‘…imagine the islands on the West Philippine Sea belonging to the ochlocratic Republic of the Philippines but currently under alien occupation. What’s it like to be under enemy occupation?’
WE can tackle Jose Rizal’s first trip overseas (Calamba to Barcelona, 01 May-16 June 1882) where his passage to Africa (aboard the Djemnah, 03 June) did lead to interesting observations: “At about 11 or before, the doctors came to disinfect our ship. One of them…brought us the news about the present disturbance in Egypt. The Khedive, according to what I have heard, is a prisoner of the Minister of War Arabi-Bey who, it seems, wants to execute a coup d’état. Everybody, the troops and the youth, seemed to be on the side of this young man who has won the goodwill of all.” What Rizal reported was a slice of the Urabi Revolution, the nationalist uprising (1879-1882) led by Ahmed Urabi Pasha that concluded with the British occupation of Egypt. Was this the young Rizal’s first blush with a bloody anti-colonial struggle? His second diary entry concerned the Suez:
“After going through an agglomeration of houses among dwarfish and rickety trees, we enter the Canal, the work which immortalizes Lesseps {Viscount Ferdinand Marie} and yields incalculable benefits…Here and there can be seen only huts, telegraphic stations, some miserable Arabs, dredges, and little launches with sails which move swiftly through the clear surface of the water…During the navigation, we saw a wretched young man running alongside the ship, picking up pieces of bread which the passengers threw to him. Seeing him run on the sand, go down and pick up eagerly the bread, now going down the river to wrest from the water a piece of biscuit, was enough to sadden the gayest man.”
That scene moved the sensitive 20-year-old Malay Filipino 140 years ago. Real history. Or we can mull over an East Asian hegemon’s Invasion of America: “Like the bombing of Pearl Harbor…the Aleutian Campaign came suddenly when undetected carrier-based Japanese planes bombed United States installations at Dutch Harbor on June 3rd 1942. Three days later, Japanese forces landed on Kiska and Attu, two remote islands in the far western reaches of the Aleutian chain.” To sustain Hirohito’s violation of American sovereignty, the Japanese naval imperialists established a “submarine base, sea plane base, and protected anchorage for ships at Kiska Harbor while the Japanese Army garrisoned 3,500 men on its base at the head of Gertrude Cove…also heavily fortified the island with an impressive array of anti-aircraft weapons.”
[https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/18kiska/background/history/history.html]
That was 80 years ago. Now imagine the islands on the West Philippine Sea belonging to the ochlocratic Republic of the Philippines but currently under alien occupation. What’s it like to be under enemy occupation? One vignette: “People are angry at Filipino high officials. Why don’t they make strong representations with the Japanese authorities? Why don’t they say bluntly, frankly, sternly that if as the Japanese claim, they are our ‘liberators,’ then why don’t they free our sons and brothers and fathers and friends from the concentration camp? My wife’s cousin broke into the house late last night with tears in his eyes. He received a crumpled sheet of paper from his son in camp. The boy was asking his father for medicine. He was very ill. My wife’s cousin wanted to find out if I could secure a permit to bring medicine for his son. ‘Surely,’ he said, ‘there is nothing wrong in sending medicine to a dying son.’ I brought him to Mrs. Vargas. She will try to use her influence. But maybe, it will be too late. I feel it in my bones.”
[https://philippinediaryproject.com/1942/06/02/june-2-1942-2/; Diary of Victor Buencamino, June 2, 1942. “More deaths in O’Donnell”]
History so real. How about Operation Anthropoid (Czechoslovakia’s greatest resistance story)? “On May 27, 1942 the UK-trained Czechoslovak paratroopers Jozef GabÄík and Jan KubiÅ¡ carried out one of the most daring moves of WWII, the assassination in Prague of the Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich…GabÄík was Slovak. It was the most important operation of the resistance, but not just the Czech resistance — also the Slovak resistance.” [https://english.radio.cz/slew-events-marking-anthropoid-anniversary-friday-8751541]
“Operation Anthropoid was the only successful government-organized assassination of a top-ranking Nazi official.” And on the occasion of its 80th anniversary (Nikdy se nevzdáme!
We Will Never Give Up), the Slovak president (Zuzana ÄŒaputová) joined Czech officials (Vít RakuÅ¡an, Markéta Pekarová Adamová, etc.) commemorating the heroism of the ordinary Czechoslovakians who helped the paratroopers. [https://english.radio.cz/anthropoid-czechoslovakias-greatest-resistance-story-8751531]
Heydrich’s martial law was a result of the Munich Agreement, known in Czechoslovakia as the Munich Betrayal, and his execution proved to the world the efficacy of the Allied cause and the anti-Nazi resistance movement. Sic semper tyrannis: Eradicate Hitlerism!
