LUIS Gabuya Jabonero was 12 when he became a warrior, who was moved to avenge his mother’s beating by Japanese soldiers.
Marcelo Barriga was 14 when the war changed his life. He remembers how happy he was when he finally made it home from Japan in December 1946.
Jabonero is now 89 years old. Barriga is 94.
Both men recalled their experiences in a forum last April 18 called “Surviving the War,” which was held in the Casa Gorordo Museum in Barangay Parian, Cebu City.
History professor Jose Eleazar Bersales shared with the audience some of the experiences of Cebuano fighters.
In a new edition of the book “Tabunan” written by the late colonel Manuel Segura, some details about life in Cebu during the war were also revealed.
During the forum, Bersales recalled how nobody knew of the arrival of the Japanese in the country on April 10, 1942.
Bersales has spent years documenting the stories of war veterans and civilian eyewitnesses in Cebu.
During the Japanese occupation, he said that an explosion ruined the Central Train Station, which is now the South Bus Terminal.
Another explosion was documented in what is now the site of the University of San Carlos Main Campus on P. del Rosario St.
In Cordova Elementary School, Bersales said that women were raped and tortured, and the mayor was hanged in one of the rooms.
He was one of the 120 individuals whose lives ended there.
Ordeals
In what is now the Cebu Normal University, he shared that one Filipino assumed that the airplane passing by belonged to the Americans and shouted “mabuhay.” He was immediately shot.
Other ordeals that happened during the Japanese occupation include the Dapdap massacre in Camotes, where the soldiers ran out of bullets and used other things to beat people.
Another massacre was also reported in Medellin.
Barriga, who listened to Bersales’ presentation, recalled that he joined the Philippine Scouts for training and was transferred to Japan at the age of 14.
He remembers how happy he was when Japan’s surrender was announced and he was sent home in December 1946.
Revenge
Jabonero, for his part, remembered how the Japanese beat up his mother.
“Mubalos ko. (I will seek revenge),” he recalled telling himself back then.
He learned Nihonggo in a school in Lahug, which enabled him to interpret for the troops when they caught any intruders. He recalled punching one Japanese soldier so hard that the man fainted.
“Abe nako gamay rato pero akong kumo ga-sirit sirit man sad (I thought it was a slight blow, but my punches were fast),” he said.
Whenever they capture Japanese soldiers, Jabonero said they also hurt them, which to him was “a painful achievement.”
Leoncia Suico-Beltran, for her part, also recalled the time when her husband, Nicetos Mondero Beltran, was assigned in Borbon at the age of 19.
After the war, the Americans brought him to Japan.
The couple met upon Nicetos return to Cebu, got married, and eventually had 10 children.
Nicetos, who is now 94, however, has suffered some memory loss.
Documentation
Before the forum ended, Mario Marasigan, a 65-year-old retired soldier who battled in Sulu for seven years, urged the Philippine Veteran Affairs Office-Field Service Extension Office to consider recent events in the country for documentation as times of war.
This includes the war between government troops and Islamic State-inspired extremists.
It took five months for government troops to defeat the rebels who had laid siege in the city.
This way, he said, young Filipinos will have a chance to combine their knowledge of both the past and present, raise their awareness and spread patriotism. (Jazzy Lyle Samson, CNU Intern)