Over the course of time, Filipinos have tended to stereotype and denigrate the Chinese in their midst, depicting them not just as grasping and disloyal, but as essentially cowardly: “they don’t care who owns the cow as long as they get to milk it.” In writing Philippine history, the Chinese immigrants and their descendants¹ are acknowledged in discussions of economic development, but they tend to disappear when it comes to political history, especially those great crucibles in which the nation’s identity was forged, the Revolution and the Second World War. Thus by implication the Philippine Chinese are denied a role...

The Second World War was extended to the Pacific region with the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 8, 1941 (December 7 east of the International Date Line), which caused heavy losses to the American naval force in the Pacific. With the road cleared, the Japanese proceeded to conquer mainland and maritime Southeast Asia, and to establish the so-called “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.” A number of important cities fell one after another: Hong Kong on December 25, 1941; Manila on January 2, 1942; Kuala Lumpur on January 11; Singapore on February 15; Batavia on March 6; and...

It was hardly possible for any significant resistance force to emerge from a totally disintegrated society. But if the prewar social organizations and mobilization of the population formed the very foundation of a resistance movement, it was the community leadership which determined its form, nature and strength. The Philippine Chinese community before the outbreak of the Pacific War was a highly organized one. At the base of it there were numerous social organizations which had existed early in the Spanish period. These can be divided broadly into four types: regional or hometown associations, clan associations, trade or guild associations, and...

To trace the development of a guerrilla resistance movement, the first problem encountered by historians is the scarcity of source materials. For a small irregular force fighting in adverse circumstances, it was highly dangerous if not impossible to keep a complete roster of the team or a detailed record of its activities. Moreover, many of these valuable materials, had they ever existed, would have been destroyed during the war.

In addition, more difficulties arise from the unreliability of the materials available. Most of the primary sources come from the accounts by the leaders and members of the guerrilla team, and...

Unlike the Chinese leftists, the Chinese resistance forces on the rightist side were characterized by diversity and disunity. Four main guerrilla forces—the Chinese Overseas Wartime Hsuehkan Militia (COWHM), the Pekek Squadron (Squadron 399), the Philippine Chinese Youth Wartime Special Services Corps (PCYWSSC), and the Chinese Volunteers in the Philippines (CVP) — emerged directly or indirectly from the prewar Guomindang organizations in the Philippines. However, according to the backgrounds of the members and the political complexions that these guerrilla teams demonstrated especially in the later part of the occupation period, further classification of these groups is possible. The CVP and...

The process of historiographic interpretation of the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia started with the publication of Willard Elsbree’s work in 1953 on Japan’s role in nationalist movements.¹ For more than two decades historians had largely reached the consensus that the Japanese occupation constituted a turning point in the political history of the region.² Then in 1980, Alfred McCoy’s edited volume Southeast Asia under Japanese Occupation appeared as a reassessment of the above thesis. A summary of the nine essays collected in the volume comes up to the conclusion that “the image of the war’s uniform and lasting impact on...