Soldiers of a forgotten empire: American memory and the battle for Filipino veterans’ benefits

Abstract

More than a quarter million Filipino soldiers fought under American command during the Second World War, but the US Congress declared in 1946 that the vast majority would be ineligible to receive benefits under the GI Bill, a landmark piece of social legislation that provided financial and educational assistance to most veterans of the war. This article examines the contested politics of denying these benefits to veterans of the Philippine Commonwealth Army. It demonstrates how the US Federal Government’s efforts to suppress its imperial past shaped military welfare policy in the post-war era.

Keywords:

• Veterans
• Philippines
• GI Bill
• empire
• United States Armed Forces of the Far East
• USAFFE

Disclosure statement

The author declares that he has no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper. The development of this article was made possible by funding provided by the Daniel K. Inouye Institute.

Notes

1 Michael A. Cabotaje, ‘Equity Denied: Historical and Legal Analyses in Support of the Extension of US Veterans’ Benefits to Filipino World War II Veterans,’ Asian Law Journal 6 (1999), 67.

2 Christopher Capozzola, Bound by War: How the United States and the Philippines Built America’s First Pacific Century (New York: Basic Books, 2020).

3 Suzanne Mettler, Soldiers to Citizens: The G.I. Bill and the Making of the Greatest Generation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).

4 Certain Service Deemed Not to be Active Service, US Code 38 § 107(a) and 38 § 107(b).

5 Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).

6 Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006); Oliver Burtin, ‘Enforcing Conformity: Race in the American Legion, 1940–1960,’ in War Veterans and the World after 1945: Cold War Politics, Decolonization, Memory, Ángel Alcade and Xosé. M. Núñez Seixas, eds, (London: Routledge, 2018); Molly Merryman, Clipped Wings: The Rise and Fall of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) of World War II (New York: New York University Press, 2008).

7 Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 138.

8 Christopher S. Parker, Fighting for Democracy: Black Veterans and the Struggle Against White Supremacy in the Postwar South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); Simeon Man, Soldiering Through Empire: Race and the Making of the Decolonizing Pacific (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018).

9 Christina Duffy Burnett, ‘The Edges of Empire and the Limits of Sovereignty: American Guano Islands,’ American Quarterly, 57 (2005), 779–803.

10 Sam Erman, Almost Citizens: Puerto Rico, the US Constitution, and Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 2–6; Katrina Quisumbing King, ‘The Political Uses of Ambiguity: Statecraft and US Empire in the Philippines, 1898–1946’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2018).

11 Robert Gerwarth and Erez Manela, eds, Empires at War, 1911–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 3.

12 Dónal Hassett, Mobilizing Memory: The Great War and the Language of Politics in Colonial Algeria, 1918–39 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 5, 142.

13 Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, eds, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 37.

14 Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).

15 In this way, they resembled traditional American welfare benefits: Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York: Basic Books, 1996).

16 Paul A. Kramer, ‘Power and Connection: Imperial Histories of the United States in the World,’ American Historical Review 116 (2011), 1348–91.

17 Frank Hindman Golay, Face of Empire: United States–Philippine Relations, 1898–1946 (Madison: University of Wisconsin-Madison, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Monograph Number 14, 1998), 464–9.

18 US Veterans Administration, Decisions of the Administrator of Veterans’ Affairs: March 1, 1931 – June 30, 1946 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1954), 725.

19 Hayden’s letter to Bradley is reprinted in US Congress, Senate, Committee on Appropriations, Hearings on H.R. 5604, 79th Cong., 2nd sess., 25 March 1946, 54.

20 Jack L. August, Vision in the Desert: Carl Hayden and Hydropolitics in the American Southwest (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1999), 153–5.

21 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Appropriations, Hearings on H.R. 5604, 54.

22 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Appropriations, Second Supplemental Surplus Appropriation Rescission Bill, 79th Cong. 2nd. sess., 1946, 57.

23 First Supplemental Surplus Appropriation Rescission Act of 1946 (P.L. 79-301). The Second Supplemental Surplus Appropriation Rescission Act of 1946 (P.L. 79-391) removed eligibility for members of the New Philippine Scouts.

24 Cabotaje, 79.

25 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Deficiency, Hearings on H.R. 5604, 79th Cong., 2nd sess., 25 March 1946, 61.

26 US Congress, Congressional Record, 79th Cong., 2nd sess., 1946, vol. 92, pt. 1: 1153–4; Golay, 468–70.

27 Golay, 468–70.

28 Harry S. Truman, ‘Statement by the President Concerning Provisions in Bill Affecting Philippine Army Veterans, 20 February 1946,’ in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1950), 124.

29 Golay, 469.

30 President S. Osmeña to Resident Commissioner C. P. Romulo, 12 February 1946, Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines <https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/1946/02/12/letter-written-by-president-osmena-to-resident-commissioner-carlos-p-romulo-instructing-him-to-work-for-the-extension-of-the-full-benefits-of-the-g-i-bill-of-rights-to-filipino-war-veterans-februa/> [accessed 12 December 2021].

31 Quoted in Capozzola, 189.

32 Quoted in Rick Baldoz, The Third Asiatic Invasion: Empire and Migration in Filipino America, 1898–1946 (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 232.

33 ‘PS to Stage Palace March Tomorrow,’ Manila Times, 12 June 1948.

34 The Secretary of State to the Ambassador of the Philippines, 13 March 1950, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, Volume VI: East Asia and the Pacific (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1976), 1420.

35 ‘21 Philippine Aides Involved in GI Thefts,’ New York Times, 23 October 1949, 33. The VA was already under fire for corruption in domestic veterans’ programmes: Kathleen J. Frydl, The GI Bill (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 186–221.

36 Tillman Durdin, ‘Manila Distressed by Economic Woes,’ New York Times, 4 June 1950, 24; Ford Wilkins, ‘Philippines’ Economy is Near a Breakdown,’ New York Times, 20 August 1950, 120.

37 Donald A. Ritchie, The Columnist: Leaks, Lies, and Libel in Drew Pearson’s Washington (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 2; Drew Pearson, ‘VA Subsidizes Harems for Filipino Veterans,’ Austin American-Statesman, 14 October 1951, A34.

38 Ibid. The wives of American veterans faced similar rumours of promiscuity in US popular culture: James I. Deutsch, ‘Piercing the Penelope Syndrome: The Depiction of World War II Veterans’ Wives in 1940s Hollywood Films,’ Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 16 (1990), 31–42.

39 Pearson, A34.

40 Carlos Romulo, ‘Summary of the Proceedings: Twenty-Eight Annual National Convention of the American Legion,’ 2 October 1946, 53–5, American Legion National Library and Museum (ALNLM). The Veterans of Foreign Wars also supported expanded benefits: John N. Popham, ‘Veterans Benefit Nation, Says Gray,’ New York Times, 24 August 1949, 3.

41 US Congress, House of Representatives, 81st Cong., 2nd sess., Hearing Before a Subcommittee on Veterans’ Affairs, 2 May 1950; American Legion, ‘Resolution No. 29: Admission of Former Filipino Members of the USAFFE to Membership in the American Legion,’ 19 November 1955, ALNLM; American Legion, ‘Report of the National Adjutant,’ 30 August 1954, ALNLM.

42 Nick Cullather, ‘America’s Boy? Ramon Magsaysay and the Illusion of Influence,’ Pacific Historical Review 62 (1993), 310.

43 Congress of the Philippines, Senate, Committee on Veterans and Military Pensions, Presenting the Case of the Filipino Veteran to the People of the United States (Manila, 1954).

44 US Department of State, American Foreign Policy: Current Documents (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1959), 857.

45 Benedict J. Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion: A Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines, 2nd edition (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002), xix.

46 Bonifacio S. Salamanca, Toward a Diplomatic History of the Philippines (Diliman: University of the Philippines Press, 1995), 163.

47 Lewis E. Gleeck, Jr., The Third Philippine Republic, 1946–1972 (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1993), 333.

48 Jonathan Colman and J.J. Widén, ‘The Johnson Administration and the Recruitment of Allies in Vietnam, 1964–1968,’ History 94 (2009), 489.

49 Capozzola, 258.

50 Man, 104.

51 Albert F. Celoza, Ferdinand Marcos and the Philippines: The Political Economy of Authoritarianism (Westport: Praeger, 1997), 23.

52 Memorandum from the President’s Special Assistant to President Johnson, 14 September 1966, Foreign Relations of The United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXVI: Indonesia; Malaysia-Singapore; Philippines (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2000), 732; Memorandum from the President’s Special Assistant to President Johnson, 27 June 1966, Foreign Relations of The United States, 1964–1968, 753.

53 Satoshi Nakano, ‘The Filipino World War II Veterans Equity Movement and the Filipino American Community’ (paper presented at the Seventh Annual International Philippine Studies Conference, Leiden, The Netherlands, 16–19 June 2004).

54 Report of the Washington Conference, Joint RP-US Commission for the Study of Philippine Veterans Problems, Washington, DC, August 1966, 89.

55 Report of the Washington Conference, 95.

56 ‘Marcos Makes Profitable Visit,’ New York Times, 18 September 1966.

57 Ibid.

58 Contracts and Grants to Provide for the Care and Treatment of United States Veterans by the Veterans Memorial Medical Center, US Code 38 § 1732 and § 107.

59 ‘Settlement of Veterans Claims,’ United States Treaties and Other International Agreements 18 (1967), 1392–3.

60 US General Accounting Office, ‘Better Use Could be Made of U.S. Assistance and Other Support to the Philippines,’ 2 March 1973 (B-133359).

61 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Appropriations, 95th Cong., 1st sess., Veterans Administration Benefits Program in the Republic of the Philippines, 31 August 1977.

62 ‘Benefits to Filipinos by V.A. Termed High,’ New York Times, 1 September 1977, 15.

63 ‘Filipinos Get Rich Collecting Benefits as US Veterans,’ Detroit Free Press, 6 February 1978, 12-D.

64 US Congress, Senate, Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Hearings on the Veterans’ Program Extension and Improvement Act of 1981, 97th Cong., 1st sess., 30 April 1981, 529.

65 Public Law 97-72 amended section 632 [now 1732] of Title 38.

66 Hundreds of examples of the array of problems and bureaucratic hurdles can be found in the Philippine Veterans Case Files collection of the D.K. Inouye Papers, Hamilton Library, University of Hawai‘i (DKIP).

67 D.K. Inouye, ‘Speech at Memorial Ceremony Commemorating American and Filipino Veterans,’ 11 April 1981, DKIP, Box SP4.

68 F. Landa Jocano, ‘Filipinos in Hawaii: Problems in the Promised Land,’ Philippine Sociological Review, 18 (1970), 152.

69 N.T. Jimenez, Veterans Affairs Office, Embassy of the Philippines, 10 August 1990, DKIP, Box SB698.

70 Nakano, 33–53.

71 Ibid.

72 US Congress, Senate, Filipino Veterans Equity Act of 1993, S 120, 103rd Cong., 1st sess., introduced in Senate 21 January 1993; M. Blanco to D.K. Inouye, 13 August 1993, DKIP, Box SB698.

73 Antonio Raimundo, ‘The Filipino Veterans Equity Movement: A Case Study in Reparations Theory,’ California Law Review 98 (2), 2010, 602.]

74 Nakano, 33–53.

75 Yen Le Espiritu, Home Bound: Filipino American Lives across Cultures, Communities, and Countries (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 116–26.

76 Editorial, ‘Under the American Flag,’ Washington Post, 13 December 1997.

77 Editorial, ‘Honor Promises, However Late,’ Los Angeles Times, 19 June 1997, B8; James W. Blair, ‘The Vicissitudes of the Victor,’ LA Weekly, 10 September 1998.

78 Bob Stump, ‘Filipino Vets and Fairness,’ Washington Post, 28 January 1998, A17.

79 US Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, 105th Cong., 2nd. sess., Benefits for Filipino Veterans, 22 January 1998, 8.

80 US Department of Veterans Affairs, VA Benefits for Philippine Veterans, 3 December 1997, W.J. Clinton Presidential Library (WJCPL), WJC-DPC: Records of the Domestic Policy Council, ca. 1992–1/20/2001, Series: Irene Bueno’s Files, 1999 – 2001.

81 US Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, 105th Cong., 2nd. sess., Benefits for Filipino Veterans, 22 July 1998; Department of the Philippines, American Legion, ‘Resolution No. 98: Urge Congress to Amend Title 38 USC. Sec. 107—To Recognize the Status of Filipino Veterans,’ 19 April 1996, ALNLM.

82 ‘Briefing for the President of the United States and the U.S. Delegation to the Philippines,’ 13 November 1994, DKIP, Box SB699.

83 I.B. Bueno to J. Lambrew, 17 March 2000, WJCPL, WJC-DPC: Records of the Domestic Policy Council, ca. 1992–1/20/2001, Series: Irene Bueno’s Files, 1999 – 2001.

84 Raimundo, 613.

85 Emelyn Cruz Lat, ‘Aging Filipinos who Fought for U.S. Live Lonely Lives Waiting for Promises to be Kept,’ San Francisco Examiner, 25 May 1997, C-1

86 Democratic Party Platforms, 2008 Democratic Party Platform Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project <https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2008-democratic-party-platform> [accessed 12 December 2021].

87 Rick Rocamora, Filipino World War II Soldiers: America’s Second-Class Veterans (San Francisco: Veterans Equity Center, 2008), 80.

88 Sara Fargnoli et al., ‘Trend Toward Equality? A Comparative Analysis of the Treatment of Noncitizens Veterans in the Administration of Post-Service Benefits,’ Veterans Law Review, 2 (2010), 12.

89 Michael Honda, ‘Justice for Filipino Veterans, at Long Last,’ Asian American Law Journal 16 (2009), 193–6.

90 Quoted in Jimiliz Maramba Valiente-Neighbours, ‘Racialized Bodies and Phantom Limb Citizenship: The Case of the Filipino World War II Veterans’ (PhD diss, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2016), 4.

91 Mettler, 10.

92 Cara Wong and Grace Cho, ‘Jus Meritum: Citizenship for Service,’ in Transforming Politics, Transforming America: The Political and Civic Incorporation of Immigrants in the United States, Taeku Lee et al., eds, (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006), 71–88.

93 ‘UK Plans New Fund for Indian Soldiers Who Fought in World Wars,’ Times of India, 1 November 2018; ‘Gurkha veterans to receive equal pensions from British Army,’ New York Times, 8 March 2007.

94 Matthew Saltmarsh, ‘Colonial Soldiers Want More from France,’ New York Times, 12 August 2009; Gregory Mann, Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth Century (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 211.

95 Ann Laura Stoler, ed., Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).

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Colin Moore

Colin D. Moore is the Chair of the School of Communication and Information and an Associate Professor at the Matsunaga Institute for Peace at the University of Hawai‘i. He previously served as a research fellow at Yale University’s Center for the Study of American Politics and as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Fellow in Health Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley. His research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, and Studies in American Political Development, among other venues. He is the author of American Imperialism and the State: 1893–1921 (Cambridge University Press, 2017).