Happy Philippine American Friendship Day

The Philippines received it's independence from the USA on July 4, 1946.

However, patriotic Filippinos decided to change their independence day to the day they declared independence from Spain.

So it is not a holiday. And the influential left remains antiAmerican, so there were few celebrations. The left insists that the Philippine suffering in World War II was merely a mouse caught between two elephants fighting. But one suspects that an independent Philippines standing in the way of the oil in the Dutch Indies would have been conquered anyway. Perhaps the third revision of history will allow acknowledgement of heroism without an inferiority complex.

My husband fought with local Filippinos against the Japanese but doesn't talk about it.

Yet today, when we visited his cousins in Munoz (both in their 80's) they had lots of family photos. One was an old brown photo of a young man, with a framed certificate below, signed by Harry Truman, in memory of the young man who died in 1944.
Similarly, when we visited Lolo's classmate in Bohol, she had commissioned a bust of her brother killed in the war, with his GI hat and uniform shirt...she planned to set it on his grave at a ceremony this summer.

One of the TV stations frequently shows a locally made film of this history, but for some reason there seems to be little memory of it, except for a small memorial in our center square...

Perhaps like the memorial a few days ago where the British remembered the Battle of the Somme, and put that heroism into perspective after decades of having the inteligenica ignoring it or ridiculing those who fought so bravely, so to will the poets and historians in the Philippines again learn to tell the story of World War II heroism without shame.
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Update:

Jose Abad Santos is remembered for his Bravery...
(viaBelmontClubBlog)