BAGUIO CITY, Philippines—For the past 80 years, candles have been lit and flowers offered in a tomb that caretakers of the Baguio City public cemetery reckon to be the oldest in the area.
The tomb belongs to 22-year-old Joseph Douglas, a son of an American soldier and miner in Itogon town, Benguet province, who died on Dec. 11, 1934.
Buried in the family plot with Douglas were four relatives.
“I remember when I was young, I used to go to the cemetery and we would play on the hills. There were only a few tombs there. I left Baguio in 1970 and when I returned in 1980, I was surprised to see the cemetery with so many tombs,” said Andrew Douglas Jr., 62, Douglas’ nephew.
Andrew said his uncle, who was born on 1912, was a miner but the family never knew the cause of his death at a young age.
Douglas was one of six children of Samuel Jefferson Douglas, a Welsh who migrated to New York and became a soldier who would be assigned to the Philippines.
Andrew said Jefferson, who died in 1942, was one of the founders of Suyoc Mines in Itogon.
Andrew said he and other relatives had made a vow to continue visiting Douglas’ grave whenever they could. That’s why the tombs in the family plot have been taken care of since 1934.
Victor Padua, public services assistant of the city environment and parks management office (Cepmo), said the remains of early American residents and war veterans were in the cemetery, but their tombs had been neglected by relatives.
Padua said among the most visited tombs in Baguio City were those of Ibaloy chieftain Mateo Cariño and his son, Sioco. The Cariños once served as presidente (mayor) of Baguio.
Cariño was first buried in his property, or what is now known as Campo Sioco, said Joaquin Cariño, a member of the clan. The remains were later taken to the city cemetery after World War II. He was buried there with Sioco, who died of starvation and maltreatment from the hands of the Japanese in 1945.
Padua lamented the lack of a system in preserving the tombs of the city’s founders, heroes and early leaders so their legacy could be honored.
“There is a Heroes’ Hill here, where Filipino war veterans are buried. Now, the veterans are being buried by their relatives anywhere they find convenient,” Padua said.
He said the tombs of Japanese pioneers were secured because the plots had caretakers. “If these caretakers die, there are those who replace them and continue maintaining the tombs,” he said.
Arturo Killip, Cepmo engineer, said the tombs of Eusebius Julius Halsema, Baguio’s last American mayor, who died on March 15, 1945, and his wife, Marie Boesel, had become attractions in the cemetery.
Halsema served as Baguio mayor from 1920 to 1937.
Killip said the Baguio government started to use the cemetery along Naguilian Road in 1932 through a presidential proclamation. He said his office had conducted a visual survey to document the number of tombs and the identities of the dead in the public cemetery.
One of the oldest tombs belongs to a certain Abraham (whose family name in the tombstone cannot be read), who died in April 1932. The tomb has cracks and has been neglected. No one visits this tomb, cemetery workers said.
Killip said the survey they made in 2011 showed that the
8.76-hectare cemetery had 19,725 plots. This number must have increased to more than 20,000 because an average of 40 burials a month happen there, he said.