He understood the incomprehensible and the dizziness and hallucinations associated with starvation, though he could’ve avoided it; worse for him was the shame he felt. He knew that initial failure was inevitable. He knew the agony of defeat. He would have to restore his strength if he expected to live and decided to sleep the rest of the day. He didn’t want to dream. He was afraid to dream. He hadn’t come to terms with the Occupation and didn’t know if he ever would. But to do anything, he’d have to regain his faith in himself. He’d have to learn how to trust himself, trust in his own abilities and in his own strength again. By the afternoon, he had turned the corner. Almost immediately, he felt better.
He didn’t have time for despair, time to waste, or time for wasted effort, but as of yet he couldn’t define what he had to do. He didn’t immediately come up with answers, even though he examined his options in minute detail and looked for clarity. He looked at his situation from as many different angles as he could. He felt the pulmonary artery in his wrist in an attempt to feel his heart. He still had a pulse. Deliberately, he hadn’t eaten, then he hallucinated, invoked the name of God, and set about surveying the rest of his body. Within a short time, he had turned into a skeleton. Thinking ahead was perhaps his most difficult task. He dreamt of living a good life, free, but this young man had only recently survived the Death March.
In Manila, as the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity program was put into place, Togo and Pogo (on stage) mimicked Japanese soldiers and their greed for watches by strapping several watches on both of their arms and ended up in a cell in Fort Santiago because of it. One afternoon, the young man almost destroyed his boat but somehow managed to keep from floundering. (It might’ve been better for him if he had destroyed it.) Once he completed his prayers he turned himself over to the mercy of God, and asked for guidance. That evening he dreamt of the Black Nazarene. He dreamt of it as a living being and as such was no longer in the church in Quiapo. The Nazarene had defied the Japanese conquerors, just as he planned to defy them, and was on the Philippine side. The dream revealed that Jesus Christ was nearby, there in his boat (and wherever he went), and that he could expect a miracle and that it would magically protect him from wind and fire, just as the wooden image had survived fires and earthquakes. The Nazarene ordered the young man to be brave and sent him to Manila, where people had no choice but to deal with the Japanese.
The young man carried out these orders. He infiltrated the city and moved about quite freely despite checkpoints and frisking. He devoted a period of time (which comprised of several months) to hide and seek and gathering intelligence that would eventually prove useful to Allied forces in Australia. He became a very useful and reliable agent. Inwardly, it pained him to see how his country had been taken over, but he also saw how self-reliant his countrymen had become, and how due to forced circumstances they had become resourceful and disciplined. Overnight they had become tremendously industrious and ingenious. He saw how city folk had started raising pigs and chickens. How city folk planted camote along sidewalks. How they burned charcoal in trucks and in buses instead of gasoline. When he closed his eyes then, he’d think, “Necessity, indeed, has become the mother of invention. Or, at least there are no people dying in the streets from hunger, as I expected there would be.” It was the miracle he was looking for. But at times, he was troubled by how easily they were adapting. In general he was adapting too.
Basically, he accepted reality. Once he got use to seeing the Japanese in control, he made the best of it. And he learned that it could be invigorating. He understood with certain bitterness that the “help” that they had received from the Americans had not always been helpful and was perhaps even crippling. That was when he embraced for the first time the idea that there might be something to the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity program. If only the Japanese would stick to their “sincere intentions!” Like they said, maybe they hadn’t come to despoil but to “help” the Filipinos until the country was ready to stand on her own two feet…except then why were there bayonets on every street corner and arrogant Japanese soldiers barking “kura” to bowing Filipinos? It was an inextricable image that would infuriate him and instill in him a hatred that he never overcame.
Randy Ford
