This article is intended to shed light on the factors causing wartime violence during the Japanese Occupation of Leyte, in the Visayan Islands of central Philippines, by focusing on marginalised actors whose roles have been neglected in historiography. Why was there such a high level of violence among local groups in occupied Philippines and the immediate postwar period? What caused it to worsen? This study focuses on complicated episodes of wartime violence in Leyte to clarify how they began and escalated, and how the various local paramilitary and guerrilla groups participated in them, with locals sometimes switching sides.
The Japanese Occupation of the Philippines from 1942 to 1945 during the Second World War is regarded by Filipinos as one of the darkest periods in history. Countless Filipinos, from the elite as well as the masses, suffered hardship and were direct victims of the Japanese forces.Footnote 1 It is perhaps then understandable that much of the postwar Filipino writing about the period, including memoirs or novels concerning the Japanese invasion, have dealt with the violence which was inflicted by the Japanese upon Filipino civilians.Footnote 2 This literature is prone to describing the wartime violence as a simple diagram: the Japanese as perpetrators, the Americans as liberators, with the Filipino peoples as victims in between. Aside from such literature, Philippine historiography has largely described the Filipino population's response to the Japanese Occupation in terms of a simple dichotomy: resistance or collaboration. In such simplified perspectives, wartime violence among Filipinos was likewise merged into the ‘resistance vs collaboration’ framework. Memories of the Occupation have been conveyed to successive generations chiefly through memoirs or descriptions of the violence as having been inflicted only by the Japanese upon the Filipinos, based on a simple dichotomy regarding local responses: resistance equalled heroic deeds while collaboration was treacherous.
However, wartime violence in the Philippines was not a black and white matter. We need to move beyond a simplistic analysis of the Japanese Occupation that posits the wartime local response as being either resistance to or collaboration with the occupying power toward a more nuanced understanding of events. Both resistance and collaboration involved violence. The American historian Alfred McCoy has argued that prewar political factionalism in Iloilo province led to the severe violence among the local elites in Panay Island during the Occupation.Footnote 3 Although intra-elite factional strife in Iloilo was a key factor, it does not explain the whole dynamic of wartime violence. My previous work also discusses factionalism among the local elites in Ormoc, Leyte, focusing on the municipal feuds in rural areas during the Occupation.Footnote 4 In addition to intra-elite conflict, guerrilla politics has also been examined in several studies, most of which focus on the criminality of such groups.Footnote 5
However, the wartime violence in the Philippines was also perpetrated by and among the masses, the ‘little people’, many of whom were landless and poor peasants.Footnote 6 Yet studies of the period by Teodoro Agoncillo or Renato Constantino, for example, have neglected the role of the masses; despite the pervasiveness of popular history in Philippine historiography, much of this refers to the Philippine Revolution or the Philippine–American War.Footnote 7 Finally, although Nakano Satoshi, a Japanese historian, probes the key factors of worsening wartime violence in the Philippines by showing how the opposing poles of ‘appeasement’ and ‘coercion’ characterised occupation policy at the state and rural levels, respectively, he too does not examine the role of the masses.Footnote 8
Yet the masses, especially in rural Philippines, were indeed involved in wartime violence. Maria Felisa Syjuco describes, for example, how local collaborators, most of whom were ordinary Filipinos, provided the Kempeitai (Japanese Military Police) with information on guerrillas and guerrilla movements, leading to the arrest, punishment, torture and killings of people in the community.Footnote 9 Clearly, to understand the overall dynamic of escalating local violence during the Occupation, we need to examine the actions not only of the elites, but those of the masses. By examining these individual actions in local society,Footnote 10 we may delineate the complicated dynamics of how violence among the people of Leyte increased during the Occupation. As McCoy remarks in his essay, these wartime actors, irrespective of being from the elite or the masses, have been marginalised or forgotten; although some of them played a significant role in history, they seem to have vanished from Filipino historical memory.Footnote 11 The wartime violence in which the ‘little’ Filipinos were involved has long been neglected by Philippine historiography, nor has it been analysed with the perspective from ‘below’ as discussed by Reynaldo Ileto.Footnote 12 Therefore, this essay will argue that wartime violence was perpetrated not only by the local elites (for instance, guerrilla leaders, mayors or treasurers, doctors or lawyers), but also by the masses (peasants, petty traders)Footnote 13 from the social periphery in Leyte,Footnote 14 where the non-elite accounted for almost 90 per cent of the population.
Viewed from such a perspective the Japanese Occupation in provincial settings, populated largely by the masses, could very possibly have had a very different impact than it had in the national capital, Manila. Therefore, we must carefully investigate the extent to which occupation policy was implemented in the lower administrative units including municipalities and barrios (villages). Each town and village constituted its own sociopolitical domain where the lesser elites, lower-waged labourers, petty traders or peasants, many landless, lived according to their norms and mores. We could say that their behaviour during wartime seemed not to follow patron–client relations, but rather worked alongside and through the kinship relationships running across families or neighbourhoods. It should be noted here that the penetration of political institutions or systems introduced by the Spanish and the Americans in lower-level administrative units in rural Philippines has yet to be fully examined, however. Wartime violence in the rural Philippines seems to have worsened due to pre-existing local factors, which resulted in Japanese policy being only partially implemented in the lower administrative units. Some residents might have been mobilised to the anti-Japanese guerrilla activities, for example, while others were possibly forced to collaborate with the occupation forces. Tracing the unfolding of wartime violence in the periphery will enable us to better understand how the Japanese mobilised the masses for their war efforts, how civilians became involved in social violence and how local society underwent change during the Second World War; none of which have yet been fully unravelled.
Based on this perspective and analytical framework, this study will discuss the case of the Japanese Occupation of Leyte. The discussion will focus on the activities of paramilitary groups including the Voluntary Groups (VGs) or local police forces organised by the Japanese with the assistance of locals in occupied areas to consider the significance of this outbreak of wartime violence among marginalised actors in Philippine history.
Prewar history of Leyte
First, it is necessary to provide a glimpse of prewar Leyte's politics, society and economy. Spanish colonisation started across the island in the second half of the sixteenth century (from 1571), after which the encomiendas systemFootnote 15 was implemented for the economic exploitation of the land and people, chiefly by Catholic clergy such as the Jesuits. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Philippine Revolution had awoken the elites to a consciousness of being Visayan, rather than Filipino (of Luzon); this indigenous identity became the foundation for their strong resistance against the Spaniards and then the Americans, their next colonisers. Some leading members of the local elite such as Jaime de Veyra, Francisco Enaje, and Pastor Navarro, all of whom were from towns in eastern Leyte, were involved in the revolutionary movements against the Spanish as well as in the Philippine–American War until General Mojica surrendered to the Americans in May 1901.Footnote 16
The Pulahan Movement, which originated from the Katipunan Movement on Samar Island, was quite widespread in northern Leyte, especially in Ormoc and Palompon, but it was quelled by the United States and local Filipino administrators collaborating with them in the early 1900s.Footnote 17 Although most members of the local elite capitulated, some remained anti-American, especially in eastern Leyte. Meanwhile, in western Leyte, as the founding of Ormoc Sugar Central in the 1920s started to create large-scale sugar plantations initially operated by the Aboitiz family, some hacendero (local landlords) including the Aboitiz, the Yrastorzas, the Larrazabals, the Tans, the Torres, and the Seraficas, wholeheartedly accepted American colonial rule to protect their vested interests.Footnote 18 In the east of the island, however, agriculture was characterised by sporadic farming. Here land had been divided into smallholdings or non-contiguous plots acquired by wealthier landlords, which would be planted with coconuts for copra, rice, or other crops after the postwar decline of the abaca industry in the eastern Visayas. Among the wealthier landlords in the east were the Romualdez in Dagami and Tolosa, the de Veyras in Tacloban, the Collanteses in Abuyog, and the Caings and the Lagunzads in Dulag.
Such contrasting agriculture and livelihoods created different politics in the two parts of the island. Although most local administrators accepted American sovereignty, some municipal administrators in the east still harboured anti-American sentiments. As proof, the postwar US military records mention that there was a local chapter of the anti-American Sakdal Party in Tanauan, as well as in Ormoc.Footnote 19 Some local elites, albeit far fewer than in Luzon, were inclined to anti-American movements such as the Sakdalista in the southern Tagalog region. Anti-American feelings continued in the towns of eastern Leyte including Abuyog, Burauen, Dulag, or Tanauan where, during the Japanese Occupation, numerous poor people were drafted into the local police force or paramilitary groups, which will be discussed in the following section.
When the Japanese invaded Leyte in May 1942, many local leaders organised VGs in an attempt to defend their territory, as they had during the Philippine–American War at the turn of the twentieth century. Some, however, acted to protect their vested interests by collaborating with the enemy while others adopted a wait-and-see attitude regarding the new colonial master, Japan.
Beginning of the Japanese Occupation of Leyte
Compared to other parts of the Pacific campaign, the advance of the Japanese forces into Leyte was quite slow. The Leyte invasion force comprised the 62nd Infantry Regiment or Nagano Unit, led by Colonel Nagano Kameichiro, under the command of the 14th Japanese Army (Watari Group), which fought against the US and Filipino forces in Corregidor Island and the Bataan Peninsula from April to May 1942.Footnote 20 The Nagano Unit landed in northern Leyte and proceeded to Tacloban, then the provincial capital, by the end of May 1942. Immediately after the invasion of Tacloban, by the first week of June, the Matsunaga Unit, a battalion class force consisting of two companies dispatched from the 10th Independent Garrison Battalion (led by Brigadier General Ikuta Torao), had taken over from the Nagano Unit.Footnote 21
In October 1942, the Matsunaga Unit was merged into the 36th Independent Infantry Garrison Battalion led by Colonel Omori Yoshitsugu of the Omori Unit. The first stage of the Japanese Occupation in 1942 was said to be moderately straightforward. But VGs, led by former police officers or soldiers of the Philippine Army, were mushrooming across the island, posing a threat to the invading forces. These groups underwent several stages of alignment and realignment until they were unified into one anti-Japanese guerrilla force. Initially, the members of the guerrilla groups in Leyte consisted mostly of those who had fought in the first half of 1942 against the Japanese Army in Corregidor and the Bataan either as members of the United States Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) or as members of the United States Army in the Philippines (USFIP). Unlike these guerrilla groups which were chiefly created by the local elites, the role of the VGs, whose rank and file were mostly drawn from the poor, have not yet been recognised by historians. This might be because the VG leaders were often looked upon as ‘bandits’ by the local elites, including the acting governor of Leyte, Pastor Salazar.Footnote 22 Indeed many VG members perpetrated crimes and violence during the war.
From the second half of 1943, however, the Japanese authorities started to co-opt the VGs in their mopping-up operations against the anti-Japanese guerrillas. The VGs engaged in two basic types of activities. The first of these, chiefly undertaken by landless peasants led by the dominant landlords, was directed against the guerrilla groups organised by prominent Philippine army officers, hacendero, professionals and the like; while the second type was organised by members of the lesser elite who were quite anti-American and hence open to collaborating with the Japanese. However, the overall picture was more complex than this breakdown may suggest, since no single organisation was characterised solely by one type of activity. There were anti-Japanese VGs which turned into guerrilla units later on, while some organised VGs were pro-Japanese. The following discussion will focus on Blas Miranda, the commander of the Western Leyte Guerilla Warfare Forces (WLGWF), whose actions had a great impact on the poor. Later, other VGs fought against the WLGWF before it was finally defeated by one of the most influential guerrilla leaders in Leyte, Colonel Ruperto Kangleon.
Mass-supported WLGWF (June 1942–August 1943)
Most of the VGs in Leyte set up at the start of the Japanese Occupation were eventually disbanded or incorporated into other groups. One reason for this was that the VGs were not well-financed or organised. An exception was the force led by Blas Miranda, who attempted to create a kind of autonomous sphere in western Leyte where the WLGWF could look after the interests of the numerous landless farmers and the poor. Miranda, not a Leyteño but of Ilocano origins, was an ex-commander of the 2nd Company of the Philippine Constabulary (PC) under the Leyte Provisional Regiment in Ormoc.Footnote 23 Before the war, he had graduated as a cadet from the Philippine Academy and General Service School in Baguio, Benguet, after which he was assigned as a second lieutenant in USAFFE and the PC in the 9th Military District comprising Samar and Leyte. When the Japanese invaded Leyte in May 1942, he escaped with his family to Barrio Tangnan, Ormoc, where he organised a small band of guerrillas in June. He went on to merge most of the small guerrilla groups in western Leyte into one force by December 1942 under the WLGFW, which claimed to be able to mobilise more than 12,000 soldiers plus 8,000 reservists. Miranda's organisation consisted of six regiments which were financially supported by members of the local elite including doctors, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, lawyers, school teachers and engineers.Footnote 24 By September, as other small guerrilla groups were being incorporated into Miranda's, he had set up a civilian government, which included some public schools, hospitals, chemical factories and Catholic churches, through which the WLGWF provided the poor with free education and medicine. Illiterate elderly farmers could even go to these schools to learn how to read and write.Footnote 25
After the war, Usaldo Laguitan, a captain in WLGWF's 1st Regiment, told the American magazine Collier that these policies had brought peace, order and stability to western Leyte and prevented bandit infiltration.Footnote 26 Thus Miranda was briefly successful in creating his own political sphere: a kind of independent region in the Visayas. The masses in western Leyte were strongly drawn to Miranda's ideas, which sought to create a kind of commune in a region which was temporarily undisturbed by bandits or guerrilla forces. Some residents I interviewed in the early 1990s told me that Miranda was known by a special nickname, ‘Tagolilong’, which means someone immortal or immune to bullets.Footnote 27 Miranda was said to always wear unique clothing adorned with special signs or designs, considered a kind of protective amulet (anting-anting in Tagalog). Some of the poor in western Leyte were said to have worshipped Miranda as a god or messiah because he provided them with everything they needed. As local historian Father Richard Arens explains:
The belief in the power of anting-anting is widespread and it received a new boost during World War II when Filipino guerrilla leaders were believed to be gifted with this magical power. Uncounted stories are told about these guerilla heroes empowered with anting-anting. It is said that no guerilla leader could gain followers if he was not known to have a powerful anting-anting.Footnote 28
Miranda could be one of the leaders Arens refers to, but there is still controversy among local historians concerning such religious aspects of his personality. Ormoc-based historian Emil Justimbaste, for instance, doubts that Miranda saw himself as waging a religious war against the Japanese.Footnote 29
Miranda was said to have confessed to his men, in 1942, that while he was serving as policeman, he
noticed the social contradictions whereby the rich were getting richer while the poor were getting poorer. I do not want to ask the Americans for help in our waging war against Japan, so that we could establish our own new Visayas. Through defeating Japan, let us achieve our goal for real independence!Footnote 30
If this interviewee's recollections are true, it is probably safe to say that Miranda was both anti-Japanese and anti-American, that is, anticolonial, and used the wartime rupture to try to revive the Philippine independence movement, which had been frustrated in the early twentieth century. If so, it is easy to understand why Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific Area and Ruperto Kangleon, commander of the Leyte Guerrilla Forces in San Roque, were eager to destroy WLGWF's influence.Footnote 31 Whether the WLGWF had some connection with the Huks is unknown. It seems to have had a kind of leftist ideology, but such ideas could possibly have emerged among the masses having millennarian beliefs as in the Bongoton group in Palompon, western Leyte, during this period.Footnote 32
Considering the memories of respondents I interviewed in western Leyte in the early 1990s, what is certain is that Miranda was a steadfast military man who attracted the poor to his movement against a society controlled by the rich. Esperidion Espejo, a former WLGWF soldier, said that he considered Miranda a master or supremo, calling him a kind of ‘Jose Rizal’ who he believed would liberate the poor from their miserable lives and poverty: ‘He gave us everything we wanted just like food, medicine, education, or even judicial services, most of which were well-financed by the moral assistance of the local elites bearing sympathy toward the poor.’Footnote 33
Miranda certainly seemed to have abhorred the elite-dominated society of Leyte. There were reports that the WLGWF set fire to houses of the leading families in western Leyte including the residence of Dominador Tan, then a member of the National Assembly in Manila.Footnote 34 Similar to the Huks in central Luzon discussed by Benedict Kerkvliet, the WLGWF challenged the control of regimes by the rich.Footnote 35 Not surprisingly perhaps, Miranda's attitude against the Japanese, the Americans, and the wealthy overlords in Leyte society was not accepted by the elites or the Americans.
Following an order from MacArthur, Kangleon's force started to push the WLGWF out of the province.Footnote 36 Merging several groups from across Leyte with Kangleon's, this force, named the Leyte Area Command (LAC), was recognised by MacArthur as a legitimate guerrilla force in April 1943. In August, one of Kangleon's units under Captain de Garcia infiltrated the WLGWF's sphere, invading the town of Baybay and killing numerous WLGWF fighters and local civilians. Captain de Garcia's force eventually reached the Barrio Tangnan, Ormoc, where Miranda's hideout was located and here they raped and kidnapped his wife and two daughters. De Garcia massacred many of Miranda's men and despite WLGWF counterattacks this part of Leyte fell under the influence of the LAC.Footnote 37
In the end, Miranda's attempt to create his own independent, so-called ‘Briguez State’,Footnote 38 failed amidst violence and bloodshed. Some of his men surrendered to the LAC, but most of them chose to collaborate with the Japanese to continue to fight for their ends. According to the postwar report Miranda presented on the WLGWF, it was almost completely wiped out by the Japanese (3rd Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment led by Captain Fukuda) by July 1944. Miranda added that almost 70 per cent of his men who survived surrendered to the Japanese to collaborate with them, while the rest swore an oath of allegiance to Kangleon‘s LAC.Footnote 39 MacArthur's strategy for reoccupying the Philippines included unifying several guerrilla forces and units in Leyte under Kangleon. However, the former members of the WLGWF, which MacArthur branded a ‘bandit’ group, continued to bear animosity towards the LAC because of De Garcia's cruelty. As mentioned earlier, the Japanese-sponsored local officials in Tacloban also called them ‘bandits’.
These ‘bandits’, most of whom were landless peasants or illiterate farmers, then approached the Japanese to seek a source of income. The Japanese started hiring them as police officers in organisations such as the PC and the Bureau of Constabulary (BC) to strengthen their surveillance abilities. Some of them were involved in espionage, providing the Japanese military authorities with tactical information on the LAC's movements. However, the Japanese did not understand the motivation behind their collaboration, thinking simply that these poor or low-status people could be easily used and organised into a kind of paramilitary group against Kangleon's LAC.
Japanese forces and the poor in Leyte
As discussed, in the initial stage of the Japanese Occupation of Leyte, many peasants or landless farmers joined the VGs, led by the local elites or landlords. Most of the recruits had no stable source of income, and some of them worked as houseboys or housemaids for hacendero families during the fallow season. A number of anti-Japanese guerrilla groups or VGs were organised in each area, but their morale was very low. And as each group acted sporadically, it took more than a year to unify them under the LAC. According to the Japanese 11th Independent Garrison Command [第11独立守備隊] in the first half of December 1942,
most of the guerrilla units consisted of the landless peasants who were forcibly drafted into these groups. They have no idea of what anti-Japanese is meant to be. They reside in localities under the influence of anti-Japanese guerrilla groups, but most of them took part in the activities because of their poverty.Footnote 40
Although they looked down on the masses, the Japanese authorities then started to use these poor recruits in their fight against the guerrillas. Drafting them into the paramilitaries, the 16th Division noted in December 1943 that: ‘Most of the masses in Leyte are not highly educated unlike those in Luzon. Because quite a few residents in the province are illiterate and not schooled, they easily could take side with us if they will be carefully approached by our Imperial Forces.’Footnote 41
The Japanese in Leyte had no choice but to draft such marginalised locals into the PC and the BC, which in turn reduced the morale and discipline of these organisations.Footnote 42 The new recruits were provided with only basic military training, which was not good enough to meet the needs of the Japanese anti-guerrilla strategy. Poorly-trained, their behaviour towards unarmed civilians was sometimes ill disciplined and some of them were simply delighted to be given new weapons. They collaborated with the Japanese, but their presence in the anti-guerrilla operations sometimes resulted in more violence and even atrocities, as they used not only the issued arms, but traditional weapons such as bamboo spears or bolos (long knives).
Japanese military documents state that the VGs were organised under the direct command of municipal mayors or barrio lieutenants. Some VGs consisted of Takeyari Units (竹槍, bamboo spear units) given the task of stopping guerrilla infiltration and arresting guerrillas to maintain public order.Footnote 43 A number of peasants were drafted into such Takeyari Units in which they were trained and paid well to eradicate guerrillas. Some of these well paid peasants wholeheartedly collaborated with the Japanese military authorities and even committed atrocities. Alongside these poor collaborators, some of the minor local elites, such as municipal mayors or treasurers especially in eastern Leyte were also inclined to working with the Japanese. In the later stages of the war, as discussed, numerous WLGWF men who had surrendered to the Japanese were recruited into the latter's paramilitaries to fight the LAC. Such movements and actions by the masses at the periphery of Leyte society, irrespective of whether they were collaborators or resisters, led to complicated local conflicts. The following discussion will focus on the collaboration of Ricardo Collantes, from one of the wealthiest clans in Abuyog, where many peasants took part in Japanese-sponsored surveillance and violence against the guerrillas.
Collantes and the Jutai in eastern Leyte (June 1942–October 1944)
The Jutai was one of the paramilitary groups organised by the Japanese in eastern Leyte. Thus, a discussion of the Jutai will, on the one hand, serve as evidence of the occupation strategy but, perhaps more significantly, it will also reveal conscious collaboration among the poor. The Jutai was organised as a result of Administrative Decree no. 77, of 7 August 1942 which established the Hoko System. This decree ordered the creation of the Tonarigumi (District and Neighbourhood Association, DANAS) as part of the surveillance and disciplinary operations over the occupied areas.Footnote 44 In Abuyog and Dulag this paramilitary group functioned well because there were local officials who supported the occupation policy. We will now examine the wartime role and actions of some of these Abuyog officials, including the town treasurer, Ricardo Collantes.Footnote 45
At the time the two major guerrilla leaders, Pedro Gallego and Catalino Landia, were taking control of eastern Leyte, consisting of the municipalities of Dulag, Abuyog, Burauen and Dagami. During the prewar American years, Gallego and Landia had formed a strong political faction in Abuyog: the Bito Party. This was the political counterpart of another faction formed by Collantes: the Nalibunan Party. Since 1930, the Collantes-led Nalibunan Party had always won Abuyog's mayoral elections, with Collantes serving as the mayor until 1940, defeating Gallego and Landia in three consecutive elections. However, in the December 1940 elections, Gallego of Bito defeated Felipe Verra of Nalibunan. Nalibunan representatives protested against the election results and brought the case to court in Manila, where the Supreme Court decided in their favour. Political enmity and instability continued in Abuyog until the arrival of the Japanese on 29 May 1942.
When the Japanese occupied Abuyog, they appointed Eleuterio Caña as mayor and Collantes as treasurer. Both Caña and Collantes welcomed the Japanese since they had both haboured ill will against the Americans since the end of the Philippine–American War. They stood face to face with their political opponents, Gallego and Landia, both of whom had become anti-Japanese guerrilla leaders since the invasion. Collantes was very popular among the masses and had been generous to the poor during his long years in office as mayor.Footnote 46
In June 1942, however, the commander of the Japanese platoon in Abuyog could not immediately appoint Collantes as mayor because the Municipal Code of 1902 prohibited four consecutive terms, so instead, he appointed Caña. Postwar testimonies by many of his subordinates or neighbours highlighted Caña's hostility against the Americans. One subordinate, Verra, mentioned in affidavits in 1946 that Caña was pro-Axis, and had asserted that the Axis nations were pursuing a just cause in expanding their territories and that ‘Asia should be for Asiatics’. Verra also added that:
Collantes convinced me to help him cooperate with the Japs administration, for the Japanese are the most generous and kind people in the world having given us independence just after we have been conquered unlike America that we have not been given independence despite of the fact that we have been under [them] for more than 40 years.Footnote 47
Most residents concurred with the view that Caña had been harbouring this hostility against the Americans and that this led him to readily collaborate with the Japanese. From the very onset of the Occupation, Collantes too had collaborated with the Japanese by procuring foodstuffs for them and hunting down guerrillas. However, the town was temporarily occupied by Landia and Gallego's guerrilla forces. Both leaders subsequently went into hiding in the mountains in October 1942 while Caña and Collantes evacuated to Tacloban until the town was retaken by the Japanese (the 2nd Battalion of the 20th Infantry Regiment, under Captain Namba Yoshitaro) in November 1943.
During the second half of the following year, 1944, the Namba Unit moved to southern Leyte. Then, the 6th Company of the 2nd Battalion of the 22nd Artillery Infantry Regiment (under Captain Masuda Tatsuro) took over from the Namba Unit to take control of the town of Dulag.Footnote 48 The Japanese authorities set up a special anti-guerrilla paramilitary, the Jutai, in collaboration with two municipal treasurers in eastern Leyte, Balbino Lagunzad of Dulag and Collantes of Abuyog. In August of that year, the US military forces were already approaching Leyte as part of their campaign to end the war and reoccupy the Philippines. To strengthen the operational discipline of the Namba Unit, the Kempeitai or Japanese Military Police organised their own Jutai, which was somewhat different in nature from the one organised by the Masuda Unit.Footnote 49
Not many official records were kept of Jutai activities, but by piecing together details gleaned from CIC postwar interrogations of some of its members it is possible to shed some light on their rather obscure activities. At the onset of operations against the guerrillas, the Japanese tried to adhere to their own guidelines and strategy. Unfortunately, most Japanese soldiers did not speak the local dialect—Waray—and were, consequently, unable to win the locals over to their side. Moreover, despite strenuous propaganda work some locals obviously abhorred the Japanese because of their harsh occupation policy and remained hostile. The Japanese then adopted other measures to try to win over the local population such as providing them with cash (one peso per month), foodstuffs and clothes in return for their collaboration.Footnote 50
One Francisco Cañavela was a member of the Jutai. Francisco, like his father before him, had been a poor fisherman since the American colonial years. They would sometimes serve as houseboys of the families that had political control over Dulag and Abuyog, the Gallegos and Elmedos, respectively.Footnote 51 Being a tenant or a servant of these leading families, he nursed a grudge against them that he bore into the occupation period.
The Japanese Occupation of Leyte was a turning point in Francisco's life. Initially, VGs were organised for the anti-Japanese resistance in Dulag and Abuyog. Although his father, Antonio, had minimal schooling, the VG leader made him a police officer and gave Francisco a similar position. In the second half of 1942, the guerrilla forces led by Gallego and Landia were in control of eastern Leyte. Francisco and Antonio, along with a Japanese platoon from the Matsunaga Unit, went to Tacloban after the guerrillas had driven the Japanese out. Upon their arrival in Tacloban, however, the Kempeitai hired both men as intelligence agents. During the first half of 1944, they were active in Jutai activities.
Why did the Cañavelas quit serving as police officers in guerrilla VGs to join the Jutai? According to their postwar testimonies to the CIC (Counterintelligence Corps of the US Army) agents, one reason for their shift, as evidenced by the following statement, was the practical need to make a living:
We were quite afraid of both Japanese forces and the guerrilla forces. Although we took part in the guerrilla activities, all of us were not paid and not given food. So, when we heard of the recruitment of the Jutai conducted by the Japanese, I couldn't believe it because we would be given enough food and money. We peasants had been under oppression from the rule of landlords since the American colonial years. We were longing for taking vengeance on them. Then, we decided to take side with the Japanese to change our miserable circumstances.Footnote 52
Parallel cases of violence also resulted from Jutai operations in Dagami, in central Leyte. One case involved Anselmo Tarazona. Born in Cebu in 1908, Tarazona was a peasant in Dagami during the American colonial years. When the Japanese invaded Leyte, he was initially involved in guerrilla activities against them. But he was captured by the Matsunaga Unit in the early months of 1942 and then started to serve as a houseboy for the unit. According to the testimony of an acquaintance in the barrio, Tarazona's daughter had married a man named Sekiya, one of the long-term Japanese nationals resident in Dagami. Mingling with his Japanese son-in-law, Tarazona learnt to speak, read and write Japanese; when the Japanese authorities learnt of his proficiency in the language, he was officially hired as a translator. He received a stable income from this work and also engaged in the procurement of foodstuffs, including rice and corn, pigs, carabaos and chickens.Footnote 53
In November 1943, Tarazona played an active part in the ‘mopping-up operations’ conducted by the Omori Unit by providing them with information on suspected guerrillas.Footnote 54 Informants notified Tarazona of alleged guerrilla contacts made by the Dumduma family, in Dagami. The Yamashita Unit (the 2nd Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment) rapidly responded by arresting five members of the family and sending them to headquarters, where they were tortured and later publicly executed. According to the testimony of the Dumduma's neighbours in Dagami, Tarazona was not alone in such collaboration: the mayor, Francisco Sudario, was also involved in such Japanese operations.Footnote 55
How many local peasants or fishermen took part in Jutai activities? There is a gap in the historical records about the strength of Jutai membership, though some sources in CIC dossiers show that the membership may have been five or six hundred.Footnote 56 After anti-American propaganda training, they started to assist Japanese soldiers in areas where the guerrillas were active. After the war, most Jutai members were arrested and interrogated by the US Army's CIC agents. Some of them were even charged with treason in the People's Court. Many were alleged to have been involved in killing guerrillas and civilians. It can be said that the Japanese guerrilla mopping-up operations would not have succeeded without their collaboration.
Other cases of acts of violence committed by police forces or the Jutai showed that even children or minors could be involved in collaboration. Gomerciendo Gobenciong was a poor Filipino Chinese peasant. He was born in Tanauan in eastern Leyte and according to the postwar testimony of his friend to the CIC, when Gobenciong was 17, he joined the PC despite his parents’ opposition. When war broke out, he was tempted by a friend to join Landia's guerrilla organisation, but the financial security that came with the PC, then a Japanese-sponsored police agency, led him to decide to stay with that force. However, this was not the only reason behind his decision. The political dominance of some elite guerrilla leaders, including Landia, aroused his hostility and this was exacerbated by the atrocities committed by Landia's forces; thus, he became an active Japanese collaborator. Another reason why he sided with the Japanese was that some of Landia's men were said to have set fire to his home in Tanauan sometime in March 1943 as they suspected his father of being a collaborator.Footnote 57
After the war, some informants testified that Gobenciong had been very sadistic and cruel, torturing or beating guerrillas who were arrested during anti-guerrilla operations ordered by Collantes. In February 1944, a man named Castillo, a suspected guerrilla, was charged with owning a gun, and Gobenciong arrested him and took him to the Japanese Army's garrison in Abuyog, where he beat the man up to make him confess. Castillo was released, but Gobenciong still followed him to report on his movements to the Japanese authorities. One day Gobenciong was in Castillo's home barrio in Betio, where he was courting a girl. When Gobenciong saw the girl, he could not help approaching the girl to serenade her. But his rude conduct enraged Castillo's neighbours. Threatening them with his pistol, Gobenciong arrested and took them to the Japanese garrison where he beat and tortured them. In addition to such brutality, he was involved in the killing of civilians suspected of being guerrillas. Verra, one of the prominent landlords in Abuyog and a member of Captain Landia's guerrillas, had a tenant whose name was Juan Cadan. Cadan was charged with looking after Verra's home and property with Pelageo Elmedo, another of Landia's group, because the Japanese soldiers were looting all deserted homes. On 16 March 1944, Elmedo said that he saw a patrol of BCs and Japanese soldiers approaching. Elmedo ran away about 400 yards and hid so that Cadan would not be found with a guerrilla in his home. Unfortunately, Cadan was spotted by the Japanese and taken to their garrison with his hands tied behind his back. At the garrison, without the attendance of the Japanese soldiers, Gobenciong and Francisco Cañavela, also a BC member, began to beat him. After torturing him, Gobenciong and Cañavela knifed Cadan to death.Footnote 58
From the second half of 1943 until mid-1944, the Yamashita Unit's mopping-up operations against the guerrillas increased in intensity. By then, the Japanese were also assisted by BC surveillance. Gobenciong helped to spread propaganda against the Americans, forcibly taking foodstuffs from the masses and participating alongside the Japanese in committing atrocities and torture. The CIC dossiers show that he was allegedly involved in ten cases of murdering guerrilla suspects and that he used weapons to abuse his authority over ordinary residents. Gebenciong's CIC interrogation statements show that he seemed to have seriously felt that the Japanese Occupation could bring about a better life for the poor peasants. He was convicted of collaboration in the People's Court but was placed on probation due to his youth. In the vicinity of Abuyog, even after the war most locals were resentful towards members of both the Japanese-sponsored BC and the Jutai. It would take a long time for these social divisions to fade.Footnote 59
Home Guard and Naval Police in Ormoc (November–December 1944)
Another paramilitary group in Ormoc, the Home Guard, set up alongside the Naval Police, also contributed to the deterioration of security in the area in late 1944 and the postwar period. As mentioned, sugar production was a large-scale business around Ormoc, where numerous peasants lived in conditions of abject poverty exploited by the leading hacenderos. During the Japanese Occupation, Catalino Hermosilla, the Japanese-sponsored mayor, was wholly entrusted with local administration because he was so popular. In November 1942 Mayor Hermosilla organised the paramilitary Home Guard as part of the security measures directed against guerrillas and appointed his nephew, Francisco Hermosilla, as its leader. Most of its members were peasants working on the Hermosilla or Larrazabal haciendas.Footnote 60
Jose Gaquit was one of those who joined this organisation. After the war, he testified that the Home Guard was well funded and trained by the Japanese. Its activities included attempting to persuade guerrillas belonging to Miranda's WLGWF to surrender or arresting and interrogating them, using violence. At the same time, they were actively involved in anti-American propaganda and mopping-up operations against the guerrillas alongside the Abe Platoon (October 1942 to November 1943) and the Nakazawa Company (after January 1944).Footnote 61
Gaquit participated in such Home Guard activities for reasons that parallel those of Gobenciong in Tanauan. The CIC dossier notes that Gaquit's father was killed by one of Miranda's WLGWF men under Lt Cataag. Gaquit was born in Ormoc in 1925 where he completed his secondary education before the war. After war broke out he started work in his parents’ pharmacy. At the onset of the Occupation, when the Hirayama Platoon was stationed in Ormoc,Footnote 62 Gaquit and his family fled to the mountains. However, they soon returned to the town centre to their pharmacy business where, sometime in 1942, guerrillas witnessed them selling medicines to Japanese soldiers, which led to his father's murder. During his postwar CIC interrogation, Gaquit mentioned that one of Lt Cataag's men had killed his father and that this had caused him to harbour hatred of the guerrillas and had driven him to collaborate with the Japanese.Footnote 63
The Naval Police near barrio Valencia, Ormoc, were another paramilitary aligned with Japanese war efforts. It seems to have been organised when the US forces were approaching the town. This occurred at the same time as the landing of the 1st Division of the Japanese Army from Manchuria, in the vicinity of Ormoc Port in December 1944. Though there is as little information in the records about this organisation as there is about the Jutai, it is nonetheless still possible to glimpse the nature of its activities. They banked on the anti-American sentiments of the masses to serve Japanese war efforts in Ormoc. More than fifty members, most of them landless farmers and low-ranking police, joined the Naval Police. The CIC investigation report mentions that the function of the Naval Police in Valencia was to oversee civilians working on the Valencia Airstrip, built by the Japanese Navy during the occupation. The leaders of this organisation were Paulito Baloran, chief of police of Valencia, and Pedro and Alfredo Yap. Interestingly, some Japanese descendants or Korean residents, born in the Philippines to Filipino mothers married to Japanese immigrants, such as Dioniso Osawa, Miguela Osawa, Ando Yoshiharu and Boku Seishin, became members. The CIC report also points out that the Naval Police were connected to the activities of the Colorum in Ormoc,Footnote 64 organised by one Perfecto Alicaway, who was the alleged local leader of Sakdal in the town. It also states that Alicaway's residence was used as the Naval Police headquarters and later sheltered Baloran and the Yap family until all of them were arrested and interrogated by CIC personnel in January 1945.Footnote 65
After its inception the Naval Police expanded to other barrios, concentrating their activities on ‘peacekeeping operations’, in other words, guerrilla hunting. Most of its members nursed hostility against both the WLGWF and the two leading local landlords, the Larrazabals and the Hermosillas. Some of the barrio heads (lieutenants), also joined the Japanese in their guerrilla-hunting patrols, during which both guerrillas and some unarmed civilians were killed or injured.
Eimination of anti-American ‘subversives’
A careful examination of violence in postwar Leyte also throws some light on this discussion of wartime violence. Mainstream Philippine historiography considers the former to be merely a by-product of the Japanese Occupation. However, this observation glosses over the full complexity of the postwar social violence, much of which occurred as independence was clearly approaching. Though case studies reveal that violence among ‘neighbours’ invariably took on different hues, there were commonalities across motives for resistance and/or collaboration at various stages of the Second World War. Although some of these were opportunistic in nature, others were acts of faith connected to a desire for social justice and liberation from all forms of foreign rule and rulers. This was reflected in the case of Blas Miranda, of the WLGWF, and indeed of the many lesser figures active in other paramilitary groups. Unfortunately, the sincerity of their views was overridden during the postwar American ‘rehabilitation’ period in Leyte, when the social divisions in local communities re-emerged and violence against former collaborators became rampant.
When the US landing forces pushed the Japanese 16th Division into retreating to the interior of Leyte, civilian violence increased. In newly ‘liberated’ areas, some residents, especially those who had taken part in guerrilla activities against the Japanese, conducted house-to-house searches hunting former members of paramilitary groups such as the Jutai or PC to exact their vengeance.Footnote 66 The killings reflected and exacerbated the profound social divisions within communities.
The memoirs of Ken-nosuke Nakajima, a former soldier of the Japanese 9th Infantry Regiment, mention that many Jutai members in the Dulag and Abuyog areas were massacred by Landia's men.Footnote 67 Vigilante punishments were meted out not only to former collaborators but also to their relatives or neighbours. The CIC's ‘Weekly Report’ of 28 December 1944 reported that collaborator-hunting had climaxed among the locals with the remnants of Miranda's WLGWF being abused and killed on the spot when found. It further noted that such actions had created unrest in communities and had a profound impact on the employment of former collaborators in the province during the postwar period.Footnote 68 One resident in Sitio Balite, Villaba, told me in an interview that she had witnessed numerous summary executions in a sugar cane plantation of remnants of the WLGWF accused of collaboration with the Japanese.Footnote 69
The American military authorities in Ormoc branded such elements as the remnants of the WLGWF, members of the Home Guard or the Naval Police as ‘vagrants’ and considered them to be involved in a ‘subversive’ movement against the reinstated Philippine Commonwealth regime,Footnote 70 revealing American concern with the disorder caused by pro-Japanese and WLGWF elements during the rehabilitation period. When the prewar political regime was reinstated the provincial elite spoke about the unity of the people during Philippine independence in 1946. Thus, after he was exonerated from the treason charges against him, Bernardo Torres, a wartime Japanese-sponsored governor of Leyte, declared that:
I wish only for the unity of our people. I wish for peace and order, first, as a preparation and foundation for that unity… But I can do credit to myself and be faithful to the memory of our heroes by doing my best to help unite all Filipinos not for any nation or race but for themselves, for the ideal that all the Filipinos should stand together, as one, in victory and defeat, in happiness or suffering. Footnote 71
Indeed, such remarks made by senior members of the province's elite reveal a desire for reconciliation among the residents who were still suffering from the scars of the war and a kind of healing for the local communities once divided into resistors and collaborators. However, this reconciliation was itself a product of the force and coercion exerted by the new regime. Miranda of the WLGWF initially denounced Kangleon's strategy against his group in his report, submitted to the US Army's Philippine-Ryukyus Command (PHILRYCOM) seeking recognition of his guerrilla group, in the last week of October 1944.Footnote 72
In the first place Miranda disliked Kangleon's politics since the latter had once surrendered to the Japanese in Mindanao in May 1942. He preferred to get in touch with Col. Peralta in Panay Island to seek support for the WLGWF. When Miranda's hideout in Ormoc was invaded by Kangleon's force in August 1943, he escaped to Camotes Island while most of his men surrendered to Kangleon's LAC or collaborated with the Japanese. Miranda stayed on the island only long enough to realise that Kangleon's men would find and kill him. He emphasised that ‘I fought for freedom. I have not only sacrificed my life and the life of my family a hundred times against the Japs, bandits, and my own comrades in arms who had were interceded to take my life treacherously.’ He added ‘(What) I have done in the guerrillas was for the common good of all, and not for personal profit, personal gain, or to build up my personal future in politics, personal gain, or a means to seek revenge.’ In this report he asked that the US forces to recognise the WLGWF as a legitimate guerrilla forces like Kangleon's LAC, never breathing a word of his anti-Americanism.Footnote 73
A former WLGWF guerrilla in Ormoc told me in an interview that death threats were issued to Miranda to pressure him into surrendering to Kangleon. As mentioned, his wife and two daughters were raped, kidnapped and jailed by Kangleon's men in August 1943 and it was not until the spring of 1945 that Miranda could see them again. Miranda was forced to surrender to Kangleon on condition that he would never again utter an anti-regime or anti-American remark. This may have been part of a secret deal between Miranda and the LAC to secure his family's release.Footnote 74
In spite of his surrender to the LAC, Miranda's influence among Leyte's masses remained. A CIC report dated 31 December 1944 mentions American concern about the menace to Leyte society constituted by the existence of Miranda since ‘he still [had] a considerable following, most of whom are poor tenants of leading landlords, in the Ormoc area, which could conceivably cause trouble at this time by an opposition movement to the Kangleon Government’.Footnote 75 But Miranda himself had no real choice but to accept the transaction in exchange for his family's lives. After this virtual surrender to Kangleon he applied to join the Replacement Battalion of the Philippine Army in Palo in a bid to obtain guerrilla recognition honours for his men during the war, but this was rejected by PHILRYCOM in May 1945.Footnote 76 After the release of his wife and daughters, he was dispatched to Zambales as a local police chief. His dream of establishing a real independent nation in the Visayas was frustrated, but many Leyteños have looked upon him favourably ever since.
Collaboration issues and the poor (November 1944–May 1946)
Meanwhile, in eastern Leyte including Abuyog, Burauen, Dulag, and La Paz, most of the collaborators were arrested by CIC agents following a ‘blacklist’ drawn up by Landia, Gallego and their followers. Those arrested were interned in the civilian internment camps in Tacloban or in Abuyog. According to the list drawn up by the local CIC in Tacloban (224th CIC Detachment), there were 34 suspected collaborators interned in the military police stockade at Dulag, as of 31 October 1944.Footnote 77 Another CIC report entitled ‘Filipino blacklist’ dated the same day shows the number of former Kempeitai spies as 24; of those who swore allegiance to the Japanese government in Dulag, 11; of the BC, 32; the Jutai, 12; and miscellaneous pro-Japanese caught by Landia's group, 10.Footnote 78
Also, on the same day the USFIP Headquarters wrote another report on the internees, ‘Consolidated list of enemy spies and collaborators’. It shows that 62 collaborators were arrested in the town of Alang-Alang; 8 in Barugo; 107 in Burauen; 7 in Carigara; 72 in Dagami; 38 in Dulag; 8 in Jaro; 28 in La Paz; 23 in Palo; 1 in San Miguel; 33 in Tacloban; 52 in Tanauan; and 28 in Tolosa.Footnote 79 Interestingly, the number of collaborators or alleged enemy spies arrested were relatively high in towns such as Alang-Alang, Burauen, Dagami, Dulag, Tacloban, Tanauan and Tolosa where anti-American sentiments had been quite strong for decades, since the Philippine–American War.
Those arrested by the CIC included some municipal officials such as Jose Caing, the mayor of Dulag. Caing was said to have had cordial relations with Captain Yamazoe, commanding officer of the Japanese Army in Dulag from October 1942 to April 1943. According to some memoirs written by Japanese soldiers, and the testimonies of local residents in the 1970s, Yamazoe behaved gently towards the local officials as well as the townspeople, who admired him as a ‘highly respected Japanese officer’. He was killed in a guerrilla ambush in April 1943.Footnote 80 From my interviews in municipalities such as Tanauan, Dulag, Dagami and Burauen, I learnt that the name of Captain Yamazoe itself was well-known among the generations who survived the war.Footnote 81 As mentioned, collaborators or former members of the Jutai under the command of the Kempeitai as well as those under Mayor Caing were massacred by Landia's men in 1945.
In Abuyog, local reactions to collaborators were also harsh. On 13 November 1944, the civilian volunteer leadership and the teniente del barrio of Abuyog adopted a resolution severely denouncing all collaborators, including Ricardo Collantes and Eleuterio Caña. The denunciation included labelling members of the Jutai or PC as traitors or war criminals. This resolution was forwarded to the CIC office in Tacloban,Footnote 82 and the CIC duly arrested Collantes and interned him in the civilian camp in Tacloban. Based on CIC reports, the Commonwealth special prosecutor filed 13 counts of treason against him and numerous local people and guerrilla leaders, including Gallego and Landia, filed affidavits against him late in 1944. Strangely though, most of them changed their opinions in 1946. Reinvestigation started in the People's Court where a number of witnesses now testified in favour of Collantes. In fact, even Gallego and Landia advanced favourable testimony.Footnote 83
Clearly, in this case, there was some movement behind the scenes. In April 1945, the CIC in Tacloban produced a short memorandum entitled ‘Coercion of internee's family’. This mentioned that through Landia's influence, one of his men, Captain Traya, had sought to purchase, for less than its market value, some land owned by Collantes near Abuyog. Moreover, Traya offered to use his influence to either secure Collantes’ release or a supply of favourable affidavits. According to this memorandum, this offer was made to Mrs Collantes sometime in March 1945.Footnote 84 While there is no direct evidence to show that the Collantes family accepted such an offer, it is clear that a number of witnesses did indeed submit affidavits and testimonies favourable to Collantes.
Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that Collantes’ case was as politicised as other collaboration cases involving the national elite. Postwar politics in the Philippines prevented former witnesses from telling the truth about former collaborators, particularly those from the upper echelons of society. The CIC investigation found that some members both of Landia's and Gallego's guerrilla groups had been paid to spy on other groups for the Japanese. Certainly, some former followers of both leaders had also collaborated with the Japanese. As such, Landia was surely afraid that Collantes’ trial could possibly have an adverse impact on his political status as well as his ambitions—in the event, he went on to become governor of Leyte in 1949. In March 1946, the special prosecutor handling the Collantes’ case could not help being irritated with witnesses who decided they did not want to testify even though his collaboration was quite obvious. The prosecutor asserts in this memorandum that ‘the witnesses, especially the aggrieved parties themselves have become turncoat either to political pressure, lack of interest for having forgiven the treacherous act of Subject (Ricardo Collantes) or due to amicable settlement’.Footnote 85
Collantes had also opposed the Americans and sided with the poor while collaborating with the Japanese. Part of the Civilian Volunteer's and Teniente del Barrio of Abuyog's statement on 13 November 1944 read: ‘For the satisfaction of the poor people they had maliciously victimised through their criminal, traitorous and pro Japanese activities and crimes.’Footnote 86 Having aligned himself with the poor and profited from his collaboration with the Japanese, he trusted the latter and tried to create his own political sphere for the masses in the town. But the local oligarchs, most of whom were former guerrilla leaders, hindered such efforts.
In stark contrast, most collaboration cases brought against the poor were not viewed as being political but were simply dismissed as unpatriotic conduct with most of the accused being found guilty in the People's Court. The case of Gobenciong recounted above was one of these. He was a former member of the BC and Jutai in Abuyog and Dulag and was alleged to have been involved in the murder of local civilians. He was found guilty as charged, but the sentence was commuted on the grounds of his minor status at the time. Paulito Baloran, a poor farmer and a leader of the Colorum and the Naval Police in Ormoc, was also found guilty and convicted. Ceferino Bartiquin, a former barrio lieutenant in Barrio Cabulihan in Ormoc, was said to be a member of the Colorum and was allegedly implicated in killing guerrillas. He was sentenced to death by the People's Court.Footnote 87 Local elites such as Collantes and Caing could seek assistance from someone in a position of influence, but this option was not available to the poor who had to accept their sentence.
For the ordinary Leyteños, wartime collaboration with the Japanese was the only way to seek social justice as recompense for the poverty and hardship they had endured under both Spanish and American colonial rule. Thus, their wartime choices and actions should be seen also in the context of anticolonialism, and not solely in terms of collaboration with a occupying force. In this sense, the relatively high number of ‘collaborators’ in eastern Leyte, and wartime violence among the people, can be seen as a manifestation of the ‘unfinished revolution’ the local masses had nurtured since General Emilio Aguinaldo surrendered to the Americans in March 1901. It cannot be denied, of course, that opportunistic motives drove some of the poor to collaborate with the Japanese, but the poverty they had experienced under elite-dominated Leyte society was the crucible of their motivation for engaging in violence during the Occupation. Their decision to collaborate with the Japanese was thus an act of faith, built on a burning desire to change the elite domination of Philippine society which continued to be firmly rooted during American colonial rule. As with the Hukbalahap or Makapili movements in central and southern Luzon, many Leyteños were frustrated with a society where a handful elite figures or hacendero had dominated politics and the economy, impoverishing the masses. Notably, two of the leaders discussed here, Ricardo Collantes in Abuyog and Blas Miranda in Ormoc, were sympathetic towards the poor who were mobilised to create a kind of ‘commune’ in the locality, irrespective of being pro- or anti-Japanese.
These voices raised in protest about social injustice in Leyte were not accepted as representing legitimate political groups by the reinstated Commonwealth regime and US forces, however. Their ‘unfinished revolution’ was again suppressed, with American involvement, in the lead up to Philippine independence in July 1946; once again this was similar to the fate of the Huks in central Luzon. Thus, these cases were treated as nothing more than treasonable acts committed by ‘bandits’, and the violence they perpetrated among their own people has been either forgotten or written off as just more social upheaval caused by the war and postwar aftermath. Nevertheless, such violence should be investigated both as an important historical phenomenon and for the ways in which it reverberates in the recurrent violence n Philippine society.
The chief of police in Ormoc City told me in an interview in June 1995 that private armies were organised by several local landlords including the Tans, the Larrazabals, the Cabahugs, the Seraficas, the Pastors and the Hermosillas, adding that most of the members were landless peasants who worked as tenants on their plantations.Footnote 88 In addition, a former WLGWF guerrilla told me that some members of these private armies were relatives of former WLGWF, Naval Police or Home Guard members.Footnote 89
It could be said that the local landlords are once more using or exploiting the energy of a simmering ‘unfinished revolution’ and that instead of improving social conditions, the rich control politics and the economy by redirecting the energy of the poor. Thus, the violent energy generated by the poor during the Japanese Occupation has been transformed into the energy of another kind of violence that may seem to equate to the political ‘bossism’ identified by Alfred McCoy and John T. Sidel, who describe such violence in Philippine society as a product of factional strife among the elite in provincial politics. However, this view ignores the violence that simmered among the masses long before the war and which made itself manifest during the Japanese Occupation.Footnote 90
Conclusion
Violence among the masses during the Japanese Occupation was a product of the frustrations of the lower strata of the elites and the poor with the social inequalities rooted in the Spanish and the American colonial years. However, it was not until the beginning of the Occupation that the masses in Leyte were awakened by Miranda's efforts, for example, and became conscious of their situation. Unfortunately, as they were poor and uneducated, they did not know how to channel their energy to best mobilise towards their final goal: real freedom. Therefore, amid the total elimination of ‘subversive elements’ during the postwar ‘rehabilitation’ period in the provinces, their energy was dissipated, suppressed and annihilated by the reinstated Commonwealth government and the Americans. This energy on the periphery of the Philippines has now turned into another kind of violence which has assumed the form of the private armies that protect the properties and vested interests of Leyte's rich. This frustrated energy of the poor is exploited by the local oligarchs, sometimes leading to the serious violence associated with drugs and political corruption in Philippine society.
In the ‘War on Drugs’ initiated by Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, for example, numerous individuals from poor and marginal communities have been recruited into local VGs to conduct extrajudicial public killings of addicts in the name of maintaining public order. It has been rumoured that police officers have hired the poor to kill for cash. Through Duterte's campaign, it appears that the poor are being used to do the killing by some leading officials including prominent politicians or high-ranking military officials and police officers.Footnote 91 There are always a few amongst those who need money who may accept such jobs, which may even involve killing someone who threatens the interests of the rich. In this respect, it could be said that there is some continuity between wartime violence and the current extrajudicial executions in provincial Philippines.
As Brian Fegan argues, among other things, that disempowered rural Filipinos have had, since the early twentieth century, two critical commodities that they can use to negotiate with the dominant elites—their votes and their capacity to engage in violence.Footnote 92 As ‘entrepreneurs in violence’, the poor in Leyte during the war received arms from the Japanese and fought against anyone who resisted the occupation forces, or they received arms from guerrilla groups and fought against the Japanese and those designated as ‘collaborators’, or they received arms in the private armies to protect the estates of landed elites.
Fegan's view may convince us that the wartime violence among the masses in Leyte was nothing more than a by-product of the Japanese Occupation which could be connected to the current anti-drug criminality in Philippine society. Acording to Elmer Lear, the local populace has never been mobilised towards the social movements.Footnote 93 But neither view fully explains the whole dynamic of violence among the masses in Leyte. How can they explain the obvious collaboration in serious acts of violence committed by the Jutai in several towns where there had been furious battles between the Filipino revolutionaries and the Americans in the early 1900s? And also, how can they interpret the actions of Blas Miranda and his following, most of whom were the poor, in their fight against their fellow Leyteños in Kangleon's force?
Except for those who acted opportunistically, the poor in Leyte acted in good faith. Whether or not they were resisters or collaborators is not the question. They trusted the people in power, regardless of whether they were Filipino elites or Japanese officers, in seeking justice. Unfortunately, most of the local elites betrayed them after the war to save their own reputations. As proof, most of the poor collaborators were convicted as charged with the crime of treason in the People's Court while the elite saw their charges dropped or were acquitted.
Collantes in Abuyog, for example, initially took the side of the poor during the Occupation, but after he was arrested by the CIC, it was obvious that he had used the poor for his own ends, and could clear his reputation as a collaborator. His case at the People's Court was dropped as no witnesses wanted to come forth regarding his wartime collaboration. The local elites like him later stigmatised the poor so as not to take any responsibility for the wartime violence they had helped unleash. The only actors on the wartime stage truly seeking national freedom were the local masses. They had no choice at the time but to employ violent methods because these were the only ways to make their presence felt in the elite-dominated society of the province. In fact, the masses in Leyte pursued a number of different paths, in the anti-Japanese guerrilla forces, and in a complex mix of elite-dominated paramilitary groups that operated in between the occupying troops and guerrillas. Unlike the Huks in Luzon, they were not waging a total war against the regime, however. After the war, some of them returned to their previous way of life; others were drafted into private armies.
Leyte was not alone in experiencing such wartime violence. There were mass movements in other regions of the Visayan Islands including Panay and Negros which also led to the formation of paramilitary groups that collaborated with the Japanese.Footnote 94 There is thus still scope for others to seriously examine these matters and to discover the reality of life in the Visayas during the Japanese Occupation.
