Granddaddy would save his food and pass it through the bars to his daughter-in-law and granddaughter. He wrapped it in banana leaves. They ate the food. They ate the banana leaves. He would look at little barefoot Elena in disbelief — an angel shot out of the sky and stuck in hell. He would say, “Any news on Richard?” And my grandmother, with her hard, Spanish mouth and sad eyes, would simply shake her head. Granddaddy would watch them leave as they made their way back to the church. She was a brave woman, he thought, with a faith he envied in a God he didn’t understand. “Elena and I are safe,” she said. “We’re sleeping under the altar.”
5. Uncle John
One day, an American soldier named John Hachey was wandering through the old city carrying some important piece of paper, and a little boy ran up to him and begged him not to bomb the church because it was full of civilians. John Hachey ran through the streets like he’d never run before, his heart pounding and tears streaming down his face, and he reached the man with the maps and the authority and told him, “Don’t bomb the church!” Who would believe that John Hachey — with his southern accent and thinning blond hair that stood up like a wheat field — would return to Maryland and have a daughter named Mary, and that this woman would marry my Uncle Jappy?
6. Uncle Jappy
My Uncle Jappy survived the war, got a degree in medicine (Santo Tomas ’56), moved to the U.S., and began introducing himself as “Carlos.” I knew him as Uncle Jappy. The more Spanish-influenced in the family called him Tito ’appy. He was not Japanese, nor was he a collaborator, being a mere five years of age when the war started and hardly a man when it finished. His only guilt was in his genes, which expressed the Chinese blood of my family to a startling degree — he could have passed, perhaps, for Japanese. I cannot explain why the family thought it was a joke to call him Jappy during the war, and even more difficult to explain why they used that appellation with all the love and affection implied by nicknames when the war was over. We called him Jappy until the day he died, which was long after his father and brother had left this earth, escorted into the afterlife by the Japanese.
7. Lolo Richard and Fernando
My grandfather and Fernando, my uncle, lived out their lives in Fort Santiago. Who knows what happened? The records are murky. In fact, we only knew that they were in there because someone saw them. How could anyone see them? So many collaborators in those days of hopelessness. Our city, their war. Survival is easy to justify. My Aunt Elena was then two. She’d made it out to the province where the rest of her siblings were crashing around, wondering when they’d have to go back to school. The story goes something like this: Everyone was in the dining room eating and Elena decided that she needed to pee, although her mother did not have time to attend to her. She got left in the bathroom for quite a while. When my grandmother finally got around to getting her cleaned up, Elena informed her that a man had come to visit her. He just stood there smiling and Elena was not afraid, even though she didn’t know who he was. He was wearing khaki pants and a jacket made out of similar stuff. He looked like her brother Jorge, only older, a lot older. He had just kind of disappeared and not through the doorway. That’s how my family found out that my grandfather, Lolo Richard, was dead. There is no way of knowing how much time he and his son were incarcerated.
I imagine my grandfather with his arm around his son, holding him close, while young Fernando’s heavy eyes looked to him for an answer. “The general said he was coming back” is all that he can say. He wonders if his wife is all right, whether her obstinacy has worked for or against her. He wonders if his father is still alive and prays that the other six children have made it out to the province.
8. Uncle Lou
Uncle Lou and Uncle Jorge escaped Manila in a truckful of Japanese soldiers headed for Cabanatuan. At first they were confused by the generosity, but after a soldier insisted that they were to stand at the back of the truck and stay visible, they saw that they had earned the ride. Two mestizo teenagers were more than a good-luck charm against guerrilla attacks and American snipers. Cabanatuan was where the Americans who weren’t at Santo Tomas were imprisoned. Gapan, the town where the family kept the provincial home, was less than ten miles away.
My Uncle Lou worships MacArthur. My Uncle Lou thinks he’s a hero. Uncle Lou left the Philippines for the land of MacArthur shortly after the war. Granddaddy took him on a ship away from his country, just as he’d taken him from my grandparents’ house when he was a baby, determined to make him as American as he had once been. Granddaddy returned to Manila. Uncle Lou never did. He joined the all-new American air force. He married his blond, blue-eyed sweetheart. He joined the John Birch Society. He ran for congressman on the Libertarian ticket. He’s so American that I — who am half American — cannot comprehend him. “MacArthur,” says Uncle Lou, “defines glory.” As far as I’m concerned, “glory” is “gory” with an l.
MacArthur’s at the battle of Bataan facing fully armed Japanese troops, gets all the Filipinos together — most of whom are farmers and don’t even have shoes — arms them with sticks, tells them to go into battle and then gets mad when they break rank. Some didn’t break rank and that was a far greater bungle. Bravery and stupidity are not the same thing. I have another theory — Americans pronounce “Bah-tah-ahn” as “B’tan,” which sounds completely different. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the Filipinos got confused and went somewhere else.
9. Tio Jack
If they did, they were lucky. My great-uncle Tio Jack (Joaquim was his real name) was in the wrong place at the wrong time and soon found himself being marched north with a bunch of American GIs. This stroll through the countryside is now known as the Bataan Death March. I’ll bet they were cursing MacArthur, imagining the Aussie steaks and fried eggs he had for breakfast every morning. Survival was improbable. A man stooping to sip water from a dirty puddle usually found himself face down in it and on his way to the afterlife. The only choices that presented themselves seemed to be modes of death: shot in the head, dehydration, decapitation, or starvation — you make the call. Dizzied with sickness and exhaustion the prisoners made their way, teetering a hundred miles along the edge of the grave. My Tio Jack somehow managed to sneak away. He lay down hidden in a boat and some villagers, with little thought of their own lives, managed to secrete him away. In later years as Tio Jack — a jovial octogenarian — recounted the tale, he would say, “Others escaped. They learned the Japanese were crazy about staying clean. They threw you know, you know, you know at the guards.” In my family, three “you knows” means shit. “So these GIs just pitch it at them, and the Japanese, who would take a grenade in the face for the emperor, go running and screaming. You should have seen it, it was so damn funny.” Tio Jack was a great man. He could tell you about the Bataan Death March and make it funny. All of his stories were funny, even though half of them weren’t.
10. Benito