Forgotten under a Tropical Sun

P. McCallus Joseph

Description

Memory has not been kind to the Philippine-American War and the even lesser-known Moro rebellion. Today, few Americans know the details of these conflicts.There are almost no memorials, and the wars remain poorly understood and nearly forgotten.Forgotten under a Tropical Sun is the first examination of memoirs and autobiographies from officers and enlisted members of the army, navy, and marines during the Spanish, Filipino, and Moro wars that attempts to understand how these struggles are remembered. It is through these stories that the American enterprise in the Philippines is commemorated.Arranged chronologically, beginning with veterans who recall the naval victory over the Spanish at Manila Bay in 1898 and continuing to the conventional and guerrilla wars with the Filipinos, the stories remember the major campaigns of 1899 and 1900, the blockade duties, and life in provincial garrisons. Finally, the lengthy (1899-1913) and often violent military governance in Moroland - the Muslim areas of Mindanao - is considered. Within these historical stages, Forgotten under a Tropical Sun looks at how the writers address incidents and issues, including accounts of well-known and minor engagements, descriptions of atrocities committed by both sides, and the effect on troop morale of the anti-imperialist movement in the United States.Additionally, Forgotten under a Tropical Sun explores the conflicts through the tradition of war memoirs. Attention is given to the characteristics of the stories, such as the graphic battlefield descriptions, the idea of manliness, the idealized suffering and death of comrades, the differing portrayals of the enemy, and the personal revelations that result from the war experience.

Sujets

• Musulmán
• Musulman
• Islam
• Asia
• États-Unis
• History of the Americas
• Military history
• United States of America
• USA
• Histoire

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 03 octobre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781631012785
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

FORGOTTEN UNDER A TROPICAL SUN
FORGOTTEN UNDER A TROPICAL SUN

War Stories by American Veterans in the Philippines, 1898–1913
JOSEPH P. MCCALLUS
The Kent State University Press
Kent, Ohio
© 2017 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-60635-319-6
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information for this title is available at the Library of Congress.
21  20  19  18  17      5  4  3  2  1
To the memory of my mother, Margaret McCallus
CONTENTS

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 First Encounters
2 Heroes of the New Frontier
3 Brutality
4 The Good Father
5 The Pioneers’ Club
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
Fig. 1. USS Olympia
Fig. 2. George Dewey
Fig. 3. Bradley A. Fiske
Fig. 4. Herbert O. Kohr
Fig. 5. “Uncle Sam: Now That I’ve Got It …”
Fig. 6. Funston’s Charge
Fig. 7. Lawrence Benton
Fig. 8. Jack Ganzhorn
Fig. 9. Lawton’s Funeral Procession
Fig. 10. L. J. Van Schaick and Ward Cheney
Fig. 11. David Potter
Fig. 12. James Parker
Fig. 13. The Church at Catubig
Fig. 14. Littleton Waller
Fig. 15. Map of Moroland
Fig. 16. John R. White
Fig. 17. Hugh L. Scott
Fig. 18. Hugh L. Scott and the Sultan of Sulu
Fig. 19. Sydney Cloman Interrogates the Suspects
Fig. 20. Moro Trench at Bud Dajo
Fig. 21. William Oliver Trafton and Wife Lena
Fig. 22. The Pioneers’ Club, Christmas, 1939
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book began in the American Historical Collection at the Ateneo de Manila University. There, among the memorabilia of a century of Philippine-American relations, I found a complete collection of an obscure pre–World War II journal, The American Oldtimer . The journal was the product of an old soldiers’ club in Manila, and it was dedicated to preserving the memories of men who took part in the often forgotten war between the United States and the Philippines. Many of their recollections were vivid and detailed. Some were humorous. All produced, at least in me, a sense of melancholy: here were the memories of veterans in the last decades of life. The Japanese would shortly incarcerate many of them. Some would never leave the internment camp alive.
The stories I found in The American Oldtimer interested me, and I began to collect other memoirs of the conflict. Most of these narratives were by soldiers and sailors who were little known in their lifetime, or if they did have notoriety, it was fairly forgotten over the years. Forgotten or not, the stories offered a detailed and intimate view of Americans serving in a faraway place during a fascinating time.
I am grateful to many people and organizations on both sides of the Pacific. In the Philippines, Leslie Ann Murray of AmCham Philippines and the Bulletin of the American Historical Collection was supportive in many ways. I am thankful to Bezalie Bautista Uc-Kung of New Day Publishers for allowing excerpts of We Thought We Could Whip Them in Two Weeks to appear here. As he has for decades, John Melvin offered friendship and encouragement. Like the American Historical Collection at the Ateneo, the Filipinas Heritage Library in Makati was instrumental in the completion of the project.
In the United States, Columbus State University extended several grants that allowed me to gather research. The good people at the university’s Simon Schwob Memorial Library have always been receptive to my research endeavors. In particular, Bessie Bussey of the interlibrary loan department worked tirelessly to get me rare materials.
A number of scholars graciously looked at the manuscript and offered their advice. Patrick Jackson, Richard Meixsel, and Jim Owen read early versions of the work, and I am thankful for their suggestions. Alex Vernon and David Silbey offered wonderful recommendations, and the work is much better for them.
I am deeply indebted to Charles L. Borskey, grandson of William Oliver Trafton, for providing me with papers, photographs, and a copy of the original manuscript of his grandfather’s memoir. I am also appreciative to Michael Warner for giving me information on his ancestor, Lawrence Benton, and to David S. Stieghan for bringing my attention to William Macy.
As with previous books, this one could not have been completed without the understanding and support of my wife, Juliet Adolfo McCallus.
INTRODUCTION
Memory has not been kind to the Philippine-American War and the even lesser known American military campaigns in Moroland. Today, as it has been for generations, few Americans know the details of these conflicts and their aftermath. American children usually hear nothing of them in school. There are almost no memorials. The fighting produced no great works of literature. Out of the nameless battles came no icons like Sergeant York or Audie Murphy. John Wayne never played a Philippine-American War hero.
Why has the American experience in the Philippines at the beginning of the twentieth century been largely forgotten? 1 There are a number of possible reasons. Because it followed on the heels of the Spanish-American War and because there was a political and cultural connection between Spain and the Philippines, many have lumped the two wars together under the title of the former. This is unfortunate because there are obvious discrepancies between the two: the Spanish-American War lasted a few months, while the war in the Philippines lasted from 1899 to 1902, by some accounts to 1905, and still by others to 1913. In terms of casualties, in the first war there were far fewer combatants on both sides to die than in the second. Philippine civilians suffered substantially higher death rates than in Cuba or Puerto Rico. 2 Not the least difference concerned America’s intent: the United States fought the Spanish to free Cubans of European tyranny; the United States fought the Filipinos so that they would not rebel against American rule.
Historical amnesia might be attributed to the anxiety the war produced. Unlike Britain, there was no imperial tradition in America, and the idea of foreign conquest shook notions of national identity. Inflamed by a sometimes hysterical press, the American populace became divided on the war. The anti-imperialist movement viewed the Philippines as an inglorious exercise in colonial conquest, a hypocritical act of self-debasement. The movement did have highly visible supporters, such as Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie. Doubtlessly, many Americans felt uneasy about the war, perhaps even guilty. But most saw the taking of the islands as a national right, or from a different perspective, a responsibility to help the Filipino people. It was manifest destiny, a celebration of American prerogative. Despite anxious misgivings about hypocrisy, Americans sent their soldiers off with cheers and supported them until they came home. And then quietly moved on.
Then there is the angst of nation building, a now familiar term not known at the time. With the capture of Philippine political and military leader Emilio Aguinaldo in 1901, the war quickly ran down. Save for several highly publicized events, such as the incident at Balangiga and the battles in Mindanao in 1906 and 1913, the Philippines became a relatively quiet place. Under the Philippine Organic Act of 1902, the United States began to slowly, and at times unevenly, prepare the colony for independence. Relations between Filipinos and Americans became largely relaxed and cordial. The memories of a brutal war were pushed aside for the idyllic notions of tutelage and development. In short, seeing a new nation emerge, both peoples washed their hands of the bloody affair as quickly as they could.
There are other reasons. One is, quite simply, that the United States won the war. Because of the military victory in the Philippines, and one with comparatively few casualties, no great cultural introspection was necessary. Another reason was the American economy. During the first years of the twentieth century, the United States saw great national prosperity. A nation flush with victory in good economic times need not wring its hands. Under these glad tidings, the Philippine war quickly evaporated from the American consciousness.
Perhaps the crucial event in this disremembering is World War I. The Great War began in 1914, and the United States entered the war in 1917. By November 1918, after names such as Belleau Wood and the Meuse-Argonne arrived in the national lexicon, America had sent two million men to Europe and suffered over 116, 000 dead. 3 With such numbers in little more than a year and a half, it is not surprising that the events in the Philippines twenty years earlier quickly faded from memory. The hostilities in Luzon, Samar, and Mindanao—replete with carabao baggage trains and an enemy equipped largely with knives—would have seemed remarkably anachronistic set against the trenches, tanks, and airplanes of Europe.
The problem of memory has caused problems of interpretation. For the first fifty odd years after its end, little attention was paid to exploring the war. It was usually viewed as a disagreeable but necessary exercise by the United States to save the Filipinos from Aguinaldo’s elitist Tagalog dictatorship. References to the affair usually contained terms as the Philippine “insurgency” or ideas such as the compassionate uplifting of the people and the creation of the Philippine nation. The key operating term was “progress.” By 1960, Philippine independence, the heroic role of Filipino guerrillas in WWII, and the election of pro-United States Ramon Magsaysay during the Cold War, all reinforced the notion that the Philippines was a successfully developed American democracy. The Philippine-American War was thus retrospectively an ineluctable catalyst for the birth and growth of a country. Few writers or academics in the United States or the Philippines saw any real problem with this.
But the 1960s ushered in a new in