The Senate approved on Tuesday a bill declaring September 2 as a special non-working holiday in Ifugao province to commemorate the surrender of renowned Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita at the end of World War II in 1945.
“For communities to progress, we must also consider honoring and learning from our history and the people who were part of it,” Senate local government committee chair Juan Edgardo Angara said in a statement.
The bill, according to Angara, would mark the surrender of Yamashita, then commander of the Japanese Imperial Army in the Philippines, on September 2, 1945 in Kiangan, Ifugao.
Under the bill, the provincial government of Ifugao, the municipal government of Kiangan, along with the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP), the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office (PVAO), and the Military Shrines Service (MSS) are tasked to “lead appropriate and meaningful commemorative programs and activities” in relation the event.
Such activities, according to the bill, would “give significance and honor the heroes and heroines who contributed to the Philippines’ liberation from the Japanese forces.”
Yamashita, who surrendered his forces several weeks after the announcement of Japan’s surrender on August 15, 1945, was later found guilty of war crimes and sentenced to death in 1946. /ee