War's End

From a personal account of the late Raul M. Gonzalez:

“The day came when American soldiers landed in Iloilo.  They were welcomed everywhere while the Japanese soldiers fled to the mountains of Antique and Capiz and the shores of Aklan.  Pocket groups of stragglers dug in and made a valiant but futile effort to thwart the advance of the Americans.  The Japanese Imperial Army faded into the night and lingered only as a memory of a senseless war.   

“Our family went back to our residential house in Barangay Quintin Salas in Jaro and found it in ruins.  The guerillas used the house as its headquarters and Japanese soldiers targeted it, as they abandoned Iloilo City.  After the Japanese fled, the guerillas stripped the house of whatever useable furnishings they can lay their hands on and left the house in shambles.  In the days that followed, Sergio and I went back to the farm to see what remains of our property.  Everything looked normal and even the pile of harvested palay called tumpi looked untouched, slightly leaning to one side probably because of the wind.

“We went about our business and went home for lunch.  Unknown to us, there was a Japanese soldier hiding inside the tumpi waiting for a chance to get away.  Realizing that there was no way he can slip away undetected, he decided to end his misery, took out a match and burned the pile of palay with him in it.  The people soon realized what happened and they stood guard around the tumpi. 

“It was a pitiful sight, knowing that a man was burning inside.  The smell of burning flesh lingered in the air for hours.  The straggler likely thought that it was the best that he could do.  If he got caught, who can say how the bitter guerillas will treat an enemy?  In the town of Barotac Nuevo, the angry populace butchered all the Japanese soldiers they could find except for the cook who was able to flee.  To the Japanese, there is honor and nobility in taking one’s life in the face of defeat.

“Life was coming back to the Iloilo City.  Residents returned from their mountain lairs.  It was time to pick up the pieces of their lives.  American servicemen mingled with the natives freely and a brisk barter trade flourished for lack of credible currency.  Filipinos snatched up American goods including cigarettes, K-rations, coffee, corned beef, balls of cheese and, yes, chocolates.  These were the memories of liberation days. 

“Warmed by the euphoria of peace, children were like unbridled ponies, running all over the place.  This was how it was when our youngest brother Mario, at 7 years of age, was hit by a military jeep driven by an American soldier.  We rushed him to a hospital where doctors announced that his arm must be opened up.  He died of an overdose of anesthesia.  His death was so unnecessary, so meaningless, at a time when war had finally ended.”

Delfin Gonzalez in the Guerilla Movement

From the manuscript of Ken Ishikawa:

“After the Pacific War broke out and the Japanese Imperial Army succeeded in overrunning the last bastion of the US-Filipino forces on the island of Corregidor on 09 April 1941, the Japanese began their expansion to the south. On April 16, the Japanese landed on the island of Panay.  They began occupying the districts of La Paz, Molo, Jaro, and downtown Iloilo City, and started turning schools, civic buildings, and large houses into their garrisons…

“In order to raise the morale of the populace in Panay and to keep peace and order amidst enemy occupation, Tomas Confesor established a provisional provincial government. Because of his background in leading farms and haciendas, Delfin Gonzalez was named by Confesor as his Food Administrator for Jaro and Leganes, referred to by the resistance forces as Zone 9. 

“It was Delfin's duty to make sure that agricultural production continued in his territory despite enemy occupation and that the people living in the area and the guerillas operating in the sector would not want for food.  Delfin travelled across his area through rice paddies, carefully avoiding the dirt roads where squads of Japanese soldiers patrolled.  He would visit outlying farms where crops were being covertly grown.  When he was not travelling, Delfin tended his own farm with crops he used to supply the resistance.  Delfin chose to give the bulk of his harvests to the guerillas and the needy.  His son, RMG, remembers that the family subsisted mainly on lugaw or rice broth, seasoned only with either sugar or  salt, during the length of the Japanese occupation.

“Delfin did not lack for help in providing nourishment for his family; his sons, Sergio and Raul, learned how to forage for food.  They went to rice paddies, hunched, scanning the surface of the mud for mouths of tilapia or catfish.  Their tenants taught them the proper technique of catching catfish without getting stung by their barbs, a skill the boys happily applied in dozens of afternoons along the ditches and mudflats near the farms.  When villagers harvested mung bean in a field somewhere, Raul and Sergio looked for unharvested seeds along with other children and womenfolk.

“As if the routine his job demanded of him was not dangerous enough, Delfin would, now and then, get missives from his fellow guerillas inviting him to meetings.  Couriers from Confesor stashed orders and information meant for him in a hollow stalk of bamboo at a grove in a secret location near his house.  Once Delfin has memorized the instructions and the meeting places, he assigned Raul to hide these clandestine papers in the holes in the stilts of their house.  Whenever he set out for these gatherings, he would normally take someone to accompany him. One such companion was Sergio who walked with his father to Tacas to meet guerilla leaders there.

“Delfin knew that his role under Confesor's resistance government doubled the dangers for his family.  Aside from being responsible for his wife and brood of five children, he also had to worry for his sister-in-law Anita, her husband and her two children.  Because of this, Delfin was very careful not to rouse the suspicion of the Japanese.  Through his vigilance and caution, he was able to keep his guerilla and patriotic activities a secret.”