More PH war files not yet accessible

PATRIOTS’ CAMP Filipino guerrillas resting at their camp pose for a photo, one of those found in the Guerrilla Unit Recognition Files (GURF).

(Last of two parts)

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO — The 70-year-old Philippine Archives Collection (PAC) in the US National Archives in Washington, which the Philippine government and private groups began digitizing in 2015, is larger than the reported trove of 1,665 boxes, several of which remain inaccessible, according to a historian.

“Before the PAC was moved from St. Louis [Missouri] to the US National Archives in Maryland, it was even larger than what we have now,” said Ricardo Jose, a history professor at the University of Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City.

“It contained more rosters [that] were used in verifying claims from the Philippines. Some of the correspondence I saw recommended offering several rosters to the Philippine government, but I am not sure if any action was taken. The recommendation also stated that if the offer was refused, these files were to be destroyed,” Jose said.

Some boxes Jose had requested arrived empty. The files, he was told, were being used by a US government agency or were not available due to security classification.

“So what these files contain is unknown,” he said.

Marie Vallejo, who led the Filipino team that digitized the PAC’s Guerrilla Unit Recognition Files (GURF), confirmed Jose’s information.

The exact volume of the PAC could not be determined, she said, because it was likely that the US Army never cataloged it. “The inventory was at folder level, not by piece of paper,” she said.

The files may have been lost, misplaced or misfiled when the documents were moved from the Philippines to Kansas City and St. Louis after World War II, she said. “I was glad these were not burned,” she added.

Inventory

But Ernesto Carolina, Philippine Veterans Affairs Office (PVAO) administrator, said it was more than enough that the agency discovered the existence of the PAC through Vallejo, a daughter of a war veteran.

The PVAO, Carolina said, had no idea how many files are in the US National Archives on World War II in the Philippines.

“We have not communicated a request for an inventory because when I went [in October 2017] some documents were still being groomed in the laboratory so these could endure human handling,” he said. “We are very happy with what is [in the US National Archives] as it is right now.”

Phase 2 of the digitization project, funded by the government-owned Phividec Industrial Authority, has gathered 25,000 photographs, war trial records and US Army Forces in the Far East (Usaffe) files.

The PVAO is sending a team in May to undertake the project’s Phase 3. “We are completing the story,” Carolina said.

The US National Archives and Records Administration hinted only of a problem pertaining to sources and listings.

On its website, it said: “The records in the Philippine Archives Collection originated with a variety of organizations and individuals. Unfortunately, their provenance and any original order were lost when the records were brought together and combined with the records of the Recovered Personnel Division.”

“We digitized what was there to preserve it and bring back,” Vallejo said.

The GURF, made up of 270 boxes with 280,000 records, can be accessed online on the PVAO website.

Primary sources

Jose described the GURF as a “rich source of primary sources,” mainly on the Filipino guerrilla resistance movement against Japan.

The collection would “allow historians now and well into the future to write volumes of histories of specific guerrilla units, and individuals in them.”

Jose, who has gone through the records in the US National Archives, found the PAC important because, he said, it can present a Filipino perspective through the diaries, action reports, maps and intelligence reports written at that time.

“There are also several memoirs written right after the war, some with photographs, which shed much important light on the organization of the guerrillas, anti-Japanese propaganda and intelligence gathering operations,” he said.

A study of the whole collection, Jose said, would allow historians to draw conclusions on a larger scale about the guerrilla resistance movement and how widespread it was. The study would take time because of the size of the collection.

Rewriting war history

Jose said the availability of the GURF, and the PAC as a whole, warrants the rewriting of the Philippine World War II history.

He said the records confirmed guerrilla rivalries through draft agreements between Usaffe guerrillas in Central Luzon and factions of the anti-Japanese Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon (Hukbalahap). The talks broke down.

WAR FILES Staff members of the Philippine Archives Collection scan documents retrieved from the GURF, which are stored in the US National Archives. —MARIE VALLEJO

“Going over the folders in the collection, one also sees an unfortunate underside to the guerrilla claims—some (or many) are outlandish and obviously exaggerated; some guerrilla units claimed victories that were not theirs and belonged to other, recognized units. Recognition of Filipino guerrilla groups, in fact, was hampered by bogus claims,” Jose said.

“The files contain reports of US Army officers (sometimes Filipinos) who investigated the claims. Many of the claims were denied, being exaggerations or bogus,” he added.

“There were some guerrilla units that to me were genuine but were denied [recognition] because of insufficiency of evidence. There were some units [that] lost most of their papers; some of their leaders were captured and killed by the Japanese and thus lacked the supporting papers.”

Patriots

The records spoke highly of Filipino patriots such as Wenceslao Vinzons, Christians, Muslims, “lumad” (indigenous peoples), lowlanders, uplanders, college graduates and people with limited education.

“Not all are represented, however, since some of our patriots (such as the mountain people) were not educated and unable to write their stories. One tragedy I found in the collection was the decision made by American authorities not to grant recognition or backpay to volunteers—their reason being that since they volunteered freely they did not have to be paid,” Jose said.

“Those who were paid were recruited or members of organized guerrilla units following standard military organization. The Banal Regiment of the Huks was the sole Huk unit to be recognized by the Americans, and is well documented in the collection, but other Huk units were considered threats and not recognized,” he said.

Because the rosters of guerrillas are now public, these could help track down grandparents or great-grandparents whose stories have not been told, he said.

Instilling pride

The PAC, he said, should be able to develop a sense of pride in the role of Filipinos in World War II.

“We should write our own history of World War II and the papers in [the] PAC will play a large role in this. It will reinforce our sense of who we are, who our heroes were, and make us more aware of what Filipinos did during the dark years of the Japanese occupation,” he said.

The next step, Carolina said, is to consolidate the PAC together with files in private museums and universities, eventually filling the Philippine Center for World War II Studies on Mt. Samat and making all materials accessible on the internet.

Jose suggested the development of better search engines to ease access to the records.

The PVAO and the National Historical Commission of the Philippines are deemed to be the most appropriate agencies to manage the files. Universities and libraries should have copies for local research.