THE VIEWS FROM RIZAL
A question I asked my teacher at grade school allowed me to learn one of the best lessons in social studies.
I remember asking one of the teachers at Marist School this question: “Why do we celebrate an embarrassing defeat in the hands of an enemy?”
The question had to do with the occasion which our country marks every 9th of April. We now refer to it as “Araw ng Kagitingan.” I remember it used to be called “Bataan Day.” When the grade-schooler me asked my teacher what April 9 had to do with a small western Luzon province, she said, that was the date that “Bataan fell.” I was told that the occasion was then referred to as “The Fall of Bataan.”
I found it baffling then that an entire country would want to remember a day when we were forced to surrender. Compounding my confusion then was the fact that the “Fall of Bataan” was followed by another horrifying event: the Death March. That infamous “March” saw thousands of Filipino and American soldiers – defeated, sick, and hungry – dragging themselves and their wounded comrades through about 140 kilometers of dirt road under the intense summer heat of 1942 to face more suffering at the Capas Concentration Camp in Tarlac.
I had the opportunity to ask the question again a few years later – that time, to a living veteran of the Second World War and a survivor of the Death March. I phrased the question the same way I did when I asked my grade school teacher about it: why do we celebrate an embarrassing defeat in the hands of an enemy?
I was afraid the octogenarian from Antipolo would be offended by my question. It looked like he did not take offense and instead appeared delighted that I displayed a keen interest in that one particular day of the year that mattered to him and the thousand other Filipinos who fought alongside him. He smiled, looked me intensely in the eyes, and said:
“It is not the ‘fall’ we celebrate; it is the ‘stand’ we gallantly took in Bataan.”
Not the ‘Fall’. It’s the gallant stand we celebrate.
The short explanation reverberated in my young mind. As I grew up, I sought more explanation. What did the veteran mean by “gallant stand”? Why was that “gallant stand” worth celebrating with a national holiday every year?
Here are some of the facts about the battle that led to the “Fall” which laid those questions to rest once and for all.
It appeared the enemy underestimated the resolve of Filipino soldiers to hold the battle lines and to keep fighting, never mind that our forces were outnumbered, undertrained, and outgunned. The Filipinos held their ground for as long as they could. According to my veteran friend, the enemy was so angered by their gallant stand in Bataan that the enemy decided to fly more than 100 fighter planes to strafe and bomb their positions. The enemy had about 300 pieces of artillery continuously bombarding our soldiers’ position, yet they refused to surrender.
They surrendered only because that was the decision of the American general who was left in charge by the late and famous General Douglas McArthur – a certain US Major General Edward King. They had to heed the orders from the American commander of the Allied forces fighting in Bataan. My veteran friend said he and his Filipino comrades “would have chosen to die defending their positions in Bataan rather than surrender.”
To die rather than to surrender.
That must have been the Filipino Soldier’s definition of “Kagitingan.”
Our soldiers’ “Kagitingan” was so powerful that they were said to have destroyed the enemy’s timetable for the conquest of the entire southwest Pacific. Their “Kagitingan” may have prevented other countries in the Pacific region from falling into the enemy’s hands.
Yesterday, we joined the rest of the nation in commemorating the Battle of Bataan and the spirit of “Kagitingan” which shone brightly in that one moment in World History.
On a clear day, one can see from Antipolo the giant cross at the peak of Mt. Samat in Pilar, Bataan. Underneath that cross is the “Dambana ng Kagitingan,” a shrine built many years ago so that every generation of Filipinos would come to know the quality of gallantry that flows in their blood.
As I glimpsed at the cross, I said a silent prayer for the gallant Filipino soldiers who perished defending their positions in the towns and jungles of Bataan and those who died at the concentration camp in Tarlac.
I also whispered a silent “thank you” to that generation of Filipino soldiers. I understand that many of them were barely out of their teens when they heeded the call to defend our country.
My most earnest prayer was this: that the same spirit of “Kagitingan” may continue to be alive in each of us. We need this same quality in our national character as we face the daily challenges of life. We need to take the same brave stand, the same determination to keep fighting, and the same resolve never to surrender as that which was displayed to the fullest by the Filipino soldiers in the battlegrounds of Bataan. ([email protected])