What My WWII Father Would Say

It's been months since my last blog. Months of playing spectator sport to toxic world politics had put me in a space of silent observation. As an immigration advocate, it's hard not to get triggered by daily posts about how immigrants are treated in this country. A lot of comparisons to the rounding up of Jews in Nazi Germany, and in fact, they're undeniably parallel. The images, static and moving, are stark, invasive, and personal. Only this time we are watching in full play from both safe and unsafe spaces, the differences thinning, from all sides, all POV, with people and their handheld devices recording every angle of violence and powerplay, depending on the algorithms of our social media accounts. Yes, algorithms. A complete mindfuck if you ask. We see the same, and we don't see the same. A case of what do you really want to believe, and therefore, what you will believe to be true.

I have collected WWII and war books for the past thirty years. My writing of #BataanNewJersey was made easier by the bank of images I have had inside my head for decades, on top of the reality that my father experienced pre-during-and-post WWII. I have seen many documentaries about World War I and what caused it, and the 30-year gap of political maneuvering that led to WWII. I never questioned once that my entire birth and existence were brought about my father's war experiences. My family lives through its aftermath. The shadow of war was omnipresent when I was growing up in Manila, and still is to this day, 23 years after his passing. I can only imagine what would have been like for other war families. My father would have been 105 today. The same story echoes elsewhere that WWII has touched, especially in Taos, New Mexico, a county that sent 1,800 of its young men to the pacific theater. Also 105, Valdemar deHerrera, the last known American survivor of the Battle of Bataan passed last year. DeHerrera was two years older than my father, who was recruited into United States Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) at the age of 19 from ROTC, and was in the The Death March and Japanese Concentration Camp at 20.

Augusto Roa Realuyo (center) a year before the infamous Fall of Bataan in 1941.

My father was brought to New York by my doctor Aunt in the late seventies for a last resort medical confinement in the VA Hospital in Manhattan. The hospitals in Manila couldn't correctly diagnose his failing health, but I am sure, one thing they never failed to recognize was the fact that whatever it was that caused him to lose half his weight was connected to WWII. My father would survive and bring the rest of his family here. He would live to witness, for two decades more, the very American democracy that put him in the Death March and a Concentration Camp. He was an American "national" during WWII, and now, we are all American "citizens." The similarity between the two terms is colonial history at work.

He was not without his opinions. War veterans have much to say about the countries they fight for. My taste for justice came from him. Perhaps fate itself intervened to make sure I became the chronicler of our family history, including WWII, so we can share with the world what really happened from our POV. In my case, mostly my own father's take on world history. It was of no coincidence that I grew up with a deep fascination for world history, pages of which I devoured as a child in Manila. It was all his quiet maneuvering, buying a whole book care of encyclopedia instead of a TV set. Because then, in the seventies, due to the fascist silencing of Marcos' Martial Law, most of us couldn't speak -- not about the current state of affairs, or the wars that got us there.

Today, families of immigrants in American immigration detention centers are speaking up in ways that families were not able to in previous wars. U.S. citizens are being detained for being--brown and immigrant. We are all suspects. This country is divided, they say. Social media misinformation has deluded so many into realizing a version of truth that serves their bigoted lens. We are all pawns. And we are all blind. We are all seeing. American bigotry has put all of us in some petri dish growing viral hate, not knowing what to do. My father would call these detention camps exactly what they were -- concentration camps, similar to the one he survived during WWII. We know they exist, because we are all witness to their unprecedented expansion, but we don't know what's really happening inside. My father saw all forms of abuses against humanity --- what prompted him to become a guerilla after his release and become part of covert operations against the Japanese. The war produced all forms of humans, from those who betrayed their own to those who quietly and publicly fought against oppression. My father made a choice and lived to tell. There was no need to blur injustice in his mind and heart. He experienced it himself. He would know, if he were alive today, that democracy and freedom were worth fighting for, even if that means having to live with disorders the inflicted on his soul and weakening body for the rest of his life. The soul after all gathers strength over time. For him, the Fall of Bataan was not the end of it all. It was the beginning of a growing understanding that while so many lost their conscience during the worst of times, many stood up to make sure that history could survive long enough to tell the truth.

In memoriam, Augusto Roa Realuyo, born January 19, 2021. Happy birthday and Thank you!