History: Are we supposed to memorize stuff?

‘The 2017 Siege of Marawi counts among the most high-intensity urban battles of the modern era not only in the Philippines and Southeast Asia but in the world.’

ERNANDO Poe Jr., on his 85th birth anniversary, was cited by the National Commission on Culture and the Arts on Week 4 of National History Month for having played the mythical hero in the Panday series and the action-adventure films adapted from komiks materials (Ang Kampana sa Santa Quiteria, Santo Domingo, Alupihang Dagat), while Marawi Historical Markers were unveiled by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines last 18 August 2024.

The NHCP this month also visited the Maharlika Integrated School in Taguig City to launch the “Karaban ng Kasaysayan para sa Kabataan – Muslim History and Heritage” and has been helping the Bangsamoro Commission for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. But no comparable effort (so far) at the Marawi Heroes Memorial, Libingan ng mga Bayani, Fort Bonifacio, also in Taguig City.

This Marawi Pylon, which was built to honor the 168 soldiers and policemen who died in the longest urban warfare episode in the country’s modern history, can be counted among the “repositories of grief” since it stands in a Philippine national cemetery. It is clearly a salute to the Filipino armed forces and law enforcers who broke the five-month-long terrorist (the ISIS-inspired Maute Group and the ISIS-linked Abu Sayyaf Group) siege of a Mindanao city in 2017. But is it a place for “healing rifts in the communal experience of nationhood?” [https://magazine.art21.org/2017/03/15/the-black-gash-of-shame-revisiting-the-vietnam-veterans-memorial-controversy/]

The 2017 Siege of Marawi counts among the most high-intensity urban battles of the modern era not only in the Philippines and Southeast Asia but in the world. Thus, for National History Month, we are constrained to ask: How does a nation remember its conflicts? How do the heirs of Jose Rizal memorialize the war dead? Will these state-sponsored rituals reinforce the ideal of a shared national identity among the different socio-linguistic groups in the Rizalian Archipelago?

The ongoing Global War on Terror may or may not be an echo of the Global Anti-Fascist War, yet we may find clues and partial answers on the question of War Memorialization and Nation-Building in Southeast Asia from John Lee Candelaria’s August 28 presentation at the UP Manila Area Studies Lecture Series:

1. Internal political dynamics and external geopolitical considerations shape the decisions to sponsor or marginalize war commemoration; the choice of which war to memorialize reveals the direction of the state’s narrative. War experience does not automatically translate to commemoration.
2. Singapore, the Philippines, and Myanmar are among the few Southeast Asian nations with notable public war commemoration of the Pacific War in the region. Pacific War memory is not entirely absent in Thailand but rather silenced and relegated to the background.
3. War was central to the building of the Filipino nation and identity; memorialization of the Pacific War occurred against the backdrop of the Cold War.
4. “Out of the memorial sites established during the two decades of dictatorship under Marcos, the Kiangan National Shrine is an oddity…a nod to local indigenous architecture…(and)…a way to honor the local indigenous fighters who joined the fight that led to Yamashita’s surrender.”
5. “Bataan and Corregidor transformed the memory of defeat into heroism and sacrifice, the Kiangan site celebrated the memory of victory.”

Candelaria’s draft also elicited this review from the President of the Hunters-ROTC Historical Society: “I only read as far as the Philippines chapter since I’m not familiar with the history of Thailand or Singapore. The author tries to contextualize monuments within the active and current historical framework. According to the author, the selection of what is to be memorialized in the past and how it is memorialized is decided by present conditions and personalities. He walks through those conditions: foreign affairs, personal glorification, neocolonialism, political cowardice, opportunism, etc. that affect the memorialization process. He tries to weave a cohesive view of the memorialization process but only arrives at the taxonomy of the different factors. Still, this would be a useful consideration for a future chairman of NHCP or anyone interested in the memorialization of history. A kind of navigational tool.” [Rhett Daza]

Let us add to Candelaria’s findings: Thailand was Axis during WW2, Marshal Plaek Phibunsongkhramchampioned Pan-Thai-ism, and it is the notorious Burma-Siam railway (built by more than 13,000 Commonwealth, Dutch and American prisoners of war as well as 80,000 to 100,000 civilians “chiefly forced labor brought from Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, or conscripted in Siam/Thailand and Burma/Myanmar)” that has been TripAdvisor’s top museum in Thailand. [https://www.cwgc.org/visit-us/find-cemeteries-memorials/cemetery-details/2017100/kanchanaburi-war-cemetery/] [https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/hellfire-pass-thailand-wwii-museum/index.html]

1. “Practices of memorialization contribute to the construction of victimhood and the perception of justice…They may have a healing effect through constructions of shared memories or generate conflicting memories that embody new sources of conflicts.” [Martin Hoondert and Gema Varona, “Practices of Memorialization and the Process of Social Reconstruction,” Oñati Socio-legal Series, June 2020]
2. “Designing memory sites, which are of great importance in terms of spirituality for the societies, by integrating them to urban space in human scales enables keeping memories alive and strengthening memory and has a positive effect on urban identity.” [Ebru Erbas Gurler and Basak Ozer, “The Effects of Public Memorials on Social Memory and Urban Identity,” Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 82 (2013) 858 — 863]
3. And lest we forget, Manila’s Ruby Tower Memorial (peril of poor workmanship, criminal liability, needless tragedy).