http://www.sunstar.com.ph/baguio/veterans-recall-japanese-occupation-ifugao

Veterans recall Japanese occupation in Ifugao

September 9, 2009

By Vency D. Bulayungan

KIANGAN, IFUGAO -- Hundreds of veterans and their sons and daughters converged in this historic town recently to celebrate the 64th anniversary of the surrender of Japanese forces here.

Alejandro Puguon, 85, the District Commander of the Veterans Association in the province recalled the treatment of the Japanese occupation back in 1943-46.

“The Japanese were friendly to us here in Kiangan and I do not remember of any maltreatment they have shown when we were under them,” he said.

Puguon, a medical aide then, said he usually went with the Japanese company to the battle ground to treat the wounded or give them first aide. He attributed the good treatment to the leadership of then Mayor Jose Dulinayan.

He said Dulinayan knew how to deal with the Japanese forces in order to save the guerillas.

Puguon calls Dulinayan a “manyana for the manyanas” since he was excellent in delaying the plans of the Japanese forces in going after the Filipino guerillas who were hiding in the mountains by giving wrong information to the Japanese.

However, Puguon admitted that there was cruelty inflicted by the Japanese in the neighboring town of Lagawe where the Japanese let people drink plenty of water then stepped on them.

"It was a gruesome scenario that one cannot tolerate to watch," he said.

Puguon recalled that the Japanese were very strict in implementing rules and regulations such as curfew hours. You cannot see any person walking during the curfew hours with the fear of being hurt by the said forces, he said.

He also said the Japanese forces burned schools thus the first missionaries have to construct makeshift tents just to educate the people.

All of these ended when General Tomoyuki Yamashita surrendered to the American and Filipino forces in Hungduan here and was brought down to Kiangan where he signed his formal surrender.

Published in the Sun.Star Baguio newspaper on September 10, 2009.

Source: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/regions/view/20090203-187233

They came to appease the dead and living

By Ben Moses Ebreo

Philippine Daily Inquirer

02/03/2009

KIANGAN, Ifugao –a group of Japanese officials on 1/30/2009 paid respects to their dead in a Buddhist ceremony called the okyo, which is similar to Ifugao’s bogwa (bone washing)…the skeletal remains of 509 Japanese soldiers who died during WWII were burned. The bones were retrieved & collected from different provinces and burned on the grounds of the Kiangan Central School in Barangay Poblacion. …Enryo Sugiwaka, the Buddhist high priest who led the okyo, said the ritual was meant to free the soul of the dead soldiers so these would return to their country. It was also aimed to bring peace of mind to their families and loved ones, he said…. “The bogwa culture of the Cordillera helped us a lot since we can easily identify that the bones we dug up belong to Japanese soldiers because Cordillerans gather the remains of their dead and place them inside their houses. Definitely, the bones that we retrieved were 80 percent Japanese,” Santos Bayucca said….war artifacts dug up with the bones – metal helmets, bullets, dog tags, a machinegun, a samurai sword, medicine bottles, belt buckles, hand grenades and water bags – revealed more information….Among the important finds was a power generator believed to belong to Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, a top commander of the Japanese Imperial Army in Asia during World War II. Yamashita surrendered to American forces in Kiangan in 1945. With a report from EV Espiritu

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090616/ap_on_re_us/us_immigration_files;_ylt=AvPbwswy.ytEwPa.BhrIkO6s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTFldjMwNm90BHBvcwM3MARzZWMDYWNjb3JkaW9uX3Vfc19uZXdzBHNsawNwb3N0LXd3aWlpbW0-

Post-WWII immigration files to be opened to public

By MARIA SUDEKUM FISHER, Associated Press Writer Maria Sudekum Fisher, Associated Press Writer – Mon Jun 15, 8:07 pm ET
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Millions of files containing detailed information about U.S. immigrants — including their spouses' names, as well as personal photographs and letters — will soon become available to the public through a federal facility in suburban Kansas City.
Preservationists had been worried that the documents providing an important picture of immigration after 1944 would be lost because the federal government considered them temporary and could have destroyed them after 75 years.
But a deal signed this month between the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the National Archives and Records Administration preserves all 53 million files. About 21 million will be sent to the National Archives and made available in batches to genealogists, families and others.
"It's a big deal because basically at this point they could have just incinerated them all," said Jennie Lew, a spokeswoman for Save Our National Archives, a San Francisco-based group that worked to preserve the files. "And these give a fuller picture of those that were allowed to immigrate later in American history."
The U.S. has been "very good at preserving the records of the Puritans and western Europeans ... but you'd miss the whole history of those" who came to the U.S. later if the A-files weren't kept, she said.
Some files contain items such as Chinese wedding scrolls or the locations of family homes, said Jeanie Low, another SONA spokeswoman.
"We're not just talking about European immigrants. We're talking about Africans, war brides, southeast Asians, every political struggle you have had," she said. "All we have before these files was immigrants coming through Ellis Island, and that is not representative of the U.S. anymore."
The first batch of about 135,000 files is expected to be available to the public this fall at National Archives' storage facility in Lee's Summit. People also can ask the archive to mail them copies of records.
Immigrants will continue to be able to get copies of their own files under the Freedom of Information Act.
The files will not be open to others, however, until 100 years after an immigrant's birth.
Lists of documents contained in A-files had been previously available to the public with a FOIA request. But the files themselves were not open for viewing or copying

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/76088.html

Posted on Friday, September 25, 2009

Obama says 'no' to pensions for WW II Alaska guards

By Erika Bolsted | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- In a strongly worded message to Congress outlining its priorities for a military spending bill, the Obama administration today said it disapproved of including money for pensions for 26 elderly members of the World War II-era Alaska Territorial Guard.

The Guardsmen are among those assigned to protect Alaska from the Japanese during World War II.

The Army decided this year to no longer count service in the Guard in calculating the military's 20-year minimum for retirement pay, although it still counts for military benefits. As a result, their pensions were decreased in January.

An estimated 300 members are still living from the original 6,600-member unit formed in 1942 to protect Alaska, then a territory, from attack. The 26 men have enough other military service to reach the 20-year minimum for retirement pay but would lose it if the Territorial Guard service doesn't count.

A Senate military spending bill up for a vote in the Senate allows the former Guard members count their service as part of active military duty, and it reinstates the payments.

State lawmakers passed a bill earlier this year to fill the pay gap until Congress made a permanent fix, but the White House said Friday it didn't think it was "appropriate to establish a precedent of treating service performed by a state employee as active duty for purposes of the computation of retired pay."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who along with Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, sponsored the fix, called the administration move "deeply disappointing, bordering on insensitive." The legislation honors 26 elderly Native people who are the few remaining survivors of a military unit that served the country with valor, Murkowski said.

"The administration's justification, which is that the legislation will set the precedent of treating service as a state employee as federal service, defies logic and history," she said in a statement. "Sixty-two years after the Territorial Guard was disbanded, the Obama administration minimizes the contribution of this gallant unit to America's success in World War II by calling its service 'state service.' "