Recalling memories of childhood is like viewing another person's picture albums. You open the page to a new set of pictures but see no connections.
One day I woke up to find that we were no longer living near the ice plant. The family had moved to a house in Kalubihan, back of the Aglipayan church. Years afterward I could return there and point out the house we stayed but couldn't figure out why we were there. My father had friends here. Emperatriz Denila my godmother also lived here. She was a beauty queen, and later in life became a born again Christians. We saw each other before she died in the 1990's.
Afterwards we moved to a house along Gustilo St, at the back of the ice plant. It was a solidly built house made of hardwood. There were no rooms, just one long hall at the upper floor. We occupied one end of the hall. One day I fell down the kitchen stairs. The main stair case was at the middle of the house.
There was one older boy with a unique name -- Powell, and he had a special toy, a boat with a small steam engine. An alcohol lamp served as its burner but it had all the elements of an external combustion steam engine. There was a bomb crater at the back of the house and it served many purposes but the most thrilling one was seeing that boat glide with its sharp put put put putting sound. I have never seen anything like it ever since.
I never had any recollection of the shape of the house we lived in during the war. I could remember its bamboo interior, the Japanese soldier singing to my brother, and my father sharpening the Japanese officer's sword but how the house looked I have no recollection whatsoever. Later my brother Delfin and I would visit the place, now overcome with wild grasses and vines. Where the house was there was only a hole filled with water and the small but tasty fresh water fish called puyo. My brother had a fishing stick and could wait hours waiting for the fish to bite. I was too impatient and couldn't stand waiting for the fish to make up its mind. I knew that that was the place of the old house because my aunt Ramona would go back there and dig for the bottle where she hid the genuine (not emergency nor the worthless Japanes paper money) Philippine currency of "peace time" that the Japanese didn't want anybody to keep.
i had no idea that cataclysmic events had forced the Japanese away from the ice plant. Liberation had come at last.
My father taught me to shout "Chocolate Joe!" every time we meet an American GI. Unlike the Japanese the Americans always smiled. I never saw any Americans in troop formation, only individuals briskly walking or stopping to appreciate a toy my father made for me, a piece of wood with evaporated cans for wheels. A tank sat on one side of the yard of the ice plant. But it soon was gone and so were the Americans.
Their jeeps remained however, and became the first mode of transportation between La Paz and Iloilo. I remember two in particular. One was named Lorna Doone, after a movie, and another just simple Ha Ha! the triumphant laughter of liberation.
There were mementoes too of the American presence at the ice plant. One was a metal cup with a hinged handle that tucks under it when stored. One American GI left his booksc to my father: a black leatherette bound handy Merriam Webster Dictionary; and two pocketbooks: King Solomon's Mines, and a biography of Cole Porter. There were two other books but I don't know if they belonged to the GI or was thrown away because they both had no first and last pages, The Reign of Greed, Charles Derbyshire's translation of Rizal's El Filibusterismo, and a primary school reader where I first met Bluebeard, the tailor who killed seven with one stroke, and the 12 dancing maidens. These were the books that whetted my appetite for reading.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Our American Neighbors
When my aunt and my mother talked about prewar Iloilo they called it "peace time." And they spoke of it with reverence as though it was the millenium. Food was plentiful and cheap. Teachers couldd be hired even if they only had fourth grade education. There were jobs for every one -- during peace time.
Things weren't the same after liberation. The price of the cheapest rice was 70 centavos and coca cola was ten centavors. A jeepney ride was five centavos but later they moved it up to ten. Oh how expensive things had become!
Father lost no time making a hut for his growing family. My brother Delfin was born during the war, and Thelma during liberation. Our house address is officially on Jereos Street although we were closer to Gustilo. Along Jereos there were two wood frame houses, in the design of the American era. Both were two stories, one painted a dull cream color while the other was red.
A Filipino married to an American woman occupied the red house. These were the Tirols. They had two daugthers, Bootsie and Bopeep. The Tirols owned a station wagon that used a crank to start the engine. It was a pretty thing with wooden sides and a canvas top. The Tirols threw a lot more trash compared with the Ledesma family, their neighbors to the left. We rummaged their trash pile and it contained things such as boxes of paper napkins and cigarettes, the cardboard cores of toilet paper, lots of milk and saltine cans. Cigar boxes were made of wood and they were very aromatic. The paper napkin boxes were excellent for making cutouts for shadow picture shows. We cut out figures of crocodiles and hiros-hiros (rhinoceros) or airplanes and warships but often just boxers with movable arms and legs. We put up a white sheet with the audience on one side and the operators on the other. The source of light is a lamp and by moving the figures with a thin bamboo stick the lamp casts a moving shadow that entertains the audience. There has to be sound effects like snorts of crocodiles or the whine of airplanes or the thump of boxing gloves.
We didn't think of Mr Tirol as a Filipino. He wore American style clothes was quite a sportsman always carrying a bag full of golf clubs with him. The trash pile was a good source for old golf and tennis balls. They stayed far longer in our hands than in his.
One day they put up a sign, Calvert School. And they used their first floor for teaching preschoolers. Since their front yard was quite narrow all programs were held at the back yard. Just meters away, separated by a barb wire fence was the house of Tiya Enya, Tidoy's mother and it had stairs going up to the second floor with an awning. Perched on the bamboo stairs, we had a grandstand, the perfect place for watching the Calvert School programs.
The Calvert School didn't last very long. The Tirol family moved elsewhere. I heard one of the sisters was a good swimmer and she had to be near a swimming pool. I never saw Bopeep and her sister and mother again. But I would ocassionally meet Mr Tirol with his bag of golf clubs hitting golf balls at the grassy sports field of the Normal School. I never saw him talking to anybody for he went there at noon and he kept on hitting those balls all by himself.
Some time later their house was occupied by a man who made ice cream and ice drops. The ice drops came in many colors -- green and pink, purple and white. I felt sad for the house. It attracted a lot of flies and left over milk gave the place a sour odor.
Things weren't the same after liberation. The price of the cheapest rice was 70 centavos and coca cola was ten centavors. A jeepney ride was five centavos but later they moved it up to ten. Oh how expensive things had become!
Father lost no time making a hut for his growing family. My brother Delfin was born during the war, and Thelma during liberation. Our house address is officially on Jereos Street although we were closer to Gustilo. Along Jereos there were two wood frame houses, in the design of the American era. Both were two stories, one painted a dull cream color while the other was red.
A Filipino married to an American woman occupied the red house. These were the Tirols. They had two daugthers, Bootsie and Bopeep. The Tirols owned a station wagon that used a crank to start the engine. It was a pretty thing with wooden sides and a canvas top. The Tirols threw a lot more trash compared with the Ledesma family, their neighbors to the left. We rummaged their trash pile and it contained things such as boxes of paper napkins and cigarettes, the cardboard cores of toilet paper, lots of milk and saltine cans. Cigar boxes were made of wood and they were very aromatic. The paper napkin boxes were excellent for making cutouts for shadow picture shows. We cut out figures of crocodiles and hiros-hiros (rhinoceros) or airplanes and warships but often just boxers with movable arms and legs. We put up a white sheet with the audience on one side and the operators on the other. The source of light is a lamp and by moving the figures with a thin bamboo stick the lamp casts a moving shadow that entertains the audience. There has to be sound effects like snorts of crocodiles or the whine of airplanes or the thump of boxing gloves.
We didn't think of Mr Tirol as a Filipino. He wore American style clothes was quite a sportsman always carrying a bag full of golf clubs with him. The trash pile was a good source for old golf and tennis balls. They stayed far longer in our hands than in his.
One day they put up a sign, Calvert School. And they used their first floor for teaching preschoolers. Since their front yard was quite narrow all programs were held at the back yard. Just meters away, separated by a barb wire fence was the house of Tiya Enya, Tidoy's mother and it had stairs going up to the second floor with an awning. Perched on the bamboo stairs, we had a grandstand, the perfect place for watching the Calvert School programs.
The Calvert School didn't last very long. The Tirol family moved elsewhere. I heard one of the sisters was a good swimmer and she had to be near a swimming pool. I never saw Bopeep and her sister and mother again. But I would ocassionally meet Mr Tirol with his bag of golf clubs hitting golf balls at the grassy sports field of the Normal School. I never saw him talking to anybody for he went there at noon and he kept on hitting those balls all by himself.
Some time later their house was occupied by a man who made ice cream and ice drops. The ice drops came in many colors -- green and pink, purple and white. I felt sad for the house. It attracted a lot of flies and left over milk gave the place a sour odor.
The Neighborhood
Much of my neighborhood got flooded during the rainy season. The water remained on the ground long after the monsoon rains were over, so when te ihe dry season arrived the earth abov was flaky but underneath the ground was soft. Mosquitoes were a constant nuisance. To reduce the mosquito population in the early evening we would coat a plate with oil and wave it over our heads. We heard of people getting sick of malaria in Palawan, but I heard of nobody getting sick of the dread disease in our community.
Marcel de los Reyes had a musician brother who played various instruments. He played Spanish tunes with his accordion. He also played the guitar and the trumpet. At that time musicians like him played in dance orchestras which meant he had to work at night. But at times he would stay and we would be lulled to sleep by his music. He was a friendly man. He was quite thin and smoked a lot. Despite his skill he and his wife were always short of money and they changed houses some four or five times as I can remember but still within our community. Our little community was bounded to the south by the ice plant; to the east by Jereos Street, to the north by Gustilo Street and to the west by a clump of bamboos. This circumscribed my life as a boy.
I mentioned Tiya Enya. She was from the town of Cabatuan, where mangoes were grown in abundance. I remember the road from Cabatuan to Janiuay lined with mangoes. She would offer an unripe mango for kids like me to remove white hair from her head. She was a widow and Tidoy was her son. There was another daughter, Rosing, who worked in Manila and was the first in our community to boast of wearing a brassiere. They lived at the back of the house rented by the Tirols, the second house from Jereos Street. Tiya Enya's house was bamboo and nipa as most houses were, two levels, and they lived upstairs, the rooms below were rented.
Next to them was the original house of the delos Reyes family but it seems to me it was sold later and the new occupants was a woman with the name of Bingbing. Her husband drove a jeepney and they had a daughter a year or two older than me who loved to sing while washing clothes. She was a pretty girl but kept to herself and her singing. The next house was occupied by an old gentleman who had beriberi. He ate a lot of mongo beans.
There were two more houses before you reached the clump of bamboos to the west. There was the house of a family that ran a calesa. Their house was higher than the others, to accommodate the horses below (partly to allow the foul dung air to escape). Their children were ill mannered and we didn't have much to do with them except to use their house, being higher, to post our bamboo cannons during Christmas and fire empty milk cans into the ice cream factory. Our community was filled with the sound of industry--the pockety pock from the diesel engines of the ice plant, the crushing of ice, the neighing of horses, and the whirring of ice cream making machines. You get used to these sounds and when I go to Janiuay I keep hearing the sounds in my head.
The last house belonged to the family of Lonsing Ballesteros. Their business was collecting glass bottles, cleaning them and reselling them. They also made drinking glasses after the war when a lot of household utensils were scarce to find. Lonsing had an elder sister who was rumored to have been a teacher but was fired for some kind of immoral conduct. Until the arrival of the Ledesmas, Lonsing and the delos Reyes boys were my closest friends.
Marcel de los Reyes had a musician brother who played various instruments. He played Spanish tunes with his accordion. He also played the guitar and the trumpet. At that time musicians like him played in dance orchestras which meant he had to work at night. But at times he would stay and we would be lulled to sleep by his music. He was a friendly man. He was quite thin and smoked a lot. Despite his skill he and his wife were always short of money and they changed houses some four or five times as I can remember but still within our community. Our little community was bounded to the south by the ice plant; to the east by Jereos Street, to the north by Gustilo Street and to the west by a clump of bamboos. This circumscribed my life as a boy.
I mentioned Tiya Enya. She was from the town of Cabatuan, where mangoes were grown in abundance. I remember the road from Cabatuan to Janiuay lined with mangoes. She would offer an unripe mango for kids like me to remove white hair from her head. She was a widow and Tidoy was her son. There was another daughter, Rosing, who worked in Manila and was the first in our community to boast of wearing a brassiere. They lived at the back of the house rented by the Tirols, the second house from Jereos Street. Tiya Enya's house was bamboo and nipa as most houses were, two levels, and they lived upstairs, the rooms below were rented.
Next to them was the original house of the delos Reyes family but it seems to me it was sold later and the new occupants was a woman with the name of Bingbing. Her husband drove a jeepney and they had a daughter a year or two older than me who loved to sing while washing clothes. She was a pretty girl but kept to herself and her singing. The next house was occupied by an old gentleman who had beriberi. He ate a lot of mongo beans.
There were two more houses before you reached the clump of bamboos to the west. There was the house of a family that ran a calesa. Their house was higher than the others, to accommodate the horses below (partly to allow the foul dung air to escape). Their children were ill mannered and we didn't have much to do with them except to use their house, being higher, to post our bamboo cannons during Christmas and fire empty milk cans into the ice cream factory. Our community was filled with the sound of industry--the pockety pock from the diesel engines of the ice plant, the crushing of ice, the neighing of horses, and the whirring of ice cream making machines. You get used to these sounds and when I go to Janiuay I keep hearing the sounds in my head.
The last house belonged to the family of Lonsing Ballesteros. Their business was collecting glass bottles, cleaning them and reselling them. They also made drinking glasses after the war when a lot of household utensils were scarce to find. Lonsing had an elder sister who was rumored to have been a teacher but was fired for some kind of immoral conduct. Until the arrival of the Ledesmas, Lonsing and the delos Reyes boys were my closest friends.
Life after the War
When the ice plant returned to full operation under Mr Gurrea, my father built another hut. It was small and squat, just three or four steps from the ground. It had windows on three sides, with a door opening to the pantaw, that's where people wash themselves, their clothes, prepare food for cooking, and to one side would be the wood stove which was just a wooden platform packed with earth and where two sig-ang stood. The sig-ang holds the pot and could be made of clay or steel bars allowing enough space for firewood b elow. At night the stove was swept clean and it becomes the family cat's favorite bedroom If you didn't have matches you kept the embers glowing all through the night. If it died my mother would tell me to get fire from the De next door neighbor, the De los Reyes family. They put a glowing ember on a husk of coconut and I would run home as fast as I could so the ember wouldn't die.
The children of Marcel de los Reyes and his wife Maria were my first friends. They came from Zarraga. Marcel worked at Mr Gurrea's shop and was an expert on making ham. Sometimes he made his own ham at home. using a chimney for curing the ham It was a tedious process. A the Gurrea shop in Rizal there was a huge vat where the ham was partly cooked prior to smoking. For unknown reasons the vat tipped over and scalded Marcel. He survived but scars covered his body.
The eldest of the de los Reyes children was Ramon, followed by Rudy, Virginia, Recaredo, and a host of small brothers whose names all began with the letter R. My favorite friend was Rudy and I liked Recaredo or Caring too but we did not get along too well and fight. We played games with marbles, cards, rubber bands, and evaporated milk cans. We did all sorts of things with milk cans. We would flip them up and if it landed on its top of bottom you earned a point. or we stacked them and he who could stack them the highest was the winner. The smaller sized milk cans made perfect wheels for cars. During Christmas season, we made bamboo cannons and the cans served as ammunition. We formed two warring groups and bombarded each other with cans.
The favorite brands of evaporated milk was Alpine and Darigold. Sometimes the ice cream makers would throw away an unopened milk can. Quite a small hill of evaporated milk cans and coconut husks had formed at the back of the ice cream factory. The husks made excellent fuel once dried.
Enterprising people made things out of scraps. Bottles were made into cups, automotive tires were recycled into clogs (bakya) and garden pots. Shoe leather became stone holders for slingshots. Old clothes were made into dolls. Eventually the recycling stopped as cheap plastic toys and gadgets flooded the markets from Occupied Japan.
The children of Marcel de los Reyes and his wife Maria were my first friends. They came from Zarraga. Marcel worked at Mr Gurrea's shop and was an expert on making ham. Sometimes he made his own ham at home. using a chimney for curing the ham It was a tedious process. A the Gurrea shop in Rizal there was a huge vat where the ham was partly cooked prior to smoking. For unknown reasons the vat tipped over and scalded Marcel. He survived but scars covered his body.
The eldest of the de los Reyes children was Ramon, followed by Rudy, Virginia, Recaredo, and a host of small brothers whose names all began with the letter R. My favorite friend was Rudy and I liked Recaredo or Caring too but we did not get along too well and fight. We played games with marbles, cards, rubber bands, and evaporated milk cans. We did all sorts of things with milk cans. We would flip them up and if it landed on its top of bottom you earned a point. or we stacked them and he who could stack them the highest was the winner. The smaller sized milk cans made perfect wheels for cars. During Christmas season, we made bamboo cannons and the cans served as ammunition. We formed two warring groups and bombarded each other with cans.
The favorite brands of evaporated milk was Alpine and Darigold. Sometimes the ice cream makers would throw away an unopened milk can. Quite a small hill of evaporated milk cans and coconut husks had formed at the back of the ice cream factory. The husks made excellent fuel once dried.
Enterprising people made things out of scraps. Bottles were made into cups, automotive tires were recycled into clogs (bakya) and garden pots. Shoe leather became stone holders for slingshots. Old clothes were made into dolls. Eventually the recycling stopped as cheap plastic toys and gadgets flooded the markets from Occupied Japan.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Under the Shadow of the Sword
When we arrived in La Paz we stayed in a hut at the back of the La Paz Ice Plant. The ice plant was owned by Mr Gurrea. Father and mother worked and met there before the war broke out. It was a hub of industry, not only making ice but also fresh milk for distribution to Iloilo households, and ice cream. It housed a huge freezer, the size of three regular bedrooms where meat and fish were frozen.
Mr Gurrea was a Spaniard married to a young Filipino wife (he divorced his American wife who chose to remain in Iloilo. Her house is still there at the bank of the Iloilo River at the right when you cross the Forbes Bridge from La Paz). The Japanese occupied the plant and surrounded it with a garrison. My father heard that the Japanese was reopening the ice plant, so, not being a farmer but a carpenter, he took the risk of leaving tje safety of Manaolan and returned to La Paz.
I remember Japanese soldiers wearing only loin cloths taking baths at one of the wells. Occasionally one of them would wander into our hut and carry my younger brother Delfin into his arms. He would show pictures of his children. At first we were alarmed when he would play with Delfin; we have heard stories of how Japanese solders tossed children into the air and bayoneted them as they fell.
The officers had my father sharpen their swords. My mother would say, "Gregorio one day that sword will cut your head off."
It never happened of course for we were careful to follow rules the Japanese imposed, such as not using kerosene and observing blackouts. An infraction can cause the male head of the family exposure to the sun for one day at the plaza. During an air raid the siren would blow and we would run to the nearest air raid shelter, nothing but a hole in the ground deep enough so our heads won't show. There we small children made mud pies and mud airplanes engaging in dogfights.
There was one dog fight that could have killed me and my grandmother. We were walking towards the La Paz market along Magdalo Street and nearing the railroad when we heard the sound of gunfire overhead. Without wasting a second my grandmother whixked me away from the road into a ditch., There we stayed until the sound of airplanes overhead died away.
The workers at the plants were slaves so my father and mother had to do other things to feed the growing family. He made wooden clogs (bakya), wooden bicycle handles, toys, anything just to survive. My mother would go to the rice mill (arrocera) and scoop rice husks and throw them to the wind. They called it pahangin. Bits of rice, being heavier would fall (binlod) and we made rice gruel out of the handful that she could gather each day.
One day a Japanese patrol returned from a campaign. Their helmets were covered with grass and twigs. Their faces were grim. I cried with terror until I couldn't breathe. My chest was heaving with every effort to breathe but I could only hear the wheezing of my lungs. My aunt Ramona took me up and told me to b e quiet and gave me a drink of water..
Living so close to the Japanese we were fortunate. We survived the war, some neighbors did not.
When we arrived in La Paz we stayed in a hut at the back of the La Paz Ice Plant. The ice plant was owned by Mr Gurrea. Father and mother worked and met there before the war broke out. It was a hub of industry, not only making ice but also fresh milk for distribution to Iloilo households, and ice cream. It housed a huge freezer, the size of three regular bedrooms where meat and fish were frozen.
Mr Gurrea was a Spaniard married to a young Filipino wife (he divorced his American wife who chose to remain in Iloilo. Her house is still there at the bank of the Iloilo River at the right when you cross the Forbes Bridge from La Paz). The Japanese occupied the plant and surrounded it with a garrison. When the city was firmly in control my father heard that the Japanese was reopening the ice plant, so, not being a farmer but a carpenter, he took the risk of leaving tje safety of Manaolan and returned to La Paz.
I remember Japanese soldiers wearing only loin cloths taking baths at one of the wells. Occasionally one of them would wander into our hut and carry my younger brother Delfin into his arms. He would show pictures of his children. At first we were alarmed when he would play with Delfin; we have heard stories of how Japanese solders tossed children into the air and bayoneted them as they fell.
The officers had my father sharpen their swords. My mother would say, "Gregorio one day that sword will cut your head off."
It never happened of course for we were careful to follow rules the Japanese imposed, such as not using kerosene and observing blackouts. An infraction can cause the male head of the family exposure to the sun for one day at the plaza. During an air raid the siren would blow and we would run to the nearest air raid shelter, nothing but a hole in the ground deep enough so our heads won't show. There we small children made mud pies and mud airplanes engaging in dogfights.
There was one dog fight that could have killed me and my grandmother. We were walking towards the La Paz market along Magdalo Street and nearing the railroad when we heard the sound of gunfire overhead. Without wasting a second my grandmother whixked me away from the road into a ditch., There we stayed until the sound of airplanes overhead died away.
The workers at the plants were slaves so my father and mother had to do other things to feed the growing family. He made wooden clogs (bakya), wooden bicycle handles, toys, anything just to survive. My mother would go to the rice mill (arrocera) and scoop rice husks and throw them to the wind. They called it pahangin. Bits of rice, being heavier would fall (binlod) and we made rice gruel out of the handful that she could gather each day.
One day a Japanese patrol returned from a campaign. Their helmets were covered with grass and twigs. Their faces were grim. I cried with terror until I couldn't breathe. My chest was heaving with every effort to breathe but I could only hear the wheezing of my lungs. My aunt Ramona took me up and told me to b e quiet and gave me a drink of water..
Living so close to the Japanese we were fortunate. We survived the war, some neighbors did not.
Mr Gurrea was a Spaniard married to a young Filipino wife (he divorced his American wife who chose to remain in Iloilo. Her house is still there at the bank of the Iloilo River at the right when you cross the Forbes Bridge from La Paz). The Japanese occupied the plant and surrounded it with a garrison. My father heard that the Japanese was reopening the ice plant, so, not being a farmer but a carpenter, he took the risk of leaving tje safety of Manaolan and returned to La Paz.
I remember Japanese soldiers wearing only loin cloths taking baths at one of the wells. Occasionally one of them would wander into our hut and carry my younger brother Delfin into his arms. He would show pictures of his children. At first we were alarmed when he would play with Delfin; we have heard stories of how Japanese solders tossed children into the air and bayoneted them as they fell.
The officers had my father sharpen their swords. My mother would say, "Gregorio one day that sword will cut your head off."
It never happened of course for we were careful to follow rules the Japanese imposed, such as not using kerosene and observing blackouts. An infraction can cause the male head of the family exposure to the sun for one day at the plaza. During an air raid the siren would blow and we would run to the nearest air raid shelter, nothing but a hole in the ground deep enough so our heads won't show. There we small children made mud pies and mud airplanes engaging in dogfights.
There was one dog fight that could have killed me and my grandmother. We were walking towards the La Paz market along Magdalo Street and nearing the railroad when we heard the sound of gunfire overhead. Without wasting a second my grandmother whixked me away from the road into a ditch., There we stayed until the sound of airplanes overhead died away.
The workers at the plants were slaves so my father and mother had to do other things to feed the growing family. He made wooden clogs (bakya), wooden bicycle handles, toys, anything just to survive. My mother would go to the rice mill (arrocera) and scoop rice husks and throw them to the wind. They called it pahangin. Bits of rice, being heavier would fall (binlod) and we made rice gruel out of the handful that she could gather each day.
One day a Japanese patrol returned from a campaign. Their helmets were covered with grass and twigs. Their faces were grim. I cried with terror until I couldn't breathe. My chest was heaving with every effort to breathe but I could only hear the wheezing of my lungs. My aunt Ramona took me up and told me to b e quiet and gave me a drink of water..
Living so close to the Japanese we were fortunate. We survived the war, some neighbors did not.
When we arrived in La Paz we stayed in a hut at the back of the La Paz Ice Plant. The ice plant was owned by Mr Gurrea. Father and mother worked and met there before the war broke out. It was a hub of industry, not only making ice but also fresh milk for distribution to Iloilo households, and ice cream. It housed a huge freezer, the size of three regular bedrooms where meat and fish were frozen.
Mr Gurrea was a Spaniard married to a young Filipino wife (he divorced his American wife who chose to remain in Iloilo. Her house is still there at the bank of the Iloilo River at the right when you cross the Forbes Bridge from La Paz). The Japanese occupied the plant and surrounded it with a garrison. When the city was firmly in control my father heard that the Japanese was reopening the ice plant, so, not being a farmer but a carpenter, he took the risk of leaving tje safety of Manaolan and returned to La Paz.
I remember Japanese soldiers wearing only loin cloths taking baths at one of the wells. Occasionally one of them would wander into our hut and carry my younger brother Delfin into his arms. He would show pictures of his children. At first we were alarmed when he would play with Delfin; we have heard stories of how Japanese solders tossed children into the air and bayoneted them as they fell.
The officers had my father sharpen their swords. My mother would say, "Gregorio one day that sword will cut your head off."
It never happened of course for we were careful to follow rules the Japanese imposed, such as not using kerosene and observing blackouts. An infraction can cause the male head of the family exposure to the sun for one day at the plaza. During an air raid the siren would blow and we would run to the nearest air raid shelter, nothing but a hole in the ground deep enough so our heads won't show. There we small children made mud pies and mud airplanes engaging in dogfights.
There was one dog fight that could have killed me and my grandmother. We were walking towards the La Paz market along Magdalo Street and nearing the railroad when we heard the sound of gunfire overhead. Without wasting a second my grandmother whixked me away from the road into a ditch., There we stayed until the sound of airplanes overhead died away.
The workers at the plants were slaves so my father and mother had to do other things to feed the growing family. He made wooden clogs (bakya), wooden bicycle handles, toys, anything just to survive. My mother would go to the rice mill (arrocera) and scoop rice husks and throw them to the wind. They called it pahangin. Bits of rice, being heavier would fall (binlod) and we made rice gruel out of the handful that she could gather each day.
One day a Japanese patrol returned from a campaign. Their helmets were covered with grass and twigs. Their faces were grim. I cried with terror until I couldn't breathe. My chest was heaving with every effort to breathe but I could only hear the wheezing of my lungs. My aunt Ramona took me up and told me to b e quiet and gave me a drink of water..
Living so close to the Japanese we were fortunate. We survived the war, some neighbors did not.
Manaolan
I was only three months old when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. In minutes they were flying over Philippines skies and bombing airfields and major targets.
As soon as the first bombs hit the Mandurriao airport in Iloilo, thousands of refugees left the city of Iloilo where I was born. My uncle Nono worked in the bridge project in Janiuay and I believe it was he who helped us to find the safety of Manaolan, tucked in the hills of Janiuay. Manaolan is now part of Badiangan town.
My parents didn't tell me how we survived in Manaolan, but being a carpenter I am sure my father found odd jobs such as repairing plows, sharpening farm implements, etc. He wasn't a farmer, however, and even if he did the small plots of family farms were owned by local families. But I was told we had our own hut and in one of my visits my aunt Ramona pointed out the site.
In 1944 or 1945 my father decided to return to La Paz.
As a small boy I would revisit Manaolan again and again, spending summer vacations there. Manang Tiba (Primitiva Paris) is now almost part of our family and took good care of me. At first she accompanied me on these visits but later I went by myself (before I was ten I was travelling to Negros and Manaolan without any difficulty). Manang Tiba had a brother named Laureano who mas married to Honor, and a sister, Remedios or Meding, the one that got raped and died. In the early 50's when communists were spreading in the countryside, Laureano was being recruited but my father dissuaded him.
My Uncle Nono, my mother's brother died during the war, not by the Japanese but by guerrillas who had a bad reputation among ordinary civilians. As usual in war civilians are pitted between the belligerents. Manang Tiba thought maybe his beard had something to do with it. It gave him the look that both Japanese and guerrillas would suspect and in war people get killed and explanations given later. In Nono's case there wasn't any explanation.
So perhaps it is this distaste for killing that made my father to discourage the headstrong Laureano.
Manang Tiba lived with her old parents (and a grandmother who was blind). Her house stood on a hillside over looking the valley where she tended a small farm. The house was made of bamboo but had grass rather than nipa (palm leaf) for a roof. Cogon grass is beautiful and lasts longer but also harbors centipedes and scorpions and the glowworm we called atipalo. I haven't seen glowworms ever since after childhood. We used to play with them in the dark but killed them afterwards because my mother said it glowworms crawl into children's ears at night. Like other houses during that period her house was a one room affair, less than a meter from the ground but had benches near the windows. This was the only furniture in the house.
We ate twice a day, once in the morning at 9, after the farm work (farmers usually start working before dawn then retire when the sun is too hot) and then at 5 in the evening. We ate on woven bamboo plates called tubo. These were square in shape, ten inches on each side and about two inches deep. We all sat on the floor and usually the rice wasjust heaped on a large banana leaf or a larger tubo. Usually you eat rice with dried fish or salted pork. Sometimes they didn't put enough salt and the pork had a rancid smell. But you get used to it. I discovered, however, that egpplant boiled in water with a little bit of pork oil is quite tasty, so it added variety to our otherwise unchanging routine of rice and dried fish.
There isn't much to do after sun down except to sleep, so we seldom even used lamps at night.
Most houses there didn't have toilets. The people just went to the bushes to relieve themselves. In Manang Tiba's house the toilet was a branch that protruded from the side of the hill some ten meters away from the house. I hadn't seen any one using it so I concluded they use it only after dark.
There were two large mangoes overshadowing the house. It filled the place with its sweet smell during mango blossom time and when the young mangoes fell. People didn't use insecticides during those times. and I would gather the fallen mangles and bring home to mother to pickle called mangaritsada or litsada in short. The best way to pickle is to slit the mango on one side, remove the seed and fill it with the aromatic langkawas (lenquas in Malay), a root similar to ginger. Put enough salt and water to the level of the mangoes.
I had a friend Islao (short for Estanislao) slightly older than I was who knew where all the awang were located, these are abandoned wells only used by carabaos but perfect for diving. One day he showed me a hole in the trunk of a tree. He told me to poke my hand into the hole and a bird bit my hand, it was the nest of a kingfisher and my hand stank so bad even soap couldn't erase it. I shouldn't have done that because some of those holes have a far more dangerous creature inside -- snakes.
There is a ditty about people named Islao: Islao, kabilao, kanding, karbaw (Islao, like a cabilao fish, like a goat, like a water buffalo).
The main produce of Manaolan were rice and corn (maize), bananas, mangoes and tobacco. They also grew a lot of buyo leaves for those who practice the awful habit of betel nut chewing. (Later I would learn that betel nut chewing was generally practices in the Philippines by rich and poor alike. The ingredients are the same, betel nut, buyo, tobacco, and lime paste. The difference lies in the container where these ingredients are ground, put into a betel leaf and carefully placed deep between the upper and lower molars. Putting the betel leaf with its content deep into the mouth is kind of like an art form. But the constant spitting afterwards is what makes betel nut chewing such a messy and dirty habit. At least, however, the odor is mitigated by the lime. In the case of pure tobacco chewing, the final gooey effluent smells like a dead rat. And it is expertly expelled from the mouth into a spittoon (by the rich) or into the spaces between the slats of the bamboo floor (by the poor).
In the mid-90's Sonia and I ran a mission school in Iloilo. Two of our students came from Manaolan. Manuel Colacion brought me back to Manaolan for a visit. We walked on the talaytay (the ridge of the hill) to where the old house of Manang Tiba stood. The mango trees were still there. There were more crops, primarily buyo, and I saw some of Manang Tiba's relatives. They weren't too old and they remembered me.
The image of Manaolan that lingers most in my mind is when the heavy rains come. The valley would fill with water and become a lake. When the fog rises in the morning the scenery resembles those Chinese water color landscapes, dreamy and mysterious.
As soon as the first bombs hit the Mandurriao airport in Iloilo, thousands of refugees left the city of Iloilo where I was born. My uncle Nono worked in the bridge project in Janiuay and I believe it was he who helped us to find the safety of Manaolan, tucked in the hills of Janiuay. Manaolan is now part of Badiangan town.
My parents didn't tell me how we survived in Manaolan, but being a carpenter I am sure my father found odd jobs such as repairing plows, sharpening farm implements, etc. He wasn't a farmer, however, and even if he did the small plots of family farms were owned by local families. But I was told we had our own hut and in one of my visits my aunt Ramona pointed out the site.
In 1944 or 1945 my father decided to return to La Paz.
As a small boy I would revisit Manaolan again and again, spending summer vacations there. Manang Tiba (Primitiva Paris) is now almost part of our family and took good care of me. At first she accompanied me on these visits but later I went by myself (before I was ten I was travelling to Negros and Manaolan without any difficulty). Manang Tiba had a brother named Laureano who mas married to Honor, and a sister, Remedios or Meding, the one that got raped and died. In the early 50's when communists were spreading in the countryside, Laureano was being recruited but my father dissuaded him.
My Uncle Nono, my mother's brother died during the war, not by the Japanese but by guerrillas who had a bad reputation among ordinary civilians. As usual in war civilians are pitted between the belligerents. Manang Tiba thought maybe his beard had something to do with it. It gave him the look that both Japanese and guerrillas would suspect and in war people get killed and explanations given later. In Nono's case there wasn't any explanation.
So perhaps it is this distaste for killing that made my father to discourage the headstrong Laureano.
Manang Tiba lived with her old parents (and a grandmother who was blind). Her house stood on a hillside over looking the valley where she tended a small farm. The house was made of bamboo but had grass rather than nipa (palm leaf) for a roof. Cogon grass is beautiful and lasts longer but also harbors centipedes and scorpions and the glowworm we called atipalo. I haven't seen glowworms ever since after childhood. We used to play with them in the dark but killed them afterwards because my mother said it glowworms crawl into children's ears at night. Like other houses during that period her house was a one room affair, less than a meter from the ground but had benches near the windows. This was the only furniture in the house.
We ate twice a day, once in the morning at 9, after the farm work (farmers usually start working before dawn then retire when the sun is too hot) and then at 5 in the evening. We ate on woven bamboo plates called tubo. These were square in shape, ten inches on each side and about two inches deep. We all sat on the floor and usually the rice wasjust heaped on a large banana leaf or a larger tubo. Usually you eat rice with dried fish or salted pork. Sometimes they didn't put enough salt and the pork had a rancid smell. But you get used to it. I discovered, however, that egpplant boiled in water with a little bit of pork oil is quite tasty, so it added variety to our otherwise unchanging routine of rice and dried fish.
There isn't much to do after sun down except to sleep, so we seldom even used lamps at night.
Most houses there didn't have toilets. The people just went to the bushes to relieve themselves. In Manang Tiba's house the toilet was a branch that protruded from the side of the hill some ten meters away from the house. I hadn't seen any one using it so I concluded they use it only after dark.
There were two large mangoes overshadowing the house. It filled the place with its sweet smell during mango blossom time and when the young mangoes fell. People didn't use insecticides during those times. and I would gather the fallen mangles and bring home to mother to pickle called mangaritsada or litsada in short. The best way to pickle is to slit the mango on one side, remove the seed and fill it with the aromatic langkawas (lenquas in Malay), a root similar to ginger. Put enough salt and water to the level of the mangoes.
I had a friend Islao (short for Estanislao) slightly older than I was who knew where all the awang were located, these are abandoned wells only used by carabaos but perfect for diving. One day he showed me a hole in the trunk of a tree. He told me to poke my hand into the hole and a bird bit my hand, it was the nest of a kingfisher and my hand stank so bad even soap couldn't erase it. I shouldn't have done that because some of those holes have a far more dangerous creature inside -- snakes.
There is a ditty about people named Islao: Islao, kabilao, kanding, karbaw (Islao, like a cabilao fish, like a goat, like a water buffalo).
The main produce of Manaolan were rice and corn (maize), bananas, mangoes and tobacco. They also grew a lot of buyo leaves for those who practice the awful habit of betel nut chewing. (Later I would learn that betel nut chewing was generally practices in the Philippines by rich and poor alike. The ingredients are the same, betel nut, buyo, tobacco, and lime paste. The difference lies in the container where these ingredients are ground, put into a betel leaf and carefully placed deep between the upper and lower molars. Putting the betel leaf with its content deep into the mouth is kind of like an art form. But the constant spitting afterwards is what makes betel nut chewing such a messy and dirty habit. At least, however, the odor is mitigated by the lime. In the case of pure tobacco chewing, the final gooey effluent smells like a dead rat. And it is expertly expelled from the mouth into a spittoon (by the rich) or into the spaces between the slats of the bamboo floor (by the poor).
In the mid-90's Sonia and I ran a mission school in Iloilo. Two of our students came from Manaolan. Manuel Colacion brought me back to Manaolan for a visit. We walked on the talaytay (the ridge of the hill) to where the old house of Manang Tiba stood. The mango trees were still there. There were more crops, primarily buyo, and I saw some of Manang Tiba's relatives. They weren't too old and they remembered me.
The image of Manaolan that lingers most in my mind is when the heavy rains come. The valley would fill with water and become a lake. When the fog rises in the morning the scenery resembles those Chinese water color landscapes, dreamy and mysterious.
Blogger by Accident
My attempts at blogging have not been very successful. I have not yet fathomed the intricacies of creating a blog account. So when I opened a Google email account I only wanted another address for my burgeoning emails. I tried sending a few emails to myself to be sure it worked. It is slightly different but otherwise I was able to open my mail. So the only thing to do is to write to my loved ones using GMail.
Today I thought of visiting Blogger again to have another go at it. I know that social networks constantly revise their systems. Imagine my surprise when I tried to open a Blogger account and my email address showed up!
I wrote my username and was dumbfounded--no password? I was asked to write my first blog. Not prepared for this, I just copied a paragraph or two from Major Dick Winters memoir, Beyond Band of Brothers. A blogger has summarized Major Winters principles of leaders, and I added it to the paragraph I had typed. That usually leads to trouble. So I published my first blog. The blog showed up without any problem.
What is happening? I went back to the Blogger site and found the answer. A Google account simplifies everything for the user of Blogger. No passwords. No crooked letters to decipher. No need to clean up hidden characters.
Google has taken the mechanics from blogging so I can concentrate on writing down my thoughts.
To all the Google people out there, thanks a million!
Today I thought of visiting Blogger again to have another go at it. I know that social networks constantly revise their systems. Imagine my surprise when I tried to open a Blogger account and my email address showed up!
I wrote my username and was dumbfounded--no password? I was asked to write my first blog. Not prepared for this, I just copied a paragraph or two from Major Dick Winters memoir, Beyond Band of Brothers. A blogger has summarized Major Winters principles of leaders, and I added it to the paragraph I had typed. That usually leads to trouble. So I published my first blog. The blog showed up without any problem.
What is happening? I went back to the Blogger site and found the answer. A Google account simplifies everything for the user of Blogger. No passwords. No crooked letters to decipher. No need to clean up hidden characters.
Google has taken the mechanics from blogging so I can concentrate on writing down my thoughts.
To all the Google people out there, thanks a million!
Major Dick Winters on Leadership
Major Dick Winters, of Band of Brothers fame, has some interesting views on leadership.
"First and foremost, a leader should strive to be an individual of flawless character, technical competence, and moral courage. In Anton Myrer's bestselling novel Once an Eagle (which is on the required reading list of many senior military officers), the protagoni9st Sam Damon says, 'You can't help where you were born and you may not have much to say about where you die, but you should pass the days in between as a good man.' How do you become a good man? You should start with a cornerstone--honesty--and from there you build character. If you have character, that means the guy you are dealing with can trust you. When you get into combat, and you get in a situation such as we were in along the dike in Holland, when I gave the orders, 'Ready, aim, fire,' nobody else was thinking about anything exept what he had been told to do. The men trust in you, have faith in you, and they obey, no questions asked. That's character in a nutshell."
Major Dick Winters Ten Principles of Success have been summarized thus:
"First and foremost, a leader should strive to be an individual of flawless character, technical competence, and moral courage. In Anton Myrer's bestselling novel Once an Eagle (which is on the required reading list of many senior military officers), the protagoni9st Sam Damon says, 'You can't help where you were born and you may not have much to say about where you die, but you should pass the days in between as a good man.' How do you become a good man? You should start with a cornerstone--honesty--and from there you build character. If you have character, that means the guy you are dealing with can trust you. When you get into combat, and you get in a situation such as we were in along the dike in Holland, when I gave the orders, 'Ready, aim, fire,' nobody else was thinking about anything exept what he had been told to do. The men trust in you, have faith in you, and they obey, no questions asked. That's character in a nutshell."
Major Dick Winters Ten Principles of Success have been summarized thus:
1. Strive to be a leader of character, competence, and courage.
2. Lead from the front. Say, “Follow me!” and then lead the way.
3. Stay in top physical shape—physical stamina is the root of mental toughness.
4. Develop your team. If you know your people, are fair in setting realistic goals and expectations, and lead by example, you will develop teamwork.
5. Delegate responsibility to your subordinates and let them do their jobs. You can’t do a good job if you don’t have a chance to use your imagination and your creativity.
6. Anticipate problems and prepare to overcome obstacles. Don’t wait until you get to the top of the ridge and then make up your mind.
7. Remain humble. Don’t worry about who recieves the credit. Never let power or authority go to your head.
8. Take a moment of self-reflection. Look at yourself in the mirror every night and ask yourself if you did your best.
9. True satisfaction comes from getting the job done. The key to a successful leader is to earn respect—not because of rank or position, but because you are a leader of character.
10. Hang Tough!—Never, ever, give up.
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