WALA LANG  At the end of a wide avenue was an imposing building and before it, on a wide plaza, was the monument to a man who was welcomed to Manila by the heads of church and government. The avenue was named after US Major General Elwell Stephen Otis, who was head of US forces during the first stages of the Filipi-no-American War. The imposing building was the Paco station of the Manila Railroad that serviced officialdom and the rich and famous, who lived in the nearby wealthy neighborhoods. The prominently located monument was to Justo Takayama Ukon (1552-1615), the Japanese Christian Daimyo (feudal lord) who preferred to lose his possessions and high status rather than give up his Christian faith. He was exiled to Manila and warmly welcomed by the entire city led by the governor-general and the archbishop. HISTORY OF NEGLECT From left: Blessed Takayama Ukon meditating before a Skyway offramp Now the avenue bears another name. The railroad station is a ruin behind a wire fence half hidden by scrabbly shrubbery and Skyway pillars and the statue of Justo Takayama Ukon, who was beatified in 2016, stares at the blank side wall of the Skyway’s Quirino off ramp 30 feet ahead. The grand monuments to Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, and Simon de Anda are well maintained and prominently located. Ditto for the smaller monuments inside Rizal Park. Gen. Antonio Luna’s monument is well located at the Padre Burgos end of Intramuros’ General Luna Street, as are those dedicated to Apolinario Mabini on Padre Faura in front of the Supreme Court building and the monument to the priests Padres Jose Burgos, Mariano Gomez, and Jacinto Zamora, a modern sculpture by Solomon Saprid, in front of the National Museum of Fine Arts. Statues of Sultan Kudarat, Gabriela Silang, Pio del Pilar, and Benigno Aquino Jr. stand at corners of Makati’s Ayala Triangle. Fernando Amorsolo, however, was sitting forlorn with palette and paint brush in hand at a Legaspi Village street corner the last time I passed there. Spanish Regime monuments follow European models and sculptural quality, specifically those of Simon de Anda on Bonifacio Drive, Carlos IV on Plaza de Roma in Intramuros, Isabel II by Puerta Isabel II in Intramuros, Miguel Lopez de Legaspi and Fr. Andres Urdaneta at the corner of Bonifacio and Padre Burgos Drives, and of Fernando Magallanes’ vanished column by the Pasig River. Monuments to Americans have not fared well. The plaza in front of Ermita Church was Plaza Fergusson. It had a bust statue of the honoree, Arthur Walsh Fergusson, executive secretary of the Philippine Commission. The space is now occupied, among other things, by a basketball court and the monument is in the grounds of the US Embassy, along with a monument that used to stand on Binondo’s Plaza Cervantes, now just a wide street. If memory serves, that was to Russell Sturgis (1805-1887), head of the 19th-century Manila trading house Russell & Sturgis. HISTORY OF NEGLECT the vanished monument to forester and botanist Sebastián Vidal in Mehan Garden. I suppose we don’t really pay much attention to our monuments. Sculptural quality, size, location, and even choice of subject could receive more careful consideration. Monuments to our worthies line Roxas Boulevard.  Carlos P. Romulo (diplomat), Vicente Lim (soldier), Fernando Poe Jr. (actor), and a few others are there, in different sizes and bases of varying styles. A bust portrait of Simon de Anda is high on a side wall of Santa Cruz church facing Escolta, now covered with cement plaster.  A monument to Spanish botanist and forester Sebastián Vidal y Soler used to stand inside Mehan Garden but Vidal lost his head during the Japanese occupation and no one seems to know what happened to the rest of him. Memorials to the Aquinos block the vista of the Legaspi and Urdaneta monument. With the skyway’s construction, the monument to Justo Takayama Ukon ought to be moved to a more dignified location commensurate to the importance of Philippine-Japan relations and of the martyr’s welcome to Manila. One possibility is the little plaza at the south end of Manila City Hall, on the intersection of Taft Avenue and Arroceros (now A. Villegas Street). That happens to be by the site of the original village of Dilao where Ukon died. We have Manila monuments to Rizal, Bonifacio, Mabini, and Antonio Luna but none to Emilio Aguinaldo, Gregorio del Pilar, and other heroes of the First Philippine Republic. Likewise, we have a monument to Raja Soliman and the heroes of the Philippine Revolution, but none to the brave datus of Tondo, Bulacan, and Pampanga who were the first to rise against Spain. Forgotten are Agustin de Legaspi, Martin Pañga, Magát Salamat, Pitongatan, Phelipe Salalila, and the others of the 24 chiefs, who in 1587-89 plotted to overthrow the newly arrived Spaniards but were betrayed. Some suffered horrible deaths, others were exiled and dispossessed of their properties.  They deserve to be high in the national memory. Notes: (a) This column’s title is a quote from the lyrics of singer Kyla’s “Monumento;” and (b) The Spanish names given the 24 datus survive in Spanish accounts but not their original native names. Comments are cordially invited, addressed to [email protected]