PH war heroes receive US awards

VALOR Retired Sergeant Eumelia Cacanindin, confined to a wheelchair at 99, is one of 44 recipients of the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal. —Photo by Neil Clark Ongchangco

BAGUIO CITY, Philippines — The first bomb dropped by Japanese fighter planes over the John Hay Air Station on December 8, 1941, was heard 3 kilometers away from Teachers’ Camp, where cadets of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) were attending classes at the time.

The instructor assured the cadets that the explosion could have been part of a routine training exercise by American soldiers stationed at the military base in the city.

But subsequent explosions heralded the beginning of the Pacific War for the Philippines during World War II.

Siblings Magtangol and Mapagtapat Ongchangco were immediately sent to Manila to be commissioned as junior military officers, along with their classmates from the PMA classes of 1942 and 1943. They were the only cadets in modern history to graduate early and lead the fight against the invading Imperial Japanese Army.

The Ongchangco brothers, along with 42 other war heroes, were posthumously honored with the United States Congressional Gold Medals during a ceremony on September 3, bringing the number of Filipino recipients to 1,096.

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READ: 41 More Filipino World War II Veterans Receive US Awards

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The U.S. Congressional Gold Medal Awards celebrate “not only the individual deeds of our heroes, but also the collective spirit of a generation that fought for a better world,” Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. said in a speech read for him by Reynaldo Mapagu, administrator of the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office, at the Baguio Convention and Cultural Center.

“Now it is our turn to defend our independence,” Teodoro said.

This was the 34th ceremony since the first awarding of the medals to Filipino war veterans in 2017.

The late Mapagtapat Ongchangco (posthumous award) is one of the 44 recipients of the US Congressional Gold Medal. —Photo by Neil Clark Ongchangco

Women among veterans

Eleven of the 44 heroes who received the medals are still alive and all but one of them stayed home because of the tropical storm “Enteng” (international name: Yagi).

Retired Sergeant Eumelia Cacanindin, now 99 and confined to a wheelchair, received her medal from Mapagu, Mayor Benjamin Magalong and Kevin McAllister, the Assistant Director of the U.S. Embassy at the Manila Regional Benefit Office of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Many of the veterans honored were women, such as soldiers Estrella Nares, Ester Fe (97 years old), Regina Oreiro (100) and Constancia Nones (101), who cared for the wounded and were responsible for the logistics of feeding and arming the guerrillas.

Some of the oldest living war heroes served as spies.

Retired Sgt. Antonia Sanches, 98, was sent to monitor enemy activity. Retired Pvt. Virgilio Costales, now 100, served as a courier relaying enemy movements to guerrilla units as a member of the Land Communications Service Company of the United States Armed Forces. Retired Sgt. Martin Lubrin, also a century old, participated in ambushes and sabotage operations against the Japanese.

Councilor Betty Lourdes Tabanda, one of the 11 children of the late Major Alfredo Flores, a survivor of the Bataan Death March who was honored here, said her father had just completed a mining engineering degree when he joined the Japanese resistance.

She said Flores fought to stay alive in a detention camp in Tarlac province “because he could not allow his family and the families of fellow soldiers to endure such a despicable situation (in an occupied country).”

THE BRAVE These men were among the soldiers who fought to defend and liberate the country from the Japanese during World War II. —Photo courtesy of the Ongchangco family

Call of duty

The Ongchangco brothers best represent how PMA cadets responded to the call of duty.

Mapagtapat, a 22-year-old first-class cadet, was due to graduate in 1942, along with 70 of his mistah (classmates), when war broke out.

He and Magtangol, a 24-year-old second-class cadet, graduated early and were sent home for a 10-day vacation, according to family records and video interviews of Mapagtapat recorded by Ongchangco’s children.

Five days later, all 71 members of Class 42 and 60 members of Class 43 were recalled to Manila to receive their rank as Third Lieutenants at the University of Santo Tomas on December 13, 1941.

Mapagtapat commanded 110 men and four officers while stationed at Mt. Samat in Pilar, Bulacan.

Dwindling supplies and the relentless Japanese onslaught forced Mapagtapat’s unit to surrender on April 12, 1942. They were part of the Death March and were imprisoned in a concentration camp in Capas, Tarlac, where Mapagtapat was reunited with Magtangol. The brothers struggled with malaria during their captivity.

One of Mapagtapat’s children said that their father found the strength to feed himself tutong (burnt rice) from the leftovers of their guards after watching the priest next to him waste away in the concentration camp.

After the war, Mapagtapat served as dean of the Corps of Professors of the PMA from 1963 to 1968. He died at the age of 92 on May 26, 2011. Magtangol served during the Korean War and died on February 14, 2002, a month before he would have turned 85.

Strategic

The 34th awards ceremony came 79 years ago to the day that Japanese Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita “ended the war in our motherland” by signing his surrender papers at Camp John Hay. The timing symbolized Baguio’s “pivotal role in the country’s most brutal war,” Teodoro said.

He said the city suffered “the opening salvo” of the Pacific War for the Philippines during World War II. Japanese bombers attacked Camp John Hay a day after destroying the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, drawing the United States into the global conflict against the Axis powers, a coalition led by Germany, Italy and Japan.

Yamashita had retreated to Baguio in the final months of the war and was cornered by Filipino guerrillas and American and Filipino soldiers in Ifugao province on September 2. He was brought back to Baguio to formalize his surrender.

According to scientists from the University of the Philippines, Baguio may have been a target because of the presence of the John Hay Air Station and the PMA.

The city was also the gateway to the country’s oldest mines in Benguet, which Japan seized to build up its ammunition supply.

To liberate the city, which was built by the American colonial government, American bombers destroyed most of Baguio. Only the Baguio Cathedral remained standing.