War Comes to Binalonan

A Personal Story of World War II in the Philippines

Just a few weeks ago I started knitting my memories of childhood into a story that could be told to the next generation, and I found the narrative grew into a child’s eye view of one of the great pivotal points in history - World War II.

Many events of my childhood revolved around my father’s wartime service, but the war itself was far away. Even when he went off with the Navy Seabees to build airfields on Pacific islands and adults hung anxiously over newscasts from the radio, the war remained a shadow rather than a real life threat. That’s why I used the title “Under the Shadow of War” to describe the experience of an American child, realizing that for much of the world, the war was far more than a shadow. For my husband Benny Cespedes, who was at that time growing up in a small town in the Philippines, it was a matter of daily survival. What was that like?

I had to find out. Although I had lived for nearly a year in his hometown of Binalonan, studied its history, and felt a lifelong bond with its people, I found it difficult to visualize the reality of the battles that had been fought there and the three year occupation by enemy troops. I spent some time pestering Benny with “dumb questions” about little stories he had told and people he had mentioned, trying to anchor them in a narrative correlating with known historical events. Benny at age 95 is one of the last to have real memories of this war that spanned the world. It is a big story to tell online, so I am dividing it into three episodes, starting here:

Part 1: The Invasion

They knew it was coming.

On December 8, 1941, just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes streamed south from Taiwan, aiming for US airfields in the Philippines. On that day, my husband Benny Cespedes was a boy of 12, at school in the little town of Binalonan, Pangasinan, located just south of the Lingayen Gulf, and on the direct route to Manila.Neither he nor his neighbors actually saw the planes, but within hours they heard about it on the radio, then read it in the newspapers. Binalonan was at a highway junction between Manila, the beaches of the Lingayen Gulf, and Baguio, the country’s alternate capital city in the cool western mountains.Very soon they began to pick up information from people moving up and down the highway, and they heard how Japanese bombers had caught the American planes refueling on the ground at Clark Field to their south in Pampanga. Then they heard that Japanese planes had also bombed Camp John Hay, the US rest and recreation facility to their north in Baguio City. Filipinos and Americans held their breath for the assault that everyone knew was coming.

On the eve of World War II, Binalonan in the province of Pangasinan, was a prosperous market town, right at the base of Luzon’s central mountain range and surrounded by broad fields where rice, corn, and beans thrived along with coconuts, bananas, and an array of tropical fruits that we Americans could scarcely imagine. Fertility was ensured by the Sinocalan River, a capricious stream carrying rich soil from the mountains, but given to frequent floods and changes of course.

Like many other small towns in the Philippines it was a tranquil place where most families owned their own nipa palm thatched house among coconut palms and fruit trees. The town plan was typically Spanish colonial – straight avenues laid out neatly in grid fashion on both sides of the main road leading toward Baguio. In the center was a large Spanish-style plaza that served as the town gathering place, with room for children to play, young people to flirt, and old people to gossip. This was also the space for religious celebrations and for the annual town fiesta, where the entire town would gather to dance and listen to concerts by the two local orchestras. It was the design introduced by Augustine and Dominican friars, who were the power in northern Luzon during three centuries of Spanish rule - Catholic church and convent on one side, town hall on the other, school building, and a large public market across the road where the main street, Pardo de Tavera, met the plaza.

Many older people in town remembered that time just forty-five years before when Filipino patriots of the Katipunan society declared for independence from Spain and the fight for Philippine independence began, a fight that continued after the American government under President William McKinley bought the islands as part of the deal that ended the Spanish American War. Native Philippine leaders had already organized their own republic with a constitution and an army. Under Emilio Aguinaldo they resisted the American army fiercely for three years, and fought battles all the way from Manila north through Pangasinan and into the mountains.

People from Binalonan had joined that fight in 1899, but in 1941, there was no doubt of their loyalty to the American cause. American government had become Filipino government. The Tydings-McDuffie Act passed by Congress in 1934 responded to the Filipino campaign for independence by promising full independence after a transitional time as a commonwealth. Administration was to be in the hands of Filipinos, but defense and foreign affairs were still the responsibility of the U.S. The date of independence was set for July 4, 1946.

That was the political background, but more important changes were taking place on the ground in the Philippines. Perhaps the most iconic event was the arrival in 1901 of shiploads of American teachers called “Thomasites” after the army transport ship Thomas that was dispatched to the Philippines to set up a public education system, free to all children, and using the English language for instruction. American educators built schools, introduced textbooks and curriculum, and created a network of normal schools or teachers’ colleges to continue their mission. They taught American history, and ordinary Filipinos embraced those stories of people from humble beginnings rising to the top, even telling how the great president Abraham Lincoln learned to read by firelight and learned to write by using a piece of charcoal on a banana leaf. In this distant land, the American dream took root.

Binalonan was soon ready for independence. Its municipal government was headed by a mayor with council members, all elected by secret ballot despite intense politicking by opposing parties. Today Benny tells how his father, who had never attended school, would practice writing the name of each candidate so he could vote in the election. He would chuckle that the candidate for mayor became very chummy and invited him to dinner before the election, but he never voted for the man. Instead he voted for the first woman mayor. Despite Spanish patriarchal traditions, women played an active role in business and politics.

The people of this corner of Pangasinan seemed to have had a natural affinity for democracy as well as a drive to improve their lives. Three generations before, this place had been settled by immigrants from the Ilocos region to the north. Unable to prosper on their narrow coast where mountains came down almost to the sea, pioneering Ilocanos pushed south in search of a better life on the broad Pangasinan plain. Benny’s grandparents were among these early settlers, who built their fortune and reputation on the values of hard work, thrift, and community.

Benny‘s father Mauricio, whom he always called “Amang” or Father in the Ilocano language, was a farmer who had inherited a plot of land in the barrio of Manguzmana as well as a town lot on Torres Street. The inheritance came from his father Camilo Cespedes, a famously thrifty man who secured title to land beside the river and, according to Filipino custom, divided it among six sons and one daughter. This left Mauricio with a farm just large enough to support a family, but one year the river changed course and swept the best fields away. Mauricio was forced to lease a plot from a relative so he could support his family, but his wife and children lived in town, and Benny‘s enterprising mother Florentina (known as Insa to her friends and neighbors and “Inang” or Mother to the family) went into business as a rice merchant, riding by the horse drawn cart called carromata to distant barrios and bringing loads of newly harvested rice to a mill in Binalonan to be husked.

Insa was a remarkable woman. In a community of hard-workers where the greatest virtue was to be “nagaget” or industrious, she was known as one who worked the hardest, moved the fastest, washed the cleanest clothes, kept the neatest house, and got the most done. She was smart, quick at numbers, and managed the household funds. Benny’s father, a widower with three children to provide for, may have noticed this when, as the story goes, he saw her after a day’s work in the fields and offered to “water your carabao.” He started taking her water buffalo to the river, and in time the two were married and became partners in life and business. Insa raised Mauricio’s children and gave birth to ten of her own. Tragically, only two, Benny and his older sister Nina survived infancy.

This was life in Binalonan, hard but also beautiful. Benny’s half siblings grew up and started families of their own, so he lived with his mother, father, and sister Nina in a traditional bamboo house roofed with nipa palm and elevated on stout posts to keep safe from flood waters. Cooking was on a wood-fired clay stove with a pot of rice cooked daily, supplemented by homegrown produce, eggs, occasional chicken and always fish from the market. There was jack fruit, star apple, chico, papaya, and banana trees in the yard and chickens under the house. His grandmother lived next door, a married half sister to the side, and relatives all around. The entire neighborhood was bound together by family events, shared work and music, and a deeply ingrained tradition of respect and gratitude.

Benny and Nina could easily walk to the public school, where instruction was in English. This was a big shift from the Ilocano language spoken at home, but Benny was good at it. English was the language of books, a rare and treasured item in the rural Philippines, but Benny was able to borrow reading material from a relative who was a school principal. By age 12 he was reading and loving books that what might be on an advanced reading list for an American boy his age.

This was the community that prepared to face the Japanese invasion. The Japanese Empire had overrun China, and in the summer of 1941 clearly had their sights on all of Southeast Asia. President Franklin Roosevelt entrusted defense of the Philippines to General Douglas MacArthur, who came out of retirement to take responsibility for United States Army Forces in the Far East, but MacArthur’s repeated requests for weapons and manpower went mostly unanswered. Congress was reluctant to send arms to a territory that was about to become independent anyway, and President Roosevelt decided to concentrate American resources on winning the war in Europe. MacArthur was charged with organizing a Philippine Commonwealth Army, but in late 1941 local defense forces were still untrained and badly under-armed.

As Japanese tanks made an easy landing on the beaches of northern Luzon, Filipino soldiers were facing tanks with Springfield rifles and outdated Browning machine guns. Some of the local recruits did not even have uniforms, and in Binalonan Benny saw young soldiers prepare for battle in dungarees with helmets fashioned of coconut husks. The townspeople knew a battle was coming, but when and where? They saw the regular US Army withdraw south to defend Manila, but a remnant of the 26^th Cavalry regiment composed of Philippine Scouts got ready to make a stand near Binalonan. Some people fled, but those who could not or would not leave dug pits in the soft earth beside the river for what protection they could find.

Early on the morning of December 24, Japanese tanks appeared on the northern road and the battle of Binalonan began. All that day Benny’s family huddled together in their hastily dug pit while the sound of bullets and exploding shells reverberated around them.

With no antitank weapons. Filipino forces fought bravely to delay the Japanese advance. Years later Benny learned how a Private Juan Soria of the Philippine Scouts actually climbed on a tank and attempted to pry open the hatch with his bayonet. Failing that, he tried to insert a grenade into the tank’s cannon muzzle. Wounded by one of the crew members, he fell off the tank, but Soria, who survived the Bataan death march and internment as a POW, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his extraordinary heroism in the Battle of Binalonan.

With such uncommon courage and unconventional tactics American and Filipino troops stalled the tank advance until late morning. Then under heat of the midday sun, an entire Japanese regiment, the 2nd Formosa, came down the road and fanned out to encircle the defenders. Casualties were massive on both sides, but at 3:30 PM 420 American and Filipino survivors withdrew on the road towards Manila, leaving behind the ghastly landscape of a hard-fought battle – shell craters, burning houses, dead bodies. Cost was high, but their brave stand had thrown off the Japanese timetable and protected the American retreat toward Manila and Bataan.

On Christmas Day 1941 Japanese troops occupied Binalonan.

Next: Surviving the Occupation