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| Pg.1 | Pg.2 The Filipinos |
November 29, 1944
A Daylight RaidTribune: "Foe loses ten more ships" — a fantastic account of two air-sea battles in daylight on Monday the 27th. Attacking a task force off Leyte, seven planes of the Hakko Air Unit first sink a battleship and 4 large transports, damaging another battleship and cruiser, then 3 more planes blitz-sink 3 circling cruisers. Observer planes were unable to confirm the latter: "When they were out of the clouds a second later, the three cruisers had already disappeared from the surface of the sea." The Takanori Unit, the 6th special attack force [kamikaze] to be organized consisting of 5 planes and one escort/observer, attacked a task force off Luzon made up of 4 carriers protected by a ring of 4 battleships, 6 cruisers and 10 destroyers. Two carriers were sunk after being hit by two or three of the planes that broke through the "intense barrage of gunfire." And there you have two stories of 15 Japanese planes sinking 12 ships, authoritatively eye-witnessed by escorts flying around leisurely and unchallenged, and no doubt equipped with a typewriter and smoking lounge. Now I understand why the U.S. Navy doesn't say whether its ships were damaged or not. Oh, there's more yet... Daihon-ei: "Three U.S. transports, 2 warships damaged" — on the nights of November 24 and 25. I'm getting dizzy now. Six planes didn't sink a single ship? They should try it in daylight like the other 15 did! . . . . News: Ormoc has been bombarded at last, even if only by four destroyers, but it lasted a full three hours without any answer from the Japanese. MacArthur did mention that two waves of 25 and 5 Japanese planes attacked shipping in Leyte Gulf. The first wave included torpedo carriers — 13 all told were shot down. No doubt they did inflict some damage. As I write this at 20:00, some 20 Japanese planes have just flown by, no doubt en route to work. |
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| Pg.1 A Daylight Raid| Pg.2 |
Supplement
November 29, 1944
The FilipinosThis war has seen a lot of standards collapse. Morally, the personnel of this government is bankrupt. There are very few men who cannot be bribed. Necessity knows no law, say the boys, and they do as they please. From top to bottom, and consequently down to private citizens, this has been the Golden Rule of this occupation. The result has been chaotic. Filipinos of limited means must necessarily be the worst offenders. As one goes around from house to house one catches snippets of phrases like: "The lavandera we had last week? She stole two polo shirts of my sons and three of our best towels." "Tsk-tsk...What can you expect? You just can't trust a Filipino." "No matter what you do for them, sooner or later they will double-cross you...." Always, I listen in pained silence, biting my lips, knitting my brow, weighing the speaker's experience and prejudice. Usually, the words are carelessly spoken in the heat of a bad moment — more often than not as a consequence of some misunderstanding. What these aliens fail to understand is that centuries of exploitation have left a sensitive mark in the average Filipino. Foreigners consider Filipinos to be short tempered, and rightfully so, conveniently forgetting that their own tempers are equally short. They fail to understand and sympathize with the background of the average Filipino. Most of these judgements are cast against servants too — the untrained and uneducated class. I believe the average American businessman thinks highly of his Filipino staff, but the average American housewife tends to have the opposite opinion. There are no two ways about it, either he or she has a very high or very low regard for a particular person — there is no inbetween. I hold that you can judge a man today — his character and genius — by what he thinks of a Filipino. And I insist that really good foreign businessmen in the country regard Filipinos more or less highly. If that isn't significant then what is? So let me explain... Filipino culture is still young by modern world standards. They are Malays, and prior to the occupation by Spain they had a simple and quaint culture. In the 400 years since Magellan and Legaspi that was the only thing they could call their own. Since then they have been floundering under foreign cultures, foreign religions, foreign domination and pressures. And a lucky thing too, but not one conducive to pacify the natural urge to be free and develop uniqueness. The result is the average Filipino is a many-sided individual, on the whole lacking purity of blood, character and culture. And therein lies the failure to be appreciated and understood. Add to this the Filipinos, in their disorganization, were exposed to and drank deeply from the West's inordinate materialistic civilization and you get a melting pot of prodigious consequence. No, you will not find Filipinos to be all alike. And if you are the petty sort, like some aliens here, you will find yourself condemning the whole for the few whose lives were mixed up in the maelstrom described above, and who can never hope to clamber aboard the bandwagon of true maturity. It will take a few more generations, but the process is moving at full speed now, and some of its benefits are already becoming apparent.
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