Earliest memory and other memories

May 25, 2014

The earliest memories of Luis Flores Jr.

The context of early childhood

My earliest memories has to have been after the Second World War. Japan invaded the Philippines in December of 1941, the Japanese took occupation in May of 1942.  I was born on February 10 of that year. I have no memory of this time of war.

In September of 1945 Japan formally surrendered to the United States and I would have been 3 years old. My brother was born around this time on July of 1945.  He was named Victor in celebration of the end of the war.  Unlike the distant past where the end of war was followed by periods of no-war, armed hostilities have been the case somewhere in the world to the present day.

The Japanese occupation of the Philippines during the Second World War did not play an important role in my consciousness nor that of my family.  I remember only one story I was told about the time my father and grandfather were stopped by Japanese troops and questioned.  They were on bicycles on their way to work at the water purification plant that supplied water to the city.  It was in an area called Balara, near the University of the Philippines.  As the story went, they were allowed to continue on because of where they worked. 

Other than this story, the war was not talked about. Neither was the Japanese occupation adequately covered in school curriculums.  Rather, the focus was on the Americans, the heroes that liberated the Philippines from the yoke of Japanese imperialism.

After the Second World War, the Philippines had one of the highest GNP in Asia partly due to the devastation of Japan; and, American and foreign  investment in the Philippines. The Philippines was the American show-case of democracy in Asia. America instituted the public school system and a government patterned after the American system, e.g. two house legislative body, a separate executive branch, etc.

However, while granting the Philippines political independence the Philippine economy was controlled by local Oligarchs and foreign interests. Indigenous independent industries and businesses were not allowed to grow and flourish. The laws of the land favoured foreign investors so much so that the richest Spanish oligarch in the Philippines acquired U.S. Citizenship. The leading banks in the Philippines mirrored the N.Y. Banking hierarchy.

Political independence quickly accommodated and supported the local oligarchy and foreign interests. All presidents have insured the position of these financial giants.  President Marcos, hailed as the champion of agrarian reform, was no exception.   Not surprisingly, the Philippine government was refereed to as a “puppet” government by the local press and the growing middle class.  It was described by some historians as a form of economic colonialism.

Even Adam Smith, the father of western capitalism did not see the eradication of economic classes as a consequence of capitalism.  Capitalism was not some kind of economic democracy, not a leveler of financial class inequalities in a society.
 

In a recent conversation with a Filipino lawyer, he declared that if the question of whether the Philippines become a state of the United States were put to a referendum in the Philippines, it would surely pass. No wonder.

The above is more about the Philippines than an early memory.