MY AMERICAN TEACHERS

Bonifacio P. Sibayan (contributed in Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People, Vol. 6:
Under Stars and Stripes, 1999, pg. 236-237)

I was in grade school in the early 1920s in Bakun, Benguet, when I saw my first American.
John C. Early was governor and superintendent of schools of the Mountain Province when he visited
our cogon-roofed school. He did not observe the teacher, but asked us children one by one to recite
a poem, sing a song, read from a book, or write our names on the blackboard. I remember singing “I
have two hands….” Then he inspected the school garden, the toilets, and left on his army mule.

In the secondary normal school at Teachers Camp in Baguio City, where I studied to become
an elementary school teacher, three American ladies taught English: Miss Woodward taught
grammar, composition, and Longfellow’s Evangeline; Mrs. Mamie Lautzenhizer, a motherly lady,
taught Sohrab and Rustom in second year and Silas Marner and The Merchant of Venice in third
year. Mrs. Wilhelmina Monto, who taught grammar and composition, was particular about
pronunciation and theme writing.

Those teachers must have succeeded, for in 1927 some of the best work of Filipino writers in
English were put together by the Bureau of Education under Director Luther B. Bewley in a volume,
Philippine Prose and Poetry, for use in high school first year classes. A second volume was later
published for the second year.

After completing my course in 1933, I was assigned as Grade I and II teacher in Karao Barrio
School in Bokod, Benguet. The American superintendent, Alexander Monto, visited me in October,
arriving before classes started. He inspected the school garden and toilets and later came into the
schoolroom. He sat in the teacher’s chair at the back of the room. Mr. Pawid, supervising teacher,
told me to send the pupils to Mr. Monto one at a time. Monto asked them to write their names,
read from a book, recite a poem or sing a song, do arithmetic operations. I went on with class, but
Monto completely ignored my teaching.

When he finished his examinations at noontime, he called for me and showed me the school
register. “Here, Mr. Sibayan, are what I found about each pupil.” Opposite each name were his
notes: some first grade pupils could not read; some did not know their arithmetic; a few were good,
etc.

“It is now the middle of October, Mr. Sibayan. Sometime in February next year, Mr. Pawid
will come to check on the progress of all your pupils. Don’t worry. I think you are doing fine.” We
shook hands and they left. In retrospect that was the best supervision I ever had as a classroom
teacher.

Orville A. Babcock, on the other hand, went around observing classes, taking profuse notes.
He returned to his office in Baguio City and sent detailed observations of both teachers and pupils to
the Filipino supervising teacher, who circulated them. Typical observations were: “The teacher of
Grade V and VII in Tublay Central School talked over the heads of his pupils.” “The Teacher of Grades
III and IV in Kapangan Central School [I was that teacher] and… of Grades I and II in Datakan Barrio
School obviously practiced the lessons with pupils before my visit.”

Babcock’s observation that teachers rehearsed their lessons when they knew supervisors
would be visiting, was common practice then. This was especially true when teachers learned that a
“terror” (Babcock had that reputation) was visiting classes.
 In 1925, when an extensive study was made to evaluate the educational system, only a little
more than 300 American teachers were left in the Philippines. By 1940, only 97 were left. The
influence of American teachers and education, however, was so strong that educational practices
and teaching methods were said to mirror the American.

The schools’ “bible,” which all teachers, supervisors and administrators had to read, and
classroom teachers discussed at teachers’ meetings, was the Service Manual (1927). It contained
regulations to be observed by all—from how teachers should dress, to how to address letters to
superiors. Male teachers were to wear jacket and tie at all times, except when supervising physical
education and gardening. Teachers were not to leave their stations even at the end of the week
without official permission from superiors. When a superior officer conferred with a teacher of the
opposite sex, the office door was to be left open.

Learning to speak, read, and write English, the only language allowed in classroom and
school premises until November 1939, was a must. Pupils were made to memorize and recite
poems, retell and dramatize stories, and memorize such maxims as “If at first you don’t succeed, try,
try (sic) again.” “A stitch in time saves time” was committed to memory, even though pupils did not
fully understand what it meant. Those Americans and the Filipino teachers they taught had faith that
someday, when the children grew up, they would benefit from the maxim’s full meaning. Their faith
was not misplaced in my case.

Certain books were found in all classrooms all over the Philippines. One of the most
ubiquitous was the abridged Webster’s dictionary especially published for use in Philippine schools.
There were supplementary readers in addition to basic. The Philippine Readers, popularly known as
Osias Readers, became classics of Philippine education, recalled with nostalgia by students of the
1920s and 1930s.

The science and art of classroom teaching were shown in demonstration lessons. The best
teachers showed new teaching methods in actual classroom situations. They (unlike today’s so-
called master teachers) received no additional pay for their expertise.

Teachers improved themselves professionally in Saturday classes under the principal

teacher. These were held at the end of the month, coinciding with payday. No classes were ever
dismissed for these or other teachers’ meetings, so no class time was ever taken from the pupil.

In the former Philippine Normal School of the late 1930s, all provinces were represented by
quotas of bright students. It was truly a national school. The superintendent was Roy K. Gilmore, an
American. Discipline was so strict that I was once suspended from classes for a day because Lenora
Jones, our English teacher, caught me with my shirt collar open and my necktie loose in the hot
weather. A “silence bell” required to stand still until the bell rang again for entering classrooms or
moving on. All students had to have personal copies of required textbooks, which the instructor
initialled on the page with the last two digits of the current academic year, so that no other student
could present the same book.

During this period, Americans performed and delivered. Hired in the U.S. for duties in the
Philippines, some late became supervisors and administrators. There were no such things as
consultants.

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 A SORROWFUL SURVIVAL

Lourdes Reyes Montinola (contributed in Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People, Vol.
7: The Japanese Occupation, 1998, pg. 290-291)

We had four Christmases during those dark days of the war. The first was a nightmare—a
sudden realization that my family’s secure world was going to pieces.

At first the war seemed an exciting novelty to us children, a welcome interruption to

examinations. On December 8, 1941, feast of the Immaculate Conception, we were on our way to
church when news of bombing of Pearl Harbor came. That same evening a piercing siren warned us
of an aerial attack—the first of hundreds we were to experience. We crouched in fear, rosaries in
hand, as the enemy dropped the first bombs, and our defenders fired anti-aircraft guns.

Despite the frightening first raid, the blackouts, bombs, and dogfights were thrilling. We
cheered for our pilots, and sometimes waved at them when they flew low. Our air raid shelter, our
library shielded by piles of sandbags, was a dream playhouse. There we children, and by Christmas
time many others, took shelter, as more relatives and friends joined us at Father’s invitation.

That year we had no Christmas tree, Santa Claus, midnight mass, or noche Buena. The men
were glued to the shortwave radio. We were sure that America was almighty and that we would win
the war.

We remained unaware of impending tragedy until the day Manila was declared an open city.
We did not realized how bad things were going to be until we saw enemy soldiers, carrying white
flags with the red sun, passing slowly through Taft Avenue. Father, Mother, and all their friends
wept.

There was initially much optimism. But the army consisted mostly of untrained young men
who fought bravely in Bataan and Corregidor, and had to survive the Death March. Many did not
return. After General MacArthur’s flight to Australia and the fall of Bataan and Corregidor, even we
children knew the war was not going to be a picnic.

Soon after, our house was commandeered by the Japanese, as were many other residences
on Vito Cruz and Taft Avenue. We transferred to a small chalet in another neighbourhood. Our
classes resumed; this time everyone had to take Nippongo lessons. Most people survived by buying
and selling. Father was not made for this; teaching and the accounting profession were his life. As
the war progressed, my parents must have sold one property after another.

We clung to every bit of news that gave comfort, but Christmas of ’42 swung between
disillusionment and hope. Father started writing a book on accounting. We children kept busy with
school and other lessons. Judging by the increasing number of beggars roaming the city and the
looters victimizing homes, people were having a harder time surviving.

Imported items had long ago disappeared from the groceries. Even local goods had to be
purchased with bushels of Mickey Mouse money. Christmas of ’43 was a beggar’s Christmas. The
enemy had taken the best from our land—our home, our food, and even our people. Thousands had
disappeared into that chamber of horrors, Fort Santiago. Father was depressed by the setbacks of
the underground movement, and seeing his former colleagues having difficulty coping with the
tremendous cost of living. Those who had gone to the provinces wrote about the atrocious cost of
food.

Many were beginning to lose hope, when faith in final victory was revived as news filtered in
the resumption of activities in the Philippine are. The great day came on September 21, 1944, when
air attacks started against the Japanese military installations in Manila. The bombings intensified in
October, and news spread that General MacArthur had landed in Leyte.

Christmas of 1944 was last before the liberation of Manila. The Japanese, having retreated
to Baguio, seemed to have left the city wide open for the American forces’ entry. About January 2
our old house was abandoned, and Father and I walked from Paco to reclaim it before looters could
descend on it. On January 8, a note from a guerrilla cousin confirmed the Americans’ advance. His
messenger picked up some funds from Father; he asked for more, as the American arrival was
drawing near.

It was a beautiful month of rekindled hopes, despite fearful nights spent barricading
ourselves from looters, and the realization that many Japanese were still in the city. Soon, the sights
of battle resumed. As the fighting escalated, we lived from day to day, sustained only by prayers. We
imagined a triumphant entry of liberators, with a host of welcoming civilians, but this was not to be.

Gunfire reverberated all over the city. On February 3, 1945, the sunset was particularly
resplendent as we watched it from the tower of our house, facing Manila Bay. By evening, however,
towards the north where the sounds came from, the sky glowed the same vermillion. Thick clouds of
smoke blew up against the clear night—higher and higher. The fighting echoed louder and louder,
and the fires increased, darkening the days and brightening the nights.

February 8, and still the liberators had not reached us, but fires continued to roar
dangerously near. Then from our tower, Father and I saw the unbelievable—groups of soldiers
emerging from a house in the neighbourhood, carrying torches. In moments the house burst into
flames, and we heard screaming. On the afternoon of the ninth, someone warned us that that night
it would be our turn to be attacked. We had nowhere to go but the huge air raid shelters in our
garden.

Father ordered an early supper, but the Japanese soldiers came too soon. Only a gunshot, a
dog’s howling, and the trampling of boots announced their arrival. We were all in the vestibule,
including Mother, who had witnessed the shooting from her balcony, and run downstairs to warn us.
Father gathered us around him—an uncle, aunt, their son Edgar; my mother, my sister, my brothers;
five other members of the household. Father had time to say only “Be brave,” before ten Japanese
soldiers came barging in, bayonets gleaming, (with) sneers on their faces. Mother protested weakly,
“We’re only civilians.”

U.S. Army records confirm that an estimated 100,000 people—out of a population of one
million—died in Manila when 16,000 Japanese troops put the city to the torch and embarked “on an
orgy of murder, rape and atrocities.” A Japanese Battalion Order dated February 13 made official
what had already happened in our house on February 9: “When Filipinos are to be killed, they must
be gathered in one place, and disposed of with the consideration that ammunition and manpower
must not be used to excess. Because the disposal is a troublesome task they should be gathered into
houses…scheduled to be burned or demolished. They should also be thrown into the river.”
 The Americans had liberated the north side of Manila on February 3. Georgia Peach, the
tank that crashed into our iron gate and ran over it to enter our driveway, came only on February 14,
too late for our family to welcome the victors. Only I had survived.

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THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT MAGSAYSAY

J.V. CRUZ (Contributed in Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People Vol. 8: Up from the
Ashes, 1998, pg. 240-241)

At about seven o’clock in the morning of March 17, 1957, we were walking up the stairs of
Malacanang Palace to the private quarters, to deliver a message of potential horror and tragedy to
the family of President Ramon Magsaysay. The message was that his airplane, bringing him home to
Manila from Cebu City, where he had been guest of honor and speaker at three commencement
exercises, was nearly two hours overdue in Manila, could not be located, and was missing. Two
hours earlier we had been wakened at home by a phone call from the Civil Aeronautics
Administration giving us the grim news. We asked what time the president had taken off from Cebu,
and were told it was at 1 a.m. We glanced at our bedside clock and saw it was 5 a.m.

Since the presidential DC-3, named Mt. Pinatubo after the volcanic mountain in his native
province of Zambales, needed only two hours and 20 minutes to make the trip from Cebu to Manila,
we feared the worst: the president was dead. And there began the struggle to fight back the tears.

We told the CAA that we, as press secretary, would be the one to notify the family, and
directed them not to tell anyone else anything until they heard from us. Then we telephoned
Senator Emmanuel Pelaez, who lived just around the corner from us, briefed him and asked him to
accompany us to Malacanang. This was a gruesome errand we couldn’t handle alone. As we walked
towards the Malacanang family dining room we could hear the sound of carefree and joyful
laughter. The entire family was gathered together for breakfast, having just heard Mass (it was
Sunday) at the palace chapel.

Mrs. Luz Magsaysay, the First Lady, was surprised that Manny and we were at the palace so
early, but only slightly. That was the way it was at Malacanaang then, the atmosphere and
procedures dictated by RM’s personal and official life-style: informal, ad hoc, impulsive. “Monch isn’t
here yet,” she told us, “but he should be showing up anytime now.” She assumed we had some
important appointment or other with him. Some small talk followed until, perhaps noticing that
Manny and we looked so grave and somber (obviously we couldn’t hide it), she asked with a note of
anxiety creeping into her voice: “Why are you guys here at this time? What brings you here?”

We told her, with the rest of the family listening in.

Although we kept emphasizing that everything we knew up to that point did not mean
anything conclusive—the plane, we said could have landed anywhere, although we had personally
checked, before going to Malacanang, other alternative landing sites and all responses had been
negative, but we withheld this distressing information from the family. The first one to react was
Teresita, the Magsaysay’s eldest child. She let out a primal scream, jumped out of her seat and ran
weeping to her room. Then Jun and Mila quietly filed out the dining room, to be alone with their
thoughts. Mrs. Magsaysay began to sob, very softly.

Anticipating that a huge throng would descend on Malacanang to wait for news and offer
comfort and sympathy, we advised the First Lady to confine herself and her children to their
bedrooms until they heard from us. We then went to what was then Nichols Field to begin the vigil,
both hopeful and melancholy, and receive the reports from the massive air search operation to
locate the plane or its wreckage that would commence, involving both Philippine and U.S. air force
planes. It was not until past five o’clock that afternoon that we got the report the wreckage had
been sighted on Mount Manunggal in Cebu, probably just three minutes’ flight from the city. Only
one person, newsman Nestor Mata, survived the crash. What had cause the plane to ram against
that hill? We have our own theory about pilot’s error—and about who the pilot at the control was—
but there’s no point in bringing it up now.

Not too long ago, a foreign friend called our attention to Ben Bradlee’s autobiography, A
Good Life, and what the executive editor of the Washington Post had to say about John F. Kennedy,
with whom he shared a very close personal relationship. “His brief time in power seems to me now,”
Bradlee said of JFK, “to have been filled more with hope and promise than performance. But the
hope and promise that he held for Americans were real, and they have not been approached since
his death.” Our friend then asked, “Don’t you agree the same could be said of Magsaysay’s
presidency?” Not at all, we replied. Although comparisons are odious, we had to address directly the
question asked.

Even before he became president, we said, Magsaysay had already chalked up, as secretary
of national defense, some outstanding achievements. He shaped up the Armed Forces of the
Philippines, as corrupt and ineffectual an organization as you could imagine, and turned it into a
fighting force that “won the hearts and minds” of the people and routed the Communist insurgency
both in open combat and “dirty war” skirmishes. He finished off the Communists as president by
obtaining Luis Taruc’s surrender.

It is true that, like JFK, not all the hope and promise of Magsaysay’s presidency was fulfilled.
Both were out down early and didn’t have enough time: RM after three years and two-and-a-half
months in the presidency. JFK by an assassin’s bullet just short of three years as president. But
during his brief tenure, RM reinvented the focus and thrust of the government by rechanneling the
bulk of its resources and efforts towards uplifting the well-being of the rural population, and
battered the monster of graft and corruption to a pulp. This is not to say that official thievery was
completely eliminated, but it was minimal compared to what it had been before, and compared to
what it has again become since.

One has to have been 46 or 47 in 1997 to have any personal memories of Magsaysay. But
the Filipino youth know something about him and his vibrant qualities of leadership, his charisma,
his affectionate concern for the poor, and his integrity, because their elders have passed on to them
what they saw and knew, authentic legends all, of this extraordinary man. He belongs to the
immortals.

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 GENERATION VOLTES V

JESSICA ZAFRA (Contributed in Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People Vol. 9: A Nation
Reborn, 1998, pg. 178-179)

In 1978, a half-hour animated space adventure show called Voltes V premiered on Philippine
television. Made in Japan and dubbed into English by Filipino voice talents, it aired late Friday
afternoons on Channel 7. The previous year Star Wars had been a box-office hit and merchandising
bonanza; the network was probably hoping to duplicate the space opera’s success on the small
screen.

Voltes V was a giant robot created by the mysterious Dr. Armstrong to defend the earth
from the Bozanian invasion force led by Prince Zardoz. It was composed of five fighter planes which
would “volt in” or merge into the super-robot Voltes V, whose arsenal included electromagnetic
tops, chain knuckles, bazookas, and the all-powerful laser sword. The fighter planes were piloted by
Dr. Armstrong’s sons Steve, Big Bert, and Little John, their friend Mark, and the token girl Jamie.

Each episode the Bozanians—who were evil incarnate, witness the horns sticking out of their
heads—would dispatch a terrifying robot to conquer the earth. Each episode the courageous Voltes
V crew would engage in a fierce battle with metal monstrosities spawned by Japanese animators.
Always Voltes V would appear to be on the brink of defeat, only to summon up reserves of strength
and terminate the enemy. Every battle ended with Voltes V raising its laser sword, carving a giant V
into its enemy, [and] then watching in triumph as the vanquished robot exploded into a million
shards of metal.

Between humongous explosions and screams of excruciating pain there were moments of
human drama: the search for the missing Dr. Armstrong, the contest between Steve and Mark for
the affections of Jamie. There was an interesting subplot on extra-terrestrial politics: the horned
Bozanians oppressed their hornless fellows. In fact one of the heirs to the Bozanian throne had gone
into exile to protest the oppression. This heir was later revealed to be none other than—gasp!—Dr.
Armstrong.

Voltes V connected instantly with its youthful audience. It shot to the top of ratings faster
than you could say “Let’s volt in,” and you’d have to scream your tonsils out because every kid in the
country was screaming, “Let’s…volt…innnn!” Every kid was singing the Voltes V theme in phonetic
Japanese, every kid was nagging his mother to buy a brand of hotdogs so he could get the Voltes V
action figures, T-shirts, rayguns, lunchboxes, records, comics, eyeliners, haemorrhoid medications…
well, not quite eyeliners and medications, but you get my drift. Voltes V was big bucks.
 Other robot cartoons soon sprouted on television. There was Mazinger Z, which featured a
female robot called Aphrodite A who had missiles for breasts. Another show, Daimos, revolved
around the doomed love affair between the fighter pilot Richard and the winged alien princess Erica,
who expressed their passion with cries of “Ree-churd!” and “Ericaah!” But the reigning king of the
robot shows was Voltes V.

Sure it had its flaws. The robot looked like a cross between an air conditioner and a chicken.
The characters were emotional to the point of hysteria, tears perpetually glistening in the corners of
their large, round eyes. The dubbing was often hilarious (the tradition of cheesy dubbing would
reach its peak nearly two decades later with Mari Mar). I could not understand why Voltes V had to
try all its weapons when it could have saved time and effort by whipping out the laser sword: then
again if it had, the series would have ended in a month. None of these mattered to the show’s
fanatical audience. Voltes V was not just a cartoon, it was a ritual, just short of a religion.

It would have taken an army of Bozanian robots to put down Voltes V: in this case it took a
presidential order. In 1980 President Ferdinand Marcos outlawed Voltes V, all the Japanese robot
cartoons, and video games. Marcos cited incidences of violence among children—kids hitting each
other with plastic swords, among other deadly activities—as the reason for the ban. Marcos’s critics
said the banning of Voltes V was a ploy to divert public attention from the president’s other
activities.

The Marcos family has persistently denied the charges against the late president. They deny
that he authorized human rights violations committed during his term. They deny that he stashed
government funds in Swiss bank accounts. But there is one charge they cannot deny, one act to
which the children of the 70s bore witness.

Marcos killed Voltes V.

We never found out what happened to Voltes V. Did they repel the Bozanian invaders? Did
they ever find their father? Did Jamie choose Steve, or Mark? What happened to Prince Zardoz and
his snivelling sycophant Zul? As a friend pointed out, we are a generation without closure,
Generation Voltes V: millions of kids hung up on an animated robot. We were too young to protest
when Voltes V was knocked off the air, but we did not forget.

The injustice lived on in our collective memory, where it rankled, festered, and grew. We
bided our time. We gathered our forces. We waited for the chance to strike back at those who had
summarily executed something we loved.

That opportunity came in February 1986. When the call came we assembled at EDSA, volted
in, and kicked out the man who had killed Voltes V.

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