Insurrection no more

IF the history books you studied in school referred to a certain turn-of-the-century conflict as "the Philippine Insurrection," please take note: the US Library of Congress has made a change. It is now officially known as "the Philippine American War."

The change in terminology occurred after the Philippine government protested the historical reference to the conflict as an "insurrection" and after the US Library of Congress reviewed its own extensive records of the conflict.

"For it to have been an insurrection," historian Patrick McSherry notes, "the US would have had to have been in some sort of basic control of the archipelago when the conflict commenced. In fact, the US only controlled Manila, Cavite, Manila Bay, and the water surrounding the archipelago. It had no troops, and no governmental control elsewhere. As a result, the action was, in fact, a war."

In his website, spanamwar.com, McSherry explains the difference between the Spanish American War and the Philippine American War.

The Spanish American War was a global conflict which extended from Cuba and Puerto Rico on the Atlantic and the Philippines on the Pacific but it also spread to such disparate locales as Egypt and Hawaii. The war lasted from April 22, 1898, when the US Congress declared war on Spain, and ended on December 10, 1898, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris between Spain and the United States.

The Philippine American War began on February 4, 1899 after a US sentry, Private William Grayson, shot and killed four Filipino soldiers outside Manila when they did not heed his orders to "Halt!" It is not clear, however, when the war ended.

By one account, the war ended with the capture of the President of the Philippine Republic, General Emilio Aguinaldo, in Palanan, Isabela in 1902. In another account, it ended with the execution of Macario Sakay, head of the Tagalog Republic, in 1906. Other accounts point to the cessation of US hostilities against the Muslim Filipinos in Mindanao in 1915 as the end of the war.

"In short, the war was longer," McSherry explains, "much more bloody, but was not a global conflict. Significantly, the war was fought between the US and the Filipinos. Spain was not involved. It was a separate and different conflict from the Spanish American War."

Part of the confusion about the two wars may have to do with pensions.

At the outbreak of the Philippine American War in 1899, the US forces sent to the Philippines had either enlisted or were conscripted to fight in the Spanish American War. When they were wounded or killed in the Philippines, pensions were issued to them or their families from the Spanish American War Pension Fund.

Despite the fact that more than 100,000 US troops were eventually dispatched to the Philippines after the Treaty of Paris was signed, the US troops wounded or killed in the Philippines continued to receive pensions from the Spanish American War Pension Fund because the US government never created a Philippine American War pension fund.

Even the gravestones of US soldiers killed in the Philippine war identified them as veterans of the Spanish American War. "This is somewhat akin to listing all Korean War vets as World War Two vets instead, which everyone would recognize as being incorrect," observes McSherry.

Perhaps it was also because the US never formally declared war on the Philippines which appears to be a requirement for a conflict to be officially termed a war.

Those who fought in the Spanish American War formed the United Spanish War Veterans (USWV). Those who fought in the Philippine War/Insurrection created their own organization -- the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) -- which still exists today and whose Wyoming chapter is the main group opposing the return of the Bells of Balangiga.

At a recent May 1 forum on the anniversary of the Battle of Manila Bay, participants discussed the issue of the Dewey Monument in Union Square, which was originally constructed in 1901 as a tribute to Admiral George Dewey.

When San Francisco officials announced plans in 1997 to spruce up the Union Square plaza with $26 million in improvements, the only issue that remained unresolved was the fate of the 90-foot tall cenotaph. But officials did not believe it would pose any problems.

"What they didn't take into account," San Francisco Chronicle reporter John King wrote in 1997, "was that for many Filipino Americans, the battle is nothing to celebrate. To them, Dewey's triumph set the stage for the United States occupation of the Philippine Islands and a war of resistance."

In King's 1997 article, I was quoted as recommending that "the base of the column be altered to allow for new text that touches on the struggles in the Philippines after the United States took possession of the islands in 1899, and the relationship between the two countries since then."

In an op-ed column I wrote in the October 30, 2000 issue of the San Francisco Examiner ("To the Filipinos, Dewey was no hero"), I proposed an alternative -- "install an informational plaque close to the monument to provide a more detailed, and accurate history."

There is historical precedence in San Francisco for this suggestion.

Across from the San Francisco City Hall beside the main Public Library is the Pioneers Monument which was erected in 1894 and dedicated to the Spanish Catholic missionaries and pioneers who colonized California. According to the American Indian Movement Confederation (AIMC), however, the statue "symbolizes the humiliation, degradation, genocide and sorrow inflicted upon this country's indigenous people by a foreign invader, through religious persecution and ethnic prejudice."

Through the efforts of the AIMC, a bronze plaque was erected in front of the monument in 1996 to "acknowledge the effects of the settlement on California Native Americans," whose population in 1767 was 300,000 but which, by 1900, had dwindled down to just 15,377 as a result of massacres, malnutrition and disease.

The AIMC worked with Debra Lehane, program director of the Civic Art Collection of the San Francisco Arts Commission on the wording of the plaque.

Ms. Lehane is now working with members of the city's Filipino community on the wording of the text of the proposed marker. The initial draft reads as follows:

"Citizens of San Francisco erected the Dewey monument in 1901 as a response to national and local patriotism. The United States had defeated Spain in the Spanish American War. Although that war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1898, within months a new conflict began -- the Philippine-American War. This war lasted about three and one half years while the overall conflict lasted approximately ten years. As many as 400,000-600,000 Filipino civilians lost their lives compared to 10,000 US soldiers. The Philippines became a direct colony of the United States from 1899 to 1935. Political independence was returned to the Philippines by the United States in 1946."

Community input on the proposed text has been requested.

Please send your comments to Rodel50@aol.com.