Since 2014 Bataan Legacy Historical Society (BLHS) has been working with the California Department of Education’s Instructional Quality Commission (IQC) to implement AB199, a legislation passed in 2011 (Sponsored by Ma and Yee) by the California Assembly and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown which encourages for the inclusion of the role of the Filipinos during WWII in the history/social sciences curriculum for Grades 7-12. The curriculum framework has been undergoing revision since 2014 and initially, the IQC proposed a two-sentence insertion of the role of the Filipinos during WWII in the framework. Today, thanks to your support, it has grown to one and a half pages to include WWII in the Philippines. It is a very complex process involving 10 stages over several years and we are nearing the final stage, which is the approval of the curriculum framework by the California State Board of Education this May. The curriculum framework only gets revised about every 10 years.
As far as we are concerned, the current draft curriculum framework still needs a lot of work in terms of historical accuracy and perspective. Two of the most salient points have not been addressed and were NOT recommended by the California History Social Sciences Project (CHSSP), the organization that wrote the text for the curriculum framework.
1. In the current framework, the Filipino soldiers are referred to as “allies”. In our comments we stated that the Filipino soldiers were more than allies (allies included Great Britain and the Netherlands). The Filipino and American soldiers in the Philippines served under the same army command – the US Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE).
2. The Greater Significance of the Battle of Bataan – The Filipino and American soldiers of the US Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), who suffered massive diseases and starvation as a result of the Europe First Policy and fought with no air support and reinforcement, were able to disrupt the timetable of the Imperial Japanese Army of 52 days and defended the Bataan peninsula for 99 days. This delay enabled the Allied Forces to harness the necessary resources that led to their eventual victory.
There were other factual errors that are still in the framework. Some examples include referring to General Edward P. King Jr. as General Ned King. General Douglas MacArthur was referred to in 1941 as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in the Pacific. It was only on August 14, 1945, that he was appointed as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in the Pacific, following the Potsdam agreement of July 26, 1945.
The IQC received letters of support from members of the community and in addition, it received 1,428 signatures on a change.org petition that BLHS initiated during the 60-day review of the curriculum framework in January and February of this year. We are very grateful for everyone’s help and support in this process. However, we still need to let the IQC know that our concerns must be addressed in order to create an accurate historical curriculum framework that will reflect the perspective of the Filipinos who made up majority of the USAFFE.
Meetings last March 24 and 25, provided opportunities when IQC can accept, reject or amend the recommendations made by the CHSSP. There will NOT be another draft of the curriculum framework and based on the comments received during the 60-day review as well as the recommendations made by the CHSSP, they will prepare the curriculum framework that will be approved by the State Board of Education in May.
We still have a long way to go before we can implement this curriculum framework as each school district not only needs to create their own curriculum but must also train their teachers on how to teach this seminal point of history. Bataan Legacy has already started steps to prepare the curriculum in anticipation of this huge step. But ultimately, it is up to the history teachers to implement it.
This is a rallying call for Fil-Am communities especially all descendants of the USAFFE soldiers and WWII civilian survivors to unite and fight for the legacy of their ancestors who sacrificed so much for the freedom that we are all enjoying today. Because of the Europe First policy, the defenders of Bataan and Corregidor fought without any air support (destroyed during the early days of the war) or reinforcement. The 75,000 soldiers of Bataan were forced to surrender because of starvation, disease and lack of ammunition and equipment. Approximately 10,000 Filipino and 750 American soldiers died in the infamous Bataan Death March and another 20,000 Filipinos and 1,600 Americans died inside their prison camp at Camp O’Donnell.
Manila became the second most devastated city in the world during WWII after Warsaw, Poland and by the end of the war, approximately 1,000,000 civilians in the Philippines perished. And yet, despite this great sacrifice, the benefits of the Filipino soldiers under the USAFFE were taken away from them by the Rescission Acts of 1946 when their service was deemed as not full-time. To this day, honor and justice for the Filipino veterans remain elusive.
As our WWII veterans and survivors dwindle in number every single day, we cannot afford to wait for another ten years to rally behind this cause. We have a moral obligation to see to it that their stories of valor and sacrifice are learned by this generation and those to come. And that justice by way of the truth will somehow restore the honor and dignity that were taken away from these Filipino WWII veterans.
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Cecilia I. Gaerlan is the Executive Director of Bataan Legacy Historical Society.