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“War, war’s stupid, and people are stupid....”
—Culture Club
BELIEVE
it or not, we have a war museum. Tucked in the heart of
Taguig City is the 10-year-old Veteran’s Foundation of
the Philippines (VFP) Museum. For easy recall, it is
simply called the
War Museum.
Besides the glass-encased pieces of ammunition that date
back to World War I, it houses a gallery of tableaus
that retells the stories of Filipino soldiers during
World War II.
At the
library, besides books and documents on anything about
wars involving the Philippines, there are also original
copies of newspapers whose headlines read “Japanese
Forces Invade Manila” and “Manila is Open City.”
Our tour
guide, whom we shall hide under the name “Remy,”
seriously asked us, “O, baka may editor ka na
nagsusulat na ng mga panahong ito? Why don’t you
leaf through the pages of history, hijo?”
We did
as we were told, but we came across no familiar names,
and we said, “Maybe they were just doing the campus
paper then, or in grade school at the time learning
their ABCs.”
If
memory serves us right, we’ve had some former bosses who
covered the wars in Vietnam and Korea, but not the
Bataan Death March or the return of Gen. Douglas
MacArthur in Leyte. We can easily recall a senior
reporter who covered the Ninoy Aquino assassination;
then again, that’s from another kind of war that
continues to haunt us till now.
A MACHINEGUN older than
your grandfather.
At any
rate, the
War Museum also has
exhibits of photographs that chronicle the involvement
of Filipino soldiers in wars beyond 1945 that involved
our neighboring countries in
Southeast Asia.
Highlights include the Philippine Expeditionary Force to
Korea (Peftok), which involved two major figures in our
history, Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. and former President
Fidel Ramos. Then a young journalist, Aquino covered the
Korean War while Ramos was a second lieutenant infantry
platoon leader to Peftok.
Now,
going back to the gallery of tableaus, we were treated
to important battles that we might have missed in our
college textbooks. For example, we learned there was a
pocket war, called The Battle of Ipo Dam, which took
place on May 17, 1945.
This
happened two months after the Liberation of Manila on
February 23, 1945, by the United States Armed Forces in
the
Far East (Usaffe), which, we all know, was under the command of
the Gen. MacArthur.
And down
south, we have a hero who fought the Japanese. Leading
the Filipino-Muslim soldiers, Abdulrahmin Imao was the
man behind the sea ambush in Giasi in Sulu on
February 8, 1945.
A TABLEAU on Trinidad Diaz,
one of the unsung heroes of WWII.
As if
capping all the World War II highlights, there’s a mural
on the signing of documents attesting the surrender of
Japan to the Allied Forces, done at the USS Missouri in
Tokyo Bay
on September 2, 1945. A copy of the actual document,
titled “Instrument of Surrender,” is also on display.
These
are some of the many important events in our war history
that you can’t google on any given day, for the simple
reason that the accounts—in the tableaus, in the
mural—come from firsthand sources: the pioneering
members of the VFP. Let’s just say the Filipino soldiers
in those tableaus survived long enough to help in the
planning and design of the museum.
“Through
the museum, we want to tell the nation and our youth the
story of the war guerrillas. We want to tell them that
during our time, we could not enjoy the movies or
watching TV or whiling our time away in malls like most
of the youth today. We were out in the trenches and the
frontlines fighting a war for our country,” said Col.
Emmanuel de Ocampo, VFP chairman.
He added
that besides the true-to-life stories preserved in the
tableaus, the museum was established through voluntary
contributions from the veterans. Since then, the museum
has been run by the Board of Trustees for the Veterans
of World War II (BTVWWII). The funds come from
Philippine Veterans Bank, by which provides 20 percent
of its net profit each year to BTVWWII.
HE RETURNED,
Gen. Douglas
MacArthur giving instructions to one of his generals.
Besides
the library and the actual museum, there’s also a
theater that can seat 300 people. Though it is in a
museum, it doesn’t follow that it also has museum-worthy
equipment. The theater has new cushioned seats and a
brand-new 35-mm projector.
De
Ocampo said busloads of students frequent the museum as
part of their tour, but most of the time, there are no
visitors, especially during school break.
He
invites everyone to make time for it. “It won’t take
much of your day. Even before you go to the malls, you
can just drop by and have an idea how your forefathers
fought in and survived the war.”
And, if
we may add, enjoy the freedom we usually take for
granted or abuse.
***For guided tours, please call the VFP Museum at
838-9148 or the office of Miguel Angelo Villa-real of
Philippine Veterans Bank at 751-8578, telefax 751-8577. |
