Sitting in Darkness: Americans in the Philippines

by David Haward Bain

The Washington Post, February 24, 1985

IN WHICH WAR was the term "Gook" invented? When did American soldiers conduct their first body count and pioneer the use of the "water cure" to persuade Asian guerrillas to betray their comrades?

After which battle did a young rifleman write home to the folks in Kingston, New York, "I am in my glory when I can sight my gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger"?

Modern as it all sounds, the answer is not Vietnam, or even Korea or World War II. The American conquest of the Philippines barely rates a mention in school history books, usually as a cryptic footnote to the short war which President William McKinley and publisher William Randolph Hearst waged on Spain in 1898 for the independence of Cuba and the circulation of Hearst's newspapers. Yet 126,458 Americans fought in the Philippines between 1898 and 1902, of whom 4,234 died, while 16,000 Filipinos died in battle and another 200,000 in "reconcentration camp." There were in addition massacres of civilians in reprisal for guerrilla attacks and similar sideshows all too familiar in subsequent Asian wars.

The story of how, and why America liberated the Philippines from Spain and then took the islands back from their inhabitants two weeks later is a complicated one, already well told in one of the classics of American historiography, Leon Wolff's Little Brown Brother, published in 1960. But the writing of history is never finished, and David Haward Bain has managed another fine book on the subject, not disagreeing with Wolff's conclusions, but making them fresh and vivid for a generation which has seen yet another Asian war.

Genres: History, Military History

464 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1984

Reviews

[Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uncle Sam had just defeated Spain during the brief Spanish-American war and part of the terms of surrender was the ceding of the Philippines, a Spanish colony for 300 years, to the Americans. The Filipinos, who had been fighting Spain for independence long before the Americans came into the picture initially believed the hokum of America's announced intent of a "benevolent assimilation" for the Philippines but later realized that it was really a malevolent imperialist colonization the Washington-based politicians were after so they resisted and they were led by a small, frail-looking politician-soldier named Emilio Aguinaldo from Cavite who had unmistakable Chinese features.


In 1901, acting upon an intelligence information as to the whereabouts of Gen. Aguinaldo, American Colonel Frederick Funston, disguised as a captured prisoner (with a few other American soldiers) embarked on a hundred mile journey towards Aguinaldo's hideout in Palanan, Isabela with their Filipino "captors." The author himself took his own expedition in 1982 to retrace Funton's long journey then wrote this book which sometimes alternates between the present (the 1980s sometime immediately after the EDSA Revolution which toppled the Marcos dictatorship) to Funston's time.


What I find delightfully unique about this book written by an American (from New Jersey) about Philippine-American history is that both Philippine and American personalities were given equal attention and sympathetic treatment. Both Funston and Aguinaldo, for example, were heroic and each of their faults and inadequacies laid down without bias.


Young Filipinos here at goodreads, do you know how the young, dashing, handsome ladies man, Filipino-heartthrob-boy-general Gregorio del Pilar met his end in the Battle of Tirad Pass while trying to slow down the American forces in hot pursuit of the fleeing Gen. Aguinaldo? This is the only book I know which quoted IN FULL an account (American, of course) of how this hero fell:


"We had seen him cheering his men in the fight. One of our companies crouched up close under the side of the cliff where he had built his first intrenchment, heard his voice continually during the fight, scolding them, praising them, cursing, appealing one moment to their love of their native land and the next instant threatening to kill them if they did not stand firm. Driven from the first intrenchment he fell slowly back to the second in full sight of our sharpshooters and under a heavy fire. Not until every man around him in the second intrenchment was down did he turn his white horse and ride slowly up the winding trail. Then we who were below saw an American squirm his way out to the top of a high flat rock, and take deliberate aim at the figure on the white horse. We held our breath, not knowing whether to pray that the sharpshooter would shoot straight or miss. Then came the spiteful crack of the Krag rifle and the man on horseback rolled to the ground, and when the troops charging up the mountain side reached him, the boy general of the Filipinos was dead."


Writing like Hemingway (wink, wink), war correspondent Richard Henry Little continued:


"We went up the mountain side. After H company had driven the insurgents out of their second position and killed Pilar, the other companies had rushed straight up the trail...Just past this a few hundred yards we saw a solitary figure lying on the road. The boy was almost stripped of clothing, and there were no marks of rank on the blood-soaked coat...A soldier came running down the trail.


"'That's old Pilar,' he said, 'we got the old rascal. I guess he's sorry he ever went up against the Thirty-Third.' 'There ain't no doubt its being Pilar,' rattled on the young soldier. 'We got his diary and letters and all his papers, and Sullivan of our company's got his pants, and Snider's got his shoes, but he can't wear them because they're too small, and a sergeant in G. Company got one of his silver spurs, and a lieutenant got the other, and somebody swiped his cuff buttons before I got here or I would have swiped them, and all I got was a stud button and his collar with blood on it.'


"So this was the end of Gregorio Del Pilar... A private sitting by the fire was exhibiting a handkerchief. 'It's old Pilar's. It's got DOLORES HOSES on the corner. I guess that was his girl. Well, it's all over with Gregorio.'


"'Anyhow,' said Private Sullivan, 'I got his pants. He won't need them anymore.'


"The man who had the general's shoes strode proudly past...A private sitting on a rock was examining a golden locket containing a curl of woman's hair. 'Got the locket off his neck,' said the soldier...


"As the main column started on its march for the summit of the mountain a turn in the trail brought us again in sight of the insurgent general far down below us. There had been no time to bury him. Not even a blanket or a poncho had been thrown over him.


"A crow sat on the dead man's feet. Another perched on his head. The fog settled down upon us. We could see the body no longer.


"And when Private Sullivan went by in his trousers, and Snider with his shoes, and the other man who had the cuff buttons, and the sergeant who had the spur, and the lieutenant who had the other spur, and the man who had the handkerchief, and another that had his shoulder straps, it suddenly occurred to me that his glory was about all we had left him."


Our poor, poor hero.

[CD · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quite readable story of the United States earliest involvement in the Philipines and it role well in to the later part of the 20th century.

A combination history, biography (F. Funston), political analysis and personal journey/travelogue of the author.

Briefly inconsistent in detail and or breadth of events, but still a worthwhile read for those interested in this topic.