For freedom and democracy

Title

Creator

Lopez, Salvador P.

Language

English

Year

1950

Subject

Arguilla, Manuel E., 1911 – 1944.

Guerrilas.

Philippines – History.

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

Novenlber, 1950' THE MANILA GUARDIAN Page15 FOR .FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY* By Salvador P. Lopez . THE OTHER DAY I came up fur in~estigation before one of and later trlillsferred to Old Bilibid .Where, in the l_!':tter,Jlart the Loyalty Status Boards of the Philippine Army. In the of August 1944, he ·was takeQ out, along with about thirty course of the testimony and examina~ion of Lyd Arguilla, her others, never to be seen again. · hUsband M?rty.el, Who .was·. arrested by_·the Japs in F~bruary So much was ~oWll 'from a confidential ,report on-·Ma1944 and is still missing; was mentioned. . . . nuel .which an Army operative had. prepared ·and ·from 'the Lyd was t~s.tifying' about_ my :Part in the activities of the few facts which Lyd was permitted ·to_.men:t;ion in the course Porch which slie and Manuel organized way back in the middle of her· testimony before the board. . of 1942 as affiliate of' Marking's Guerrillas.· )VIanuel, she said, . Thus baldly stated, the facts do create a picture of Manuel ·Was the commanding officer of the unit while she was the that is not wholly prepossessing. The Japs took him and pera'.djutant, and they received the~ instructiOns dlrect from Mark- haps· killed him, some people will- say,. but they may have mg and Y~y who hild ·placed the group directly under head- don:e so for one· reason as well as for another. He went around quarters. with the J aps, consorted with them, V\l'Orked for them; and. Though I and not he. was qn trial, the board naturally · though he may later have died at their hands, that of itself want~d to know a few facts about Manuel. The board was does not n;Lake him. a hero. · told he had been a well~knoWn writer, employed before the ?{ar in the Bureau of Public. Welfare where he continued tO . The s)ory of Manuel is the story of a hero. It is a story of work after the Exe.cutive Commission was· organized in late heroism as simple as the peasant Ilocano stock from which he January; .1942. After the 'fall 0~ Bati!-an he went 8r0UD:d the sprang, as rugged as the mountains back of the little barrio fu provinces with a unit of the Japanese Propaganda Corps. Later La Union that as the scene of his childhood and the setting he left the Bureau of Public Welfare to accept a job in the of many of his. childhood and the setting of many of his Department of Information, Japanese ~' as censor for finest stories. And I am going to tell it because it "is such a stage showS. He wrote a few stories and articles in _the Jap, story as he himself would ·have liked to tell, though it is' also controlled newspape"rs md magazines. oD. February 20, _1944, a story which none could tell half as ·well as he. he was ~ested _by tl:te K~mpetai, thrown i,11to Fort Santiago, A few days after the entry of Japanese troops in~o. Ma• &printed fTOm the Mllftilo Pon Maqari"e . nila, ManueLtol.d Pis wife: "Lfafe is not worth living without A. Administration - Insurance .. General Agents for y COMMONWEALTH INSURANCE co~ THE HOME INSURANCE CO. CI A. UNmN INSURANCE SOCIETY OF CANTON, LTD. GREAT AMERICAN INDEMNITY CO. . . . FffiB - MARINE - EARTHQUAKE - MOTOR CAR - PERSONAL ACCIDENT- W?J!KMEN's·coMPENSATION - Sl]RETY BONDS SORIANO· BLDG. Plaza C~rvantes Tel. 2-79-61 MANILA -I Page 16 THE MANILA GUARDIAN November, 1950 freedom." There was nothing declam&tory the way he said that; it was more like an aphorism whose truth he had discovered anew and was now restating in bitter though not hopeless realization. I like to think of Manuel saying that, because the words proVide the key to all that he did later on, all that happened to .him, until that awful moment in Bilibid when he told the J aps to their faces that he was fighting for freedom and democracyBut I am going ahead of the story. The point\ is that from that time on his plans were set. He had seen the face of the invader and loathed it; he had heard the tramp. of his booted feet in the. streets and he knew that this was his ·enemy. He was not a soldier. He intended to go to Bataan, but in the confusion that 'followed the rapid collapse of Filamerican resistance in Luzon, it had not been possible for him to leave·. • 1 Manuel decided that this was his place, that here he too could fight the eneiny, at close quarters, with his own weapOns. He went around the provinces with the Japanese Propaganda Corps. It was curiosity, more than anything else, which first led him to undertake such an equivocal and suspicious activity-the insatiable curiosity of a writer who wanted to see with his· own eyes ·and to hear with his own ears the reactions . of Filipinos to the. shattering impact of the Japanese invasion. Whereever he went he found that the people were sound and steadfastly loyal at heart and the knowledge pleased him because it made him feel all the more certain that redemption would come. ' · In the Bureau of Public Welfare he gathered a nwnber of trusted employees around him and with their help tUmed out anti-Japanese propaganda on the office mimeographing machine. Thia was typical of the darmg he showed through. out, the courage that enabled him to accomplish so much under such grave risks, the boldness that was later to prove his own undoing. Yay, who had escaped to-the mountains, needed fiJnds to organize Marking's Guerrillas on a more extensive scale. She sent Manuel bundles of guerrilla receipts to be gi~en in exchange for contributions from loyal 1 and well-to-di:> Filipinos. Manuel WEµit to Worfi with more enthusiasm than discretion; he would visit memb~rs of the Executive Commission who hardly knew him and say: "I'm going to ask you a favor. I've come to you because I think you are a loyal Filipino. If you are not willing to help, we'll both forget about .it. Here's a receipt signed by Yay. She needs money' for her guerrilla force. You can write '·down the amount you wish to give." .Most of the time they to.ok him at his word and gave him what he wanted. On one or two occasions, however, he happened to approach certain officials who thought he was a spy whom the J aps had set on their trail; they therefore notified the Militaxy Police as a meaSUre of protection. In this way, the Arguilla home on Calle M. H. de! Pilar was visited by the Kempetai in late December 1943; they turned the plaCe inside out, looking for guerrilla receipts. They found none. (Continued on page 21) of Sto. Tomas ·University Manila Compliments of - LVN PICTURES Watch For.• "APAT NA ALAS" • "TAPIS MO INDAY" • "REYNA ELENA" • "SATUR" Coming Soon ! Noven:iber, 1950 THE MANILA GUARDIAN Page 21 The first familiar face I saw in Tutuban station vvhen I '-arrived from ·capas in January 1943 was Manuel's. He had seen my name in ihe papers the day' before and had come to meet m.e. ) "The Japs want you in the Department," he said. "I don't think there's anything you can do about it." . I knew that, because one week before leaving Capas, I had received an order from Japanese Army Headquarters commanding; me to ·report there upon my arrival in Manila. Manuel told me not to worry foo much aboutit. He lrimself was there'; besides there was important work thci.t we could do together-"right under the noses of ·the Japs," was the way he put it. . . ~It was his failure to mind one such exreption, I think, that final- ly got him in trouble. Sometime in early February 1944, one of our couriers was.intercepted. When the Japs let him <mt a few days later,. we knew that they w;ere· up to -something. The courier sent word to Manuel and Lyd to get out of tovvn iit once: That s~me evening they left their home in Ermita and caine to the house to pass the nig~t. They carried a small leather bag and SO CENTAVOS PER PACKAGE PAYNO MORE tlner.~\ldeund More £njoyu~le / U, S, TOBACCO CORPORATION 24th & Boston Streets Port Area, Manila a portable typewriter; they were leaving next morning by train, they told us, for Pangasinan. Later on, they were going to join Marking and Yay in the mountains. We were worried, and they tried to reassure us. "Nothing is going to happen to you, whatever may happen to Lyd and me," Manuel said. And I believed him. After two weeks in the provinces, and believing, erroneously as it turned out, that they were not wanted by the Japs, after all, they returned to Manila on a Satuiday aftemQon. They §tayed in their home all Sunday. Monday morning Manuel went to his office--to resign, he said-while Lyd proceeded to her dentist. Shortly after noon, just as he was typing out his letter of resignation form the Hodobu, Manuel was arrested by the f{empetai. Lyd, retrirning home from the dentjst, was intercepted a block away from ho,,;e by her youngest brother, who told her not to proceed as the Japs were al.ready there. At four in the afternoon, ·we got her. frantic telephone call at the house .• we did not know they had come back, and we ~re surprised to hear her yoice over the telephone. . ~·_1 have gotten separated from M," she said: 'Il you see him or can send hiin word, just say that I have gone ahead." We never did get word to Manuel again. Two or more days later, when the Japs found out that Lyd had slipped through their fingers, they threw all the members of the Arguilla ·household into Fort Sa:D.tiago; his mother, sister, two brothers, and the two-year-old waif whom Manuel and Lyd had adopted. They were released two months later, When the J aps 'were cor;i.vinced there was nothing they can do to s,iiare Lyd back to the city into their clutches. · In Reverent Memory To Nati-Ona! Heroes . ... MA MON LUK Restaurant .. MA MON LUK (The Mannd King) Propriet0'1" Main: Branch: Calle SalaZar, Binondo QUezon Boulevard Manila

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