Everybody has a story to tell. Sometimes, we just get so caught up in weaving the daily chapters of our own little autobiographies that everything else seems less imminent. But then again, sometimes life slows down a bit, and even the most adrenalin-addicted of us are forced to take a second glance at what used to seem so trivial that we just let it pass us by.
I left home for college almost eight years ago, and I’ve spent most of my life in this dingy and polluted urban jungle since then, only sparing a weekend or two every so often, in addition to the requisite vacations, to go home and spend time with the people I spent the first sixteen years of my life with. Back in college, when I had tons of free time to throw around, family time wasn’t so much of a problem. I could go home basically whenever I wanted. And I never got homesick. But lo and behold, four years later, I found myself longing for more quiet weekends away from anyone who’s ever heard of the SCRA. It’s not law school, mind you. I think it’s the realization that I’m getting older, and so are my grandmother, my aunts and my uncles, and I know little more about them today than I did when I was a little brat snooping on their afternoon coffee discussions. It’s one thing to know someone based on the labels he or she has been assigned since I was a child; it’s another to know someone as a person. For although they have their roles, they’re more than that. This is why I’ve been trying to get to know my grandmother, but not as Mama, but as Carmen Brown del Corro vda. De Yenko.
I’ve always known that my grandmother hates the Japanese and Koreans. When I was younger, I used to wonder why. Today, while I don’t share her sentiments, at least not in the same degree, I don’t blame her. She lived, and luckily survived without a scratch, through their pillage.
Mama was a young adolescent when World War 2 reached this part of the world with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Rumors had been circulating Manila even before Pearl Harbor that the war was coming to the Philippines, that it was only a matter of time. My grandmother, as young adolescents were, and still are, wont to be, was essentially clueless about the realities that surrounded the dark cloud knocking at our borders. News of Pearl Harbor reached the residents of Manila on a Sunday morning. At Mama’s house, my great-grandfather was listening to the news on the radio while the rest of the family was getting ready to go to mass. Mama was wearing a green dress, she recalls. Sunday mass was a very important family event that nobody missed unless it was a matter of life or death. As this was. When my great-grandfather heard the news on the radio, he went to his family and told them they would not be going to mass that morning. Mama protested, but her father had the final say. Japanese bombs fell on the Philippines soon after that. The residents of Manila were rounded up in American army transport trucks for relocation to safer areas of the country. Mama and her family were forced to leave their home in Sta. Ana to seek refuge with wealthy landowning relatives up north in Cagayan. Like most people, they were able to bring clothes, and nothing more.
Up north, life went on, my grandmother says, though the scene was a far cry from what we would call normal. American and Japanese fighter planes roared through the otherwise pacific sky in what people called dogfights. Everyday, residents heard bombs exploding in the distance. Mama and her younger sister Angela, against the stern warnings of both their parents, would watch these fights in the sky while their mother screamed at them to follow her to the underground bomb shelter that had been dug for their safety. This went on for years. They would rush to the bomb shelters when sounds of danger approached, and then when the commotion subsided, they went about their household duties. Mama would do the laundry, her sister Angela manned the kitchen, while their sister Lulu would take care of their younger siblings, mostly rowdy young boys.
Towards the end of the war, soap and salt became extremely hard to find, and very expensive. My great-grandmother would take her son Jess on trips across the north in search of the elusive things which were previously so abundant people took them for granted. These trips took their toll on my grand-uncle Jess, who soon caught malaria, but luckily survived the ordeal.
When the Japanese were retreating to the North during Liberation, they ransacked everything in their path, raping, robbing and killing everything and everyone in their path. They bayoneted innocent babies and little children. Mama and her family fled to the mountains to escape the tragedy. Some of the relatives they sought shelter with were not as lucky. My grandmother recalled how a cousin of hers was tortured by the Japanese and Korean soldiers. Two sheets of galvanized iron were heated over a fire, and the young boy was made to lie down between the two excruciatingly hot sheets until he died. His sister, who was forced to bear witness to her brother’s torture and death, was gang raped by Japanese soldiers. She finally could not cope with the mental and physical torture, and sought refuge in insanity.
In the mountains, my grandmother’s family struggled to survive. They slept on damp earth, with only thin sheets of plastic and umbrellas to protect them from the elements. Their parents watched over them in shifts at night, cautious of all sounds that could warn of approaching Japanese soldiers. They ate fruits off the trees, to fight off hunger and disease. My great-grandmother traded in their clothes little by little to purchase food, soap and salt. Mama recalls that they had no drinking water then. Her father got water from wherever he could. Most of the time, it was the murky kind. They boiled and filtered the water several times to make sure it was safe to drink, but it still tasted of earth. But it was either drink the earthy water or die of dehydration.
My great-grandfather heard that Japanese troops were nearing the area where the family was hiding, so the whole family packed up what little they had and snuck down from the mountains to the shore during dawn. Mama was scared that the boat her father had arranged to transport them to Enrile Island would not arrive on time. They were in grave danger, especially since they were of Caucasian descent, my great-grandfather was Spanish-Filipino, and my great-grandmother American-Filipino. After what was probably the longest few minutes in their lives, the boat arrived, and they all crouched down under blankets as they headed for Enrile Island.
When the last of the Japanese troops, save for the occasional stragglers, had fled the country, Mama and her family retraced their steps back to Manila. Before they returned to Manila, my great-grandfather went back to the house where they lived in Cagayan, to gather up the rest of their belongings. He discovered that the Japanese had ransacked the place and bayoneted even their pillows.
The tragedy that had befallen the Philippines was overwhelming. Manila was left in ruins. The air smelled of death and anguish.
Mama told me the story of Tita Cel, my grandfather’s sister-in-law, a pretty and smart young woman, she tells me, who, together with most of the Yenko family, opted to stay in Manila. She had recently given birth to her firstborn son. Carrying her young baby in her arms, she and her husband were running through the city for dear life. She clutched her baby to her chest, shielding him from shrapnel. Breathless and terrified, the young family finally got to a hospital where they would be safe, at least for a while. Tita Cel unraveled the blanket she had used to wrap her child as they fled…only to find out that the baby she had risked her life to protect was already dead. The young child had been hit by shrapnel while they were weaving through Manila, avoiding sure death from bombs and bullets. Tita Cel never recovered from the death of her first child, Mama said.
Back in Manila, Mama and her immediate family were reunited with her grandmother, who had opted to stay behind. She was alive, but had lost quite a lot of weight. Food was hard to come by, and she survived on the generosity of neighbors who had become their friends.
Political commentaries aside, to my grandmother, the arrival of the Americans was a welcome transition from the four-year onslaught of Japanese atrocities. To the common people who were just fed up with living like fugitives in their own country, it was a much-awaited breath of fresh air. And chocolate. And real baths, after having to but soap at such atrocious prices before liberation.
Years after the war, when my grandparents were already married, my grandfather met a Japanese businessman, whom he invited home for dinner. My grandmother protested, but my grandfather won that argument. Being the brat that she is, Mama provided the bare minimum required by common courtesy but refused to befriend the Japanese fellow, although she admitted that he was a gentleman. The issue ultimately surfaced one day that my grandparents had dinner with the Japanese man. He explained that most Japanese, especially the educated ones back in Japan, were civilized, and that the behavior of the Japanese in the Philippines during the war did not characterize them as a people. My grandmother told him that that may be the case, but one does not easily forget four years of witnessing such atrocities.
Mama still hates the Japanese and Koreans in general, and says it is an outrage that so-called Japayukis purposely marry and/or have children with those people after what they did during the war, and that Filipinos are so obsessed with Koreanovelas. Like I said, I don’t blame her. It’s easy for me to say that we should move on with our lives, that not all of them are butchers, and so on, because I didn’t live through the war. I didn’t have to witness the bloodshed, the tortured screams, and the sheer terror of getting slaughtered that my grandmother did. I don’t exactly share Mama’s sentiments. I have my own reasons for disliking certain races. But that’s an entirely different discourse.
Everybody has a story to tell. This is my grandmother’s story. Or at least part of it. It’s a glimpse of who she is, labels and requisite boxes aside. People want to be heard. Sometimes, we just have to learn listen to voices other than ours.
