Grant K. Goodman

Japan and Philippine Beer: The 1930s

During the 1930s Japanese business interests increasingly believed that if and when free trade or preferential trade between the United States and the Philippines were to be terminated Japan would necessarily profit by taking over a greater share of the Philippine market. Such anticipation was particularly stimulated after the passage of the Tydings-McDuffie Act and the establishment on November 15, 1935 of the Philippine Commonwealth which was to be the transitional form of government until full independence was granted on July 4, 1946. Thus the pace of Japanese commercial activity in the Islands accelerated significantly, and Japans economic stake expanded accordingly. The skills, the business acumen and the unstinting diligence of the Japanese all served to provide them with financial rewards from the Philippine economy. Aggressive tactics, superior organization and sufficient capital also sustained and enhanced Japanese commercial success. All of these factors were evident in the chronology of the development of a Japanese stake in the brewing of Philippine beer.

General Artemio Ricarte and Japan

The romantic Filipino revolutionary and “irreconcilable” Artemio Ricarte y Vibora was born in 1866 at Batac, Ilocos Norte. A teacher of Spanish in Cavite by profession but a soldier by inclination, Ricarte secretly joined the independence-minded “blood brother-hood,” the Katipunan . Subsequently, he became an officer in the anti-Spanish Philippine uprising of 1896–1897. When the Spanish-American War broke out, Ricarte was one of those recruited by Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo to cooperate with the Americans in destroying Spains authority in the Philippines. As the commander of a military district in Luzon, Ricarte was rewarded by the revolutionary government with the title of General. As early as December of 1898, Ricarte doubted that the Americans would willingly withdraw from the Islands, and he submitted to Aguinaldo a plan for an immediate uprising against the American troops in Manila. Though this plot was frustrated, the outbreak of fighting on February 4, 1899, which resulted in the bloody Philippine-American War, occurred in an area immediately adjacent to that controlled by Ricarte, and some observers believe that Ricartes personal belligerence contributed significantly to the edginess of the Filipino soldiers.

“Anti-Communism” in Japanese-Philippine Relations during the 1930s

This paper derives from a larger study of the nature of Japans relations with colonial South and Southeast Asia in the period between the Russo-Japanese War and the Pacific War. By means of a detailed examination of a single facet of Japanese Philippine relations, it is hoped that a greater insight may be gained into the often convolute processes of the interactions between, on the one hand, the dominant Asian power of the inter-war period, and on the other hand, colonial entities and personalities still beholden to Western European or North American rulers. However, two caveats need to be put forward about this essay: (1) the case of the Philippines was unique in colonial Asia since the United States had fully committed itself to a policy of withdrawal, thus facilitating contacts between the local ruling elite and Japanese diplomats; (2) despite pre-war and wartime propaganda to the contrary, the principal concern of Japan in all its dealings with colonial South and Southeast Asia before the Pacific War was economic. In the prior instance, therefore, the paragraphs that follow will demonstrate an apparently remarkable degree of freedom of action on the part of the Filipinos in authority under the Commonwealth Administration (1935-46) in spite of the continuing legal responsibility of the United States for Philippine foreign affairs under the provisions of the Tydings-McDuffie (Independence) Act of 1934. The second caveat will be evidenced by the unstinting and continuous attention of Japanese diplomats to the development of ever closer economic ties between the Philippines and Japan. Research for this article was carried out in Washington, Manila, and Tokyo. Utilized in those three locations were the records of the Bureau of Insular Affairs of the War Department in Washington at the National Archives of the United States; the papers of Manuel L. Quezon, first President of the Commonwealth of the Philip pines, at the National Library of the Philippines in Manila; and the archives of the Foreign Ministry of Japan in Kasumigaseki, Tokyo. The present investigation has relied heavily on the latter. The Japanese Foreign Office representatives abroad were inveterate record keepers and constantly supplied Tokyo with detailed information on every aspect of the country in which they were serving. As will be seen below, especially in the case of the Philippines, those same diplomats also did a remarkable job of cementing connections at the highest level and of exercising leverage according ly. After several research sojourns in Japan, I have come to have great respect for the specificity and accuracy of the Japanese documentation. While the American records on the same matters emphasize military and strategic considerations in the context of United States-Japanese relations, and the Quezon Papers reveal the highly personalized nature of the Commonwealths foreign relations, it is the Japanese ar chives which provide the day-to-day specifics which make it possible for the con temporary scholar to reconstruct the kind of events which will be recounted here. 219

As The Days Go By: Throbs of Grateful Hearts: Reeducation Under the Japanese of Filipino POWs at Camp Del Pilar, Dau, Pampanga, 1942

This research note presents samples of previously unpublished testimonial letters written by Filipino officer prisoners of war (POW) to their Japanese POW camp commander in 1942. A preface to these letters, 184 in all and kept in the US national Archives, provides a glimpse of the day-to-day activities of the reeducation propaganda conducted by the Japanese Propaganda Corps in Camp Del Pilar, Dau, Pampanga. The Filipino officers’ expressions of gratitude showered upon the Japanese show another dimension of the otherwise tumultuous occupation period.

Bonner Fellers in the Philippines: American Colonial Prototype

Bonner Fellers (1896-1973), later prominent in the American occupation of Japan, in 1936 was assigned as captain in the U.S. Army to the staff of General Douglas MacArthur in Manila. His first assignment was to organize and develop a Reserve Officers’ Service School for the newly founded Philippine Army. Fellerss letters to his wife give a private view of how he gained the confidence of both General MacArthur and Philippine Commonwealth President Manuel L. Quezon when from 1937 to 1940 he served both men as principal aide and supported them on a trip to Washington in 1937. Fellers multitasked remarkably well and was privy to the highest level of both the American and Philippine governments.

Consistency is the Hobgoblin: Manuel L. Quezon and Japan, 1899–1934

During the period of American colonial rule in the Philippines prior to the Pacific War, the attitude of most thoughtful Filipinos toward Japan seemed to waver as though tantalized between fear and fascination. For while there was often a genuine concern, principally as a result of Japanese-American tensions, that a predatory Japan was literally counting the moments to an invasion and conquest of the Islands, there was also the tremendous admiration of one Asian people for another and an almost awe-struck eagerness to emulate the startling successes of Japan in achieving modern nationhood in its fullest sense. To this generalization Manuel Luis Quezon (1878–1944) was no exception.

The Philippine Legislature Trade Mission to Japan, 1933. A Reassessment

B EFORE World War II the overall economic stake of Japan in Philippine trade and investment was comparatively limited. However, as the desire of the Japanese to expand their overseas markets increased after World War I, and as the possibility of Philippine independence became more real, the opportunities for greater PhilippineJapanese economic interaction were mutually apparent and mutually attractive. After the Japanese attack on Manchuria in I93I and Japans subsequent withdrawal from the League of Nations, Japanese diplomats and businessmen in the Philippines appeared more assertive than they had been during the earlier American colonial period. Concurrently favorable Filipino responses to these more overt manifestations of Japans efforts to participate more fully in Philippine economic life were evident. Although the volume of trade between Japan and the Philippines had generally been extremely low,1 it was believed by manyJapanese and Filipinos that the preferential tariff relationship between the United States and the Philippines had been solely responsible for keeping these figures down.2 Therefore, with the greater likelihood of independence and an anticipated diminution of the free trade between the former colonial master and its soon to be independent offspring, the prospects for increased Japanese-