Wartime Memories

[Maxxclip]

Originally Posted by overtureph

"It was as if God wasn't around..."

Naalala ko tuloy yung "Exorcist: The Beginning"... "God is not here today priest"

[Maxxclip]

Originally Posted by overtureph

"It was as if God wasn't around..."

Naalala ko tuloy yung "Exorcist: The Beginning"... "God is not here today priest"

[overtureph]

THERE’S THE RUB
Museum

By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer
Last updated 02:39am (Mla time) 08/29/2007

There’s a part in Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” where the residents of the village of Macondo begin suffering from an affliction of forgetfulness. Not just amnesia or loss of memory but total blackout. They forget the use of household articles and even their names. To help them recall what they are and what they do, they attach labels to them. But soon they forget the meanings of the words themselves and the letters that form them.

I leave the reader to learn what happens afterward. But I remembered it after I read about the Bantayog ng mga Bayani now having a museum that houses memorabilia about martial law, including a reproduction of the cells that held the people who fought it. It’s not exactly Madame Tussaud’s House of Wax, there are only life-sized photographs of Ferdinand Marcos and Jose Diokno in lieu of lifelike wax figurines of Torquemada and Joan of Arc, but it does a creditable job of showing a horrific part of our history. Beats any tent of horror in a traveling "perya" [circus].

I remembered Márquez particularly in light of one thing. The point of the museum, as Carolina Malay points out, is to help our youth remember one of the darkest moments of our past and make sure it doesn’t happen again. “It’s not their fault that they don’t have memories of martial law. It’s up to us, their parents, to show them something about martial law and impart lessons to them.” That is admirable, except for one thing: Most of the youth, and adults, of this country don’t remember Bantayog ng mga Bayani [Monument of Heroes]. Hell, most of them don’t even know there’s one.

The word “museum” to refer to the place that houses the martial law memorabilia is not a little unkindly ironic. Museums, of course, are not the most popular places in other countries, luring only the occasional tourist or the class of a determined teacher -- hence “museum piece” to refer to forgotten, or ignored, relics -- but they are not also horrendously unpopular ones. To go by the fate of our National Museum itself, a near-magical place where our past unravels in tangible vitality before your eyes, but which drags in only the cat and bedraggled groups of people who look like they’d rather be elsewhere, museum for us doesn’t just rhyme with mausoleum, it might as well be synonymous to it.

It’s nice to have reminders, if you can remember what they mean -- or where they are.

FYI, Bantayog ng mga Bayani is in a perfectly accessible spot of this earth, which is the corner of Quezon Avenue and the Edsa highway, a stone’s throw (by a very feeble stone-thrower) from the Metro Rail Transit's Quezon Avenue station. You can do worse than spend a nice Sunday afternoon there, while the breezes blow and the sun shines, looking at the names carved on the Wall of Remembrance, which belong to those who did something heroic for us in more recent times, which claimed many of their lives, and which is why the breezes blow and the sun shines for us today. You can do even worse than going to the National Museum itself and bathing in the waters of the past, which flow copiously into the present.

In this light, I’d like to repeat the suggestion I made a couple of weeks ago on how to improve our education by leaps and bounds, which is to emphasize history. My other suggestion, of course, is to line up the crooks that steal education money at the Luneta and make them history. I do think that Bantayog ng mga Bayani, the National Museum and their kind are beacons in a windswept sea, but I don’t know why we should always flounder in the storm when we can sail in balmy weather. This country’s inability to remember martial law is but a drop of water in the deep well that is this country’s inability to remember what went before. Jason Bourne at least was determined to recover his past, Juan de la Cruz isn’t. We’re a rudderless country drifting aimlessly in the present.

My suggestion comes from my own experience, which I’ve told readers countless times over the past 20 years. (Come to think of it, this column will be 20 years before the end of this year!) That is that when I began devouring books on Philippine history in my college years, flailed on by the activism of my time, I had the sensation of having my eyes opened after being blind all my life. I read “Noli” and “Fili” outside of class, not inside it, out of dogged curiosity and not out of abject assignment, and saw Rizal climb down from his monument in Luneta and join our “dg” (discussion group) as it was called at the time. It was the first time I felt a sense of home, it was the first time I got to know who I was (you’ll never know who you are until you know who you were). It was the first time I felt proud to be a Filipino.

We want to produce citizens with idealism and purpose, I don’t know anything more guaranteed to do it than to make the kids read history. By whatever means, the classroom being the least of them. I’ve always said that if I were to run for president of this country (I really should apply for it given that the position is vacant), I’ll have only three things on my agenda: food, history and education. The first should take care of the present, the second of the past, the third of the future. None of those elements is dispensable. We need all three to survive, we need all three to flourish.

Of the three, teaching history is what we most need to do because it is what we most lack. That (and, yes, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) is what’s producing the mammoth ills we see today, not least history repeating itself. Not least the little shop of horrors in the Bantayog museum spilling over into our lives again today. The past is Ariadne’s thread leading out of the Minotaur’s cave. We don’t have a past, we won’t have a future.

We’ll just be, well, a museum or mausoleum, take your pick.


http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquirer...ticle_id=85263

[overtureph]

THERE’S THE RUB
Museum

By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer
Last updated 02:39am (Mla time) 08/29/2007

There’s a part in Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” where the residents of the village of Macondo begin suffering from an affliction of forgetfulness. Not just amnesia or loss of memory but total blackout. They forget the use of household articles and even their names. To help them recall what they are and what they do, they attach labels to them. But soon they forget the meanings of the words themselves and the letters that form them.

I leave the reader to learn what happens afterward. But I remembered it after I read about the Bantayog ng mga Bayani now having a museum that houses memorabilia about martial law, including a reproduction of the cells that held the people who fought it. It’s not exactly Madame Tussaud’s House of Wax, there are only life-sized photographs of Ferdinand Marcos and Jose Diokno in lieu of lifelike wax figurines of Torquemada and Joan of Arc, but it does a creditable job of showing a horrific part of our history. Beats any tent of horror in a traveling "perya" [circus].

I remembered Márquez particularly in light of one thing. The point of the museum, as Carolina Malay points out, is to help our youth remember one of the darkest moments of our past and make sure it doesn’t happen again. “It’s not their fault that they don’t have memories of martial law. It’s up to us, their parents, to show them something about martial law and impart lessons to them.” That is admirable, except for one thing: Most of the youth, and adults, of this country don’t remember Bantayog ng mga Bayani [Monument of Heroes]. Hell, most of them don’t even know there’s one.

The word “museum” to refer to the place that houses the martial law memorabilia is not a little unkindly ironic. Museums, of course, are not the most popular places in other countries, luring only the occasional tourist or the class of a determined teacher -- hence “museum piece” to refer to forgotten, or ignored, relics -- but they are not also horrendously unpopular ones. To go by the fate of our National Museum itself, a near-magical place where our past unravels in tangible vitality before your eyes, but which drags in only the cat and bedraggled groups of people who look like they’d rather be elsewhere, museum for us doesn’t just rhyme with mausoleum, it might as well be synonymous to it.

It’s nice to have reminders, if you can remember what they mean -- or where they are.

FYI, Bantayog ng mga Bayani is in a perfectly accessible spot of this earth, which is the corner of Quezon Avenue and the Edsa highway, a stone’s throw (by a very feeble stone-thrower) from the Metro Rail Transit's Quezon Avenue station. You can do worse than spend a nice Sunday afternoon there, while the breezes blow and the sun shines, looking at the names carved on the Wall of Remembrance, which belong to those who did something heroic for us in more recent times, which claimed many of their lives, and which is why the breezes blow and the sun shines for us today. You can do even worse than going to the National Museum itself and bathing in the waters of the past, which flow copiously into the present.

In this light, I’d like to repeat the suggestion I made a couple of weeks ago on how to improve our education by leaps and bounds, which is to emphasize history. My other suggestion, of course, is to line up the crooks that steal education money at the Luneta and make them history. I do think that Bantayog ng mga Bayani, the National Museum and their kind are beacons in a windswept sea, but I don’t know why we should always flounder in the storm when we can sail in balmy weather. This country’s inability to remember martial law is but a drop of water in the deep well that is this country’s inability to remember what went before. Jason Bourne at least was determined to recover his past, Juan de la Cruz isn’t. We’re a rudderless country drifting aimlessly in the present.

My suggestion comes from my own experience, which I’ve told readers countless times over the past 20 years. (Come to think of it, this column will be 20 years before the end of this year!) That is that when I began devouring books on Philippine history in my college years, flailed on by the activism of my time, I had the sensation of having my eyes opened after being blind all my life. I read “Noli” and “Fili” outside of class, not inside it, out of dogged curiosity and not out of abject assignment, and saw Rizal climb down from his monument in Luneta and join our “dg” (discussion group) as it was called at the time. It was the first time I felt a sense of home, it was the first time I got to know who I was (you’ll never know who you are until you know who you were). It was the first time I felt proud to be a Filipino.

We want to produce citizens with idealism and purpose, I don’t know anything more guaranteed to do it than to make the kids read history. By whatever means, the classroom being the least of them. I’ve always said that if I were to run for president of this country (I really should apply for it given that the position is vacant), I’ll have only three things on my agenda: food, history and education. The first should take care of the present, the second of the past, the third of the future. None of those elements is dispensable. We need all three to survive, we need all three to flourish.

Of the three, teaching history is what we most need to do because it is what we most lack. That (and, yes, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) is what’s producing the mammoth ills we see today, not least history repeating itself. Not least the little shop of horrors in the Bantayog museum spilling over into our lives again today. The past is Ariadne’s thread leading out of the Minotaur’s cave. We don’t have a past, we won’t have a future.

We’ll just be, well, a museum or mausoleum, take your pick.


http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquirer...ticle_id=85263

[overtureph]

THERE’S THE RUB
Museum

By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer
Last updated 02:39am (Mla time) 08/29/2007

There’s a part in Gabriel García Márquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” where the residents of the village of Macondo begin suffering from an affliction of forgetfulness. Not just amnesia or loss of memory but total blackout. They forget the use of household articles and even their names. To help them recall what they are and what they do, they attach labels to them. But soon they forget the meanings of the words themselves and the letters that form them.

I leave the reader to learn what happens afterward. But I remembered it after I read about the Bantayog ng mga Bayani now having a museum that houses memorabilia about martial law, including a reproduction of the cells that held the people who fought it. It’s not exactly Madame Tussaud’s House of Wax, there are only life-sized photographs of Ferdinand Marcos and Jose Diokno in lieu of lifelike wax figurines of Torquemada and Joan of Arc, but it does a creditable job of showing a horrific part of our history. Beats any tent of horror in a traveling "perya" [circus].

I remembered Márquez particularly in light of one thing. The point of the museum, as Carolina Malay points out, is to help our youth remember one of the darkest moments of our past and make sure it doesn’t happen again. “It’s not their fault that they don’t have memories of martial law. It’s up to us, their parents, to show them something about martial law and impart lessons to them.” That is admirable, except for one thing: Most of the youth, and adults, of this country don’t remember Bantayog ng mga Bayani [Monument of Heroes]. Hell, most of them don’t even know there’s one.

The word “museum” to refer to the place that houses the martial law memorabilia is not a little unkindly ironic. Museums, of course, are not the most popular places in other countries, luring only the occasional tourist or the class of a determined teacher -- hence “museum piece” to refer to forgotten, or ignored, relics -- but they are not also horrendously unpopular ones. To go by the fate of our National Museum itself, a near-magical place where our past unravels in tangible vitality before your eyes, but which drags in only the cat and bedraggled groups of people who look like they’d rather be elsewhere, museum for us doesn’t just rhyme with mausoleum, it might as well be synonymous to it.

It’s nice to have reminders, if you can remember what they mean -- or where they are.

FYI, Bantayog ng mga Bayani is in a perfectly accessible spot of this earth, which is the corner of Quezon Avenue and the Edsa highway, a stone’s throw (by a very feeble stone-thrower) from the Metro Rail Transit's Quezon Avenue station. You can do worse than spend a nice Sunday afternoon there, while the breezes blow and the sun shines, looking at the names carved on the Wall of Remembrance, which belong to those who did something heroic for us in more recent times, which claimed many of their lives, and which is why the breezes blow and the sun shines for us today. You can do even worse than going to the National Museum itself and bathing in the waters of the past, which flow copiously into the present.

In this light, I’d like to repeat the suggestion I made a couple of weeks ago on how to improve our education by leaps and bounds, which is to emphasize history. My other suggestion, of course, is to line up the crooks that steal education money at the Luneta and make them history. I do think that Bantayog ng mga Bayani, the National Museum and their kind are beacons in a windswept sea, but I don’t know why we should always flounder in the storm when we can sail in balmy weather. This country’s inability to remember martial law is but a drop of water in the deep well that is this country’s inability to remember what went before. Jason Bourne at least was determined to recover his past, Juan de la Cruz isn’t. We’re a rudderless country drifting aimlessly in the present.

My suggestion comes from my own experience, which I’ve told readers countless times over the past 20 years. (Come to think of it, this column will be 20 years before the end of this year!) That is that when I began devouring books on Philippine history in my college years, flailed on by the activism of my time, I had the sensation of having my eyes opened after being blind all my life. I read “Noli” and “Fili” outside of class, not inside it, out of dogged curiosity and not out of abject assignment, and saw Rizal climb down from his monument in Luneta and join our “dg” (discussion group) as it was called at the time. It was the first time I felt a sense of home, it was the first time I got to know who I was (you’ll never know who you are until you know who you were). It was the first time I felt proud to be a Filipino.

We want to produce citizens with idealism and purpose, I don’t know anything more guaranteed to do it than to make the kids read history. By whatever means, the classroom being the least of them. I’ve always said that if I were to run for president of this country (I really should apply for it given that the position is vacant), I’ll have only three things on my agenda: food, history and education. The first should take care of the present, the second of the past, the third of the future. None of those elements is dispensable. We need all three to survive, we need all three to flourish.

Of the three, teaching history is what we most need to do because it is what we most lack. That (and, yes, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) is what’s producing the mammoth ills we see today, not least history repeating itself. Not least the little shop of horrors in the Bantayog museum spilling over into our lives again today. The past is Ariadne’s thread leading out of the Minotaur’s cave. We don’t have a past, we won’t have a future.

We’ll just be, well, a museum or mausoleum, take your pick.


http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquirer...ticle_id=85263

[IsaRic]

Originally Posted by overtureph

This is a documentary on the Battle of Manila. I believe Wonderboy posted a link to this documentary film.

Sadly much of today's Filipinos seemed to have forgotten much of this chapter in our history. And I think, very few people know how much Manila suffered during and at the end of WWII. Most probably know about the destruction of Warsaw, the Rape of Nanking and the A-bombing of Nagasaki but I guess very few knew the extent of destruction in the Battle for Manila.

I got my copy from the Ayala Museum.

i was just reading about this! if u want one check out this link: http://www.battlingbastardsbataan.com/peter.htm

[IsaRic]

Originally Posted by overtureph

This is a documentary on the Battle of Manila. I believe Wonderboy posted a link to this documentary film.

Sadly much of today's Filipinos seemed to have forgotten much of this chapter in our history. And I think, very few people know how much Manila suffered during and at the end of WWII. Most probably know about the destruction of Warsaw, the Rape of Nanking and the A-bombing of Nagasaki but I guess very few knew the extent of destruction in the Battle for Manila.

I got my copy from the Ayala Museum.

i was just reading about this! if u want one check out this link: http://www.battlingbastardsbataan.com/peter.htm

[IsaRic]

Originally Posted by overtureph

This is a documentary on the Battle of Manila. I believe Wonderboy posted a link to this documentary film.

Sadly much of today's Filipinos seemed to have forgotten much of this chapter in our history. And I think, very few people know how much Manila suffered during and at the end of WWII. Most probably know about the destruction of Warsaw, the Rape of Nanking and the A-bombing of Nagasaki but I guess very few knew the extent of destruction in the Battle for Manila.

I got my copy from the Ayala Museum.

i was just reading about this! if u want one check out this link: http://www.battlingbastardsbataan.com/peter.htm

[IsaRic]

The picture above is of the prison guards in Mitsushima, Japan. Sitting in the of the first row are two officers. The one on the left was Capt. Sukeo Nakajima. The other officer was Lt. Kubo. Lt. Kubo eventually took over command of Mitsushima, because of the high death rate under Capt. Nakajima. Capt. Nakajima was executed by hanging.

The one to the left of Lt. Kubo was Matsuzaki, "Scareface". He was executed by hanging. To the left of Matsuzaki, was Tamotsu Kimura, "The Punk". Kimura was executed by hanging. Major Richard Gordon witnessed Kimura beat to death one of the POWs.

In the last row, directly over Capt. Nakajima, was Sadaharu Hiramatsu, "Big Glass Eye". Hiramatsu was executed by hanging.

Missing from the picture is one of Japan's most notorious prison guards, Matsuhiro Watanabe, "The Bird". Watanabe escaped his deserved punishment for crimes he committed in Mitsushima Prison Camp, by first deserting his post, as a guard, and then by going underground, until the American government stopped looking for war criminals in 1947, on orders from Gen. MacArthur. Watanabe was ranked #24, in MacArthurs list of wanted war criminals.

Watanabe, a disciplinary sergeant in the Japanese Army, was one of the most feared. His job was strictly to go from camp to camp and increase the level of discipline, severly beating prisoners in the process. Many died from his beatings. Today, Watanabe walks free and is a very wealthy man, living in Tokyo.

This picture is given to us by Major Richard Gordon.

http://home.pacbell.net/fbaldie/faces.html

[IsaRic]

The picture above is of the prison guards in Mitsushima, Japan. Sitting in the of the first row are two officers. The one on the left was Capt. Sukeo Nakajima. The other officer was Lt. Kubo. Lt. Kubo eventually took over command of Mitsushima, because of the high death rate under Capt. Nakajima. Capt. Nakajima was executed by hanging.

The one to the left of Lt. Kubo was Matsuzaki, "Scareface". He was executed by hanging. To the left of Matsuzaki, was Tamotsu Kimura, "The Punk". Kimura was executed by hanging. Major Richard Gordon witnessed Kimura beat to death one of the POWs.

In the last row, directly over Capt. Nakajima, was Sadaharu Hiramatsu, "Big Glass Eye". Hiramatsu was executed by hanging.

Missing from the picture is one of Japan's most notorious prison guards, Matsuhiro Watanabe, "The Bird". Watanabe escaped his deserved punishment for crimes he committed in Mitsushima Prison Camp, by first deserting his post, as a guard, and then by going underground, until the American government stopped looking for war criminals in 1947, on orders from Gen. MacArthur. Watanabe was ranked #24, in MacArthurs list of wanted war criminals.

Watanabe, a disciplinary sergeant in the Japanese Army, was one of the most feared. His job was strictly to go from camp to camp and increase the level of discipline, severly beating prisoners in the process. Many died from his beatings. Today, Watanabe walks free and is a very wealthy man, living in Tokyo.

This picture is given to us by Major Richard Gordon.

http://home.pacbell.net/fbaldie/faces.html

[IsaRic]

The picture above is of the prison guards in Mitsushima, Japan. Sitting in the of the first row are two officers. The one on the left was Capt. Sukeo Nakajima. The other officer was Lt. Kubo. Lt. Kubo eventually took over command of Mitsushima, because of the high death rate under Capt. Nakajima. Capt. Nakajima was executed by hanging.

The one to the left of Lt. Kubo was Matsuzaki, "Scareface". He was executed by hanging. To the left of Matsuzaki, was Tamotsu Kimura, "The Punk". Kimura was executed by hanging. Major Richard Gordon witnessed Kimura beat to death one of the POWs.

In the last row, directly over Capt. Nakajima, was Sadaharu Hiramatsu, "Big Glass Eye". Hiramatsu was executed by hanging.

Missing from the picture is one of Japan's most notorious prison guards, Matsuhiro Watanabe, "The Bird". Watanabe escaped his deserved punishment for crimes he committed in Mitsushima Prison Camp, by first deserting his post, as a guard, and then by going underground, until the American government stopped looking for war criminals in 1947, on orders from Gen. MacArthur. Watanabe was ranked #24, in MacArthurs list of wanted war criminals.

Watanabe, a disciplinary sergeant in the Japanese Army, was one of the most feared. His job was strictly to go from camp to camp and increase the level of discipline, severly beating prisoners in the process. Many died from his beatings. Today, Watanabe walks free and is a very wealthy man, living in Tokyo.

This picture is given to us by Major Richard Gordon.

http://home.pacbell.net/fbaldie/faces.html

[yamota]

Why couldn't our own government had hunted him down, just like the Israelis did hunt for Nazi war criminals for years and years after the war.

[yamota]

Why couldn't our own government had hunted him down, just like the Israelis did hunt for Nazi war criminals for years and years after the war.

[yamota]

Why couldn't our own government had hunted him down, just like the Israelis did hunt for Nazi war criminals for years and years after the war.

[overtureph]

For the simple reason that a few years after the war, our government pardoned the convicted Japanese war criminals and had them repatriated to Japan. In addition to restoring diplomatic ties with the Japanese government.

[overtureph]

For the simple reason that a few years after the war, our government pardoned the convicted Japanese war criminals and had them repatriated to Japan. In addition to restoring diplomatic ties with the Japanese government.

[overtureph]

For the simple reason that a few years after the war, our government pardoned the convicted Japanese war criminals and had them repatriated to Japan. In addition to restoring diplomatic ties with the Japanese government.

[chocolato1000]

Originally Posted by yamota

Why couldn't our own government had hunted him down, just like the Israelis did hunt for Nazi war criminals for years and years after the war.

ohohoho, you've seen "munich."

[chocolato1000]

Originally Posted by yamota

Why couldn't our own government had hunted him down, just like the Israelis did hunt for Nazi war criminals for years and years after the war.

ohohoho, you've seen "munich."

[chocolato1000]

Originally Posted by yamota

Why couldn't our own government had hunted him down, just like the Israelis did hunt for Nazi war criminals for years and years after the war.

ohohoho, you've seen "munich."