, youngest delegate to the Philippine Constitutional Convention of 1935, and first editor of the Philippine Collegian, the official student publication of the University of the Philippines.
“The remains were recovered with the help of a girl possessed by the Santo Niño (Child Jesus) from a village in Talisay town,” Ranavalona says.
Obligation
The war survivor, who is now in her 60s, says she had been looking for the remains of her father since childhood. “I feel that finding my father’s body and reliving and preserving his memories are my obligations after surviving the horrors of war. I myself can hardly remember my father because I was only 2 years old when we were captured by Japanese soldiers,” she says.
Long after the war and a fruitful marriage, she had settled in Manila, where she tended a small business. But she has not stopped searching for the bodies of her father and other family members.
She even asked a Japanese man who came to her store if he knew a certain Tsuneoka Noburo, the Japanese garrison commander who ordered the execution of Vinzons. Noburo, according to her, was able to return to Japan after the war.
She pleaded with the man to help her have an audience with the Japanese ambassador to Manila, but she never heard from him after their meeting.
1972 exhumation
Her quest brought her home to Camarines Norte in August 1972, while Manila was then flooded. “It was very rainy and I was running late for the plane flying to the Bagasbas Airport, but I made up my mind to go home.”
Her elder sister, Grace, when she was still alive, had told her about a girl who, according to residents of Barangay Sto. Niño in Talisay, was being possessed by the Child Jesus. The girl’s pupils would dilate, her voice would sound like a child’s, and she would pray the rosary.
“I thought she could help me find the body of my father,” Ranavalona says.
When she arrived at the Manila International Airport for her flight home, final boarding had already been called, but the airplane’s cabin crew still opened the door for her. “It was like luck was really helping me find my father’s remains,” she says.
In Camarines Norte, she found the possessed girl. “I observed her first. The actuation of the girl did not look she was faking it. But I only returned three days after. Then I asked the girl questions that I had longed to ask anyone who might have known where my father’s grave was. The girl eerily replied to my queries.”
The girl told her that her father was buried in the old cemetery of Indan, about five steps from the chapel. “Three Filipinos were buried in the grave but piled one on top of each other,” Vinzons’ daughter was told. The crowd stirred and offered to dig the grave, but Ranavalona refused to bring them along to the site.
Exhumation
An opportunity finally came for her, her sister Grace and two helpers to go by themselves to the spot near the chapel. The cemetery was very old and neglected, and they had to pull out the overgrowth of thick bushes and grasses before digging.
After digging waist-deep, they found a human skull.
“The people who started gathering in the clearing shouted, ‘It must be Vinzons!’” Ranavalona says. But she told them that it was not easy to assume it was his father’s because the place was also used as a mass grave for victims of a cholera outbreak in Indan.
More skeletons were retrieved. “Every time the diggers would hit a bone, I would become furious because the remains could be of my family,” Ranavalona says.
In all, the remains of six persons were recovered and placed in crates tagged according to which was first exhumed. “The six bodies corresponded to my six family members who were executed during the war, including my father,” Ranavalona says.
The digging took place exactly on the same day that she lost almost her entire family. “It was August 6, 1972. I lost them on August 6, 1942.”
Ranavalona returned to the possessed girl and asked which crate contained the remains of her father, though the crates were not presented to her at all. The girl easily said that Crate 1 had the remains of Vinzons.
“I asked her again which crate contained the remains of my grandfather Gabino. The girl said Crate 5. I couldn’t believe her straightforwardness,” Ranavalona says.
She continued her query. “I asked her what to do. She told me that I must return to the faith and that I must bring the exhumed remains to three dentists in Santa Mesa in Manila.”
What about her mother? The girl told Ravalona that her mother and two siblings were taken to Palawan by Japanese soldiers and were thrown into the sea.
Dental records
Back in Manila, Ranavalona and her husband began looking for the dentists in Santa Mesa District whom the girl referred to. “I saw no sign that could indicate a dental clinic. Then I asked a man, who turned out to be from Vinzons also. He told us to look for it in another area in Santa Mesa.”
An old woman they met referred them to a certain Dr. Delos Santos in another part of the district. They found Dr. Marco delos Santos, who turned out to be a brother of the dentist whom Vinzons would go to and possibly still have his dental records.
After three days, Ranavalona called Marco but was given the bad news that Vinzons’ dental records were already lost. In another eerie coincidence during her call, Marco was treating a patient who knew Vinzons.
It was not “scientifically” established if the remains dug out in Camarines Norte in 1972 were those of Vinzons and his family. DNA testing was not yet available in the country then.
“We turned over the remains to the National Bureau of Investigation in 1972 for examination. I followed up years later but I was told that the bones were nowhere to be found. The bones are still missing until now,” Ravalona says.
Citing “coincidences” during her search that “were just too obvious to be overlooked,” Vinzons’ daughter is convinced that the remains were her father’s.
Her problem now is looking for the remains that were turned over to the NBI. “It was lost in the possession of the government,” she says.
With the current situation in the country, Ravalona says her father could not be resting in peace. “He was a patriot and his dreams for the Philippines are yet to be realized. He believes in the greatness of the Malay race. He believes that someday, the Filipino and the Malay race would shine in the world stage.”
