Friday, November 16, 2007 Maxey: A journey for peace By Ram Maxey Bar None
LAST October 25 I was in the company of two amiable Japanese businessmen, members of the Rotary Club of East Davao, who like me were traveling to Surigao City upon the invitation of Immediate Past Rotary District Governor Fernando "Jun" Almeda.
There were four of us aboard Hikaru S. Miyake's van, the other two being Yoichi Amano and Miyake's Filipino driver. Both Hikaru and Yoichi are married to Filipinas and speak Tagalog and Visayan.
We were Jun's special guests at the unveiling of a peace marker, the event having a kilometric name: "The War Memorial of the Japanese Cremation Site in Surigao: The Way to Mourn the Fallen Soldiers of the Former Enemy Country, and to Wish for Eternal Peace." It was on this site where the Japanese army put up a crematorium during the war for the cremation of hundreds of their dead soldiers and sailors.
The text on the peace marker was in two languages--1,186 words in English and about the same length in Japanese. The marker itself is made of ceramics and was made in Japan at a cost of 136,000 yen while the base and landscaping was through the initiative of the Surigaonon Heritage Center (SHC) headed by historian Almeda, a former media colleague of mine and a retired Philippine Ports Authority executive.
To my surprise, Jun told me that they had included in the text excerpts from "The Barefoot Guerrilla" a serialized war story written by Ben Tesiorna in Sun.Star Davao in 2003. It was based on my experience as a guerrilla with the Combat Company, 114th Infantry Regiment, 110th Division, United States Forces in the Philippines (USFIP), Surigao-Agusan sector.
The last paragraph in the marker's text reads: "We pray for lasting peace between our two nations, that there shall be no more war, and we dedicate ourselves to promoting reconciliation, harmony, cooperation, dialogue and friendship between Japan and the Philippines based on equality, mutual trust and respect always and forever."
The project, conceptualized by Almeda and Dr. Leslie Bauzon, a Filipino historian and professor at the Tsukuba University, Japan as long ago as 1988, was a joint undertaking of the SHC and Dr. Bauzon, Ms. Mari Furusawa, a Japanese scholar and researcher, Japanese scholar Asano Yukiko, and Professor Takishi Kimura. It was funded solely by private sources.
The site of the peace marker is on a hill overlooking Surigao City and where the Surigao del Norte National High School is located. The school occupies a special place in my heart. It was there where I and my sister Regina (Nene) graduated in March of 1940.
Nine months later, on December 7, 1941, when I was in the second year of my pre-law course and Nene was taking up piano (Conservatory of Music) both at the University of the Philippines, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. And that changed the course of both our lives forever.
My Japanese friends and I arrived in Surigao City at about 10am. Miyake and Amano checked in at the Gateway Hotel while Jun took me to the government guesthouse where I was billeted courtesy of Gov. Robert Ace Barbers.
The three of us met again at 3p.m. at the unveiling ceremony where a crowd of students, teachers and guests had gathered. Japanese Consul Koji Mitsui, who had come all the way from Davao City, was already at the site atop the hill where in my high school days I could see the blue Pacific Ocean over yonder. Not anymore.
There are infrastructures all over the place cutting off the view. In fact, where in my time 67 years ago there were only a total of about 500 students, current school principal Marilyn Yangson told me there are now 5,000. Sixty-seven years. How time flies.
Organizers chose October 25 for the unveiling of the marker to coincide with a historic event Suriganons proudly relate to: the Battle of Surigao Strait where before their eyes on the night of October 24-25, 1944 the US 5th Fleet under Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf wiped out the Japanese navy's Southern Force of 2 battleships, 4 cruisers and 9 destroyers.
The battle was actually only one of three separate engagements that together made up the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the greatest naval battle in history that crippled the Japanese navy and hastened the end of the war in the Pacific. But that's for another column.
Jun Almeda and his project collaborators deserve commendation for putting up the Peace Marker as a reminder to all that war is senseless, and that people-to-people relationship between nations is still the best option for attaining world peace.
