11/05/2007
The Quonset Hut
First Published on November 5, 2007
My earliest recollection of my childhood was lying on a banig with my parents in theit bedroom which had no bed. We were staying in one of those Quonset huts the G.I.s left as their troops moved on. This Quonset stood at the property of my grandmother so we all moved out of the barber shop and lived in this military innovation,
Next to the Quonset hut was a vacant lot owned by the parish. It became the stockyard of my father’s surplus G.I. sheets. Although he continued to ran the barber shop, There was an extension to the hut which was rented out to a Chinese named Vicente who ran a sari-sari store. One of my aunts raised orchids and some florist bought her mariposas and cattleyas. Another aunt sold rice while the eldest worked in Chinatown for a big hardware store.
Outside, right beside the door was a guava tree. It must have been just after liberation as I recall we would have family get togethers at the living room and it seems to me that my aunts and their guests were all sitting on the floor. I can’t recall whether the piano stayed at barber shop extension or brought to the Quonset.
The time must have been after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and I must have been at least three years old. One evening, a rocket flew of the sky and ended with a loud bang. It turned out that some scavengers found this bomb by the river and accidentally detonated it. A few blocks away, there was a big yard filled with surplus war materials, mostly jeeps and trucks.
While Manila was putting away the remnants of war, the "Noble and Ever Loyal City". will never be the same. A certain sadness lingers in my heart.
Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick
First Published on September 7, 2008“
Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far,” says Theodore Roosevelt quoting from what he claims to be a West African proverb. The big stick policy has become a mark of American foreign policy. It must have been this policy that prompted the Americans to launch the Manhattan Project fifty years later.
The secret project led to the Atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki three days after, leaving the Japanese with no choice but to surrender. The word “atomic” became a word we children used naively unaware of the terror it created on the Japanese. Perchance the first atomic bombs could have been appropriately named “Speak Softly” instead of “Little Boy” and “Big Stick” rather than “Fat Man”.
Japanese envoys boarded the the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay in the morning of September 2, 1945 to sign the surrender document. Within half-an-hour of the signing ceremonies, 42 US ships entered Tokyo Bay and landed 13,000 American troops. General Douglas MacArthur said that the occupying force will be rapidly increased to about 500,000. That was the same fashion the United States colonized the Philipines half a century earlier with General Wesley Meritt landing in Manila with a contingent of 12,000 officers and men.
Far from mere rhetoric, Teddy Roosevelt’s “Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far,” has been a guiding principle in American diplomatic relations. The American president William McKinley that annexed the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico. Theodore Roosevelt succeeded McKinley after the latter was assassinated in 1901. It seems that the big stick policy antedates Roosevelt’s presidency. There were attempts to trace Roosevelt’s claim that the adage “Speak softly…” is of South African origin. The results were negative. Can it be that the American president merely coined it to justify America’s pragmatic diplomacy?
Victory Joe
First Published on October 19, 2007
“Joe” gestured with Winston Churchill's victory sign, became a common banter among Filipinos when dealing with American soldiers. Kids yelled “Hey Joe“, “Chocolate Joe“ and “Victory Joe“ when an American serviceman passes by. Jose Hernandez, rode on the popularity of the phrase “Victory Joe” and named his enterprise Victory Liner.
Filipinas who went around with American G.I.s were considered “hanggang pier” which inspired the movie “Victory Joe” where two military officers, an American (Art Cantrell), and a Filipino (Rogelio De la Rosa) vie for the love of a pretty provincial girl (Norma Blancaflor).
My father bought a big drum of petroleum jelly pilfered from military supplies by some enterprising G.I. Joe. My parents repacked the stuff in small, added a drop of fragrance, placed a sign “Pomade – 50 centavos” outside the shop and made good business from civilians commuting to and from the north of the river.
This was the time of rebuilding, not only the ruins left by the indiscriminate bombardment, but of lives that the war interrupted. Milky Way chocolates, Chesterfield cigarettes and Corned Beef overflowed and Filipinos took this as the start of the good life. White Label and White Horse were plentiful and so were other merchandise available from the PX. Father made good in trading surplus materials and was able to buy a lot from Mr. Tuazon, his friend from Sampaloc who shared his passion for automobiles.
I really have no recollection of all these things except the empty drum of petrolatum at our backyard. The image is still clear to me: my father frugally scraping the dregs from the sides of that drum. He sold so many jars of pomade from that drum.
G.I.s
First Published on October 29, 2007
My mother paid all the installments on her piano with Japanese Occupation currency which eventually had no value except as a collector’s item. In place of the Japanese customers, the American G.I.s patronized the barber shop paying in Victory Money.
One of these soldiers was Herman Kesting from Bellingham, Minnesota who became a friend of my parents and after the war, sent me letters and Christmas gifts from the states. He was my childhood champion My personal impression of Americans has been favorably influenced by the gracious manifestation of this fine gentleman, an image similar to what Audie Murphy portrayed in “To Hell and Back.”
Perhaps my father was jealous to see his son hero worship somebody else when he said “That G. I. has always been on the tail end of the war.” This did not dent my adulation of Herman Kesting. Many of my father’s friends were Americans, but the words stuck.
G.I. is a term that has been identified with members of the U.S. armed forces. People believe that this came from the term "Government Issue" which labeled many military provisions but in fact the origin is from the term “galvanized iron”.
Eventually, I came to realize that G.I.s came in different sizes, shapes and characters. My father made the acquaintance of Harry Stonehill at the Polo Club. This one was a U.S. Army Lieutenant who decided to stay in the Philippines after the war. He went into business from army surplus to cigarettes and put up the US Tobacco Corporation. Stonehill brought tobacco seeds from America and began growing Virginia tobacco, built flue-curing barns in La Union and Pangasinan, and became the most successful American businessman in the Philippines. He was later accused of illegal importation of cigarette paper into the country, declaring the shipments as "school supplies," and manufacturing cigarettes illegally.
Another G.I. who made good was William Bird who organized Philippine Rock Products which was engaged in transit mixed concrete and construction. He started making driveways for residences and pavements for gasoline stations, using a “one bagger” concrete mixer. He made good when Philrock started getting contracts in the American bases, presumably owing his military connections. Bird started to build up on construction equipment and transit mixed concrete trucks which he got from the bases. Bird built a reputation of having the cleanest mixers on the road, a tradition that his company kept even after he sold the company and moved to Thailand where he organized Bird & Sons.
The Quonset Hut
First Published on November 5, 2007
My earliest recollection of my childhood was lying on a banig with my parents in theit bedroom which had no bed. We were staying in one of those Quonset huts the G.I.s left as their troops moved on. This Quonset stood at the property of my grandmother so we all moved out of the barber shop and lived in this military innovation,
Next to the Quonset hut was a vacant lot owned by the parish. It became the stockyard of my father’s surplus G.I. sheets. Although he continued to ran the barber shop, There was an extension to the hut which was rented out to a Chinese named Vicente who ran a sari-sari store. One of my aunts raised orchids and some florist bought her mariposas and cattleyas. Another aunt sold rice while the eldest worked in Chinatown for a big hardware store.
Outside, right beside the door was a guava tree. It must have been just after liberation as I recall we would have family get togethers at the living room and it seems to me that my aunts and their guests were all sitting on the floor. I can’t recall whether the piano stayed at barber shop extension or brought to the Quonset.
The time must have been after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and I must have been at least three years old. One evening, a rocket flew of the sky and ended with a loud bang. It turned out that some scavengers found this bomb by the river and accidentally detonated it. A few blocks away, there was a big yard filled with surplus war materials, mostly jeeps and trucks.
While Manila was putting away the remnants of war, the "Noble and Ever Loyal City". will never be the same. A certain sadness lingers in my heart.
Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick
First Published on September 7, 2008“
Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far,” says Theodore Roosevelt quoting from what he claims to be a West African proverb. The big stick policy has become a mark of American foreign policy. It must have been this policy that prompted the Americans to launch the Manhattan Project fifty years later.
The secret project led to the Atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki three days after, leaving the Japanese with no choice but to surrender. The word “atomic” became a word we children used naively unaware of the terror it created on the Japanese. Perchance the first atomic bombs could have been appropriately named “Speak Softly” instead of “Little Boy” and “Big Stick” rather than “Fat Man”.
Japanese envoys boarded the the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay in the morning of September 2, 1945 to sign the surrender document. Within half-an-hour of the signing ceremonies, 42 US ships entered Tokyo Bay and landed 13,000 American troops. General Douglas MacArthur said that the occupying force will be rapidly increased to about 500,000. That was the same fashion the United States colonized the Philipines half a century earlier with General Wesley Meritt landing in Manila with a contingent of 12,000 officers and men.
Far from mere rhetoric, Teddy Roosevelt’s “Speak softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far,” has been a guiding principle in American diplomatic relations. The American president William McKinley that annexed the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico. Theodore Roosevelt succeeded McKinley after the latter was assassinated in 1901. It seems that the big stick policy antedates Roosevelt’s presidency. There were attempts to trace Roosevelt’s claim that the adage “Speak softly…” is of South African origin. The results were negative. Can it be that the American president merely coined it to justify America’s pragmatic diplomacy?
Victory Joe
First Published on October 19, 2007
“Joe” gestured with Winston Churchill's victory sign, became a common banter among Filipinos when dealing with American soldiers. Kids yelled “Hey Joe“, “Chocolate Joe“ and “Victory Joe“ when an American serviceman passes by. Jose Hernandez, rode on the popularity of the phrase “Victory Joe” and named his enterprise Victory Liner.
Filipinas who went around with American G.I.s were considered “hanggang pier” which inspired the movie “Victory Joe” where two military officers, an American (Art Cantrell), and a Filipino (Rogelio De la Rosa) vie for the love of a pretty provincial girl (Norma Blancaflor).
My father bought a big drum of petroleum jelly pilfered from military supplies by some enterprising G.I. Joe. My parents repacked the stuff in small, added a drop of fragrance, placed a sign “Pomade – 50 centavos” outside the shop and made good business from civilians commuting to and from the north of the river.
This was the time of rebuilding, not only the ruins left by the indiscriminate bombardment, but of lives that the war interrupted. Milky Way chocolates, Chesterfield cigarettes and Corned Beef overflowed and Filipinos took this as the start of the good life. White Label and White Horse were plentiful and so were other merchandise available from the PX. Father made good in trading surplus materials and was able to buy a lot from Mr. Tuazon, his friend from Sampaloc who shared his passion for automobiles.
I really have no recollection of all these things except the empty drum of petrolatum at our backyard. The image is still clear to me: my father frugally scraping the dregs from the sides of that drum. He sold so many jars of pomade from that drum.
G.I.s
First Published on October 29, 2007
My mother paid all the installments on her piano with Japanese Occupation currency which eventually had no value except as a collector’s item. In place of the Japanese customers, the American G.I.s patronized the barber shop paying in Victory Money.
One of these soldiers was Herman Kesting from Bellingham, Minnesota who became a friend of my parents and after the war, sent me letters and Christmas gifts from the states. He was my childhood champion My personal impression of Americans has been favorably influenced by the gracious manifestation of this fine gentleman, an image similar to what Audie Murphy portrayed in “To Hell and Back.”
Perhaps my father was jealous to see his son hero worship somebody else when he said “That G. I. has always been on the tail end of the war.” This did not dent my adulation of Herman Kesting. Many of my father’s friends were Americans, but the words stuck.
G.I. is a term that has been identified with members of the U.S. armed forces. People believe that this came from the term "Government Issue" which labeled many military provisions but in fact the origin is from the term “galvanized iron”.
Eventually, I came to realize that G.I.s came in different sizes, shapes and characters. My father made the acquaintance of Harry Stonehill at the Polo Club. This one was a U.S. Army Lieutenant who decided to stay in the Philippines after the war. He went into business from army surplus to cigarettes and put up the US Tobacco Corporation. Stonehill brought tobacco seeds from America and began growing Virginia tobacco, built flue-curing barns in La Union and Pangasinan, and became the most successful American businessman in the Philippines. He was later accused of illegal importation of cigarette paper into the country, declaring the shipments as "school supplies," and manufacturing cigarettes illegally.
Another G.I. who made good was William Bird who organized Philippine Rock Products which was engaged in transit mixed concrete and construction. He started making driveways for residences and pavements for gasoline stations, using a “one bagger” concrete mixer. He made good when Philrock started getting contracts in the American bases, presumably owing his military connections. Bird started to build up on construction equipment and transit mixed concrete trucks which he got from the bases. Bird built a reputation of having the cleanest mixers on the road, a tradition that his company kept even after he sold the company and moved to Thailand where he organized Bird & Sons.
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