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ROGER:
I had heard a lot
about Tomas Confesor. We had a lot of internal information at the Office
of War Information. I had already interviewed a few Filipino guerrillas.
Not members of the Hukbalahap.
They had disappeared pretty much back to the land.
SHEARER:
What was his
position?
ROGER:
He was the elected
governor of the island of Panay. He also led guerrilla forces on this
island against the Japanese. A good man.
SHEARER:
But he was not a
member of the Hukbalahap?
ROGER:
No. He was a member
of the ruling class. He had very strong feelings about the need to
divide the land and distribute income and health and social well being.
Most of the land in the Philippines, as is so often the case and still
is the case, was in the hands of relatively few families. Many of them
old families from the time Spain ruled. Most of the peasants working on
the land had nothing.
It was the same in
China where most of the people who fought the Japanese also wanted a
piece of land of their own. This is a worldwide situation. In place of
the Philippines or China, you could talk about San Salvador or
Nicaragua, or all over Latin America, Asia, Africa, you name it; the
same situation, this desire for land.
SHEARER:
What happened to
Confesor during the war?
ROGER:
He was leading the
guerrillas during the Japanese occupation. We knew about him because the
word got out. Remember, a lot of Americans got into the Philippines
during the Japanese occupation. Many Americans fought along with the
guerrillas.
Confesor's name
became famous when he was severely sick with typhoid and in hiding in a
remote section of Panay island and got up off a sickbed to write a
letter defying the invaders. That letter stirred the people and spurred
the spirit of resistance. He was so sick that it took almost a month to
write that letter.
In San Francisco at
the United Nations Conference he phoned me. He said he'd heard me on the
Voice of America broadcasts.
SHEARER:
How did he attend?
In what position did he attend the conference?
ROGER:
I'm not too sure,
that's my problem. I really don't remember specifically whether he was a
delegate or not. He was a noted man. Everybody knew the name Confesor.
He was staying somewhere in Oakland with some friends. I called and
asked to interview him. We had a long meeting in which he spoke about
what had happened. About Philippine political figures and landowners who
had been there before MacArthur, before the Bataan death march and the
fall of Corregidor, before the Americans were chased out...
...Some of these
rich and influential political figures and landlords had become part of
the Japanese-controlled Philippines government. A man named Manuel Roxas
was one of them. He finally ended up as a brigadier general in the
United States Army, a very close friend of MacArthur and the wealthy
social groups who were there in the old days. They knew each other well.
They invited each other to their places. They lived well. They owned the
land. MacArthur, remember, had spent many years in the Philippines.
Tomas Confesor said
that Roxas—a man who had collaborated with the Japanese government—the
moment the Philippines were liberated walked into a tent at the U.S.
Army base and walked out with an American officer's uniform. This was
Confesor's story. Roxas was later elected president of the Philippines.
SHEARER:
It doesn't sound to
me as though what he was telling you would be told by a man who had a
position of power or maybe he did have visions of a great power. It
sounds like someone on the outs.
ROGER:
Confesor?
SHEARER:
Yes.
ROGER:
Of course. He was on
the outs because he wanted more for the country than just getting rid of
the Japanese army. He wanted the people who had suffered so much to have
a better life, as he told it to me. I honestly believe there was a tacit
agreement between some powerful forces—maybe MacArthur, maybe the State
Department, maybe the army. I mean an agreement to discourage the
underground movement because these forces didn't want to lose their
property. They wanted to stop the guerrillas before the Americans came
back. Just get along as best they could. Tomas Confesor was on the outs
because he refused to do that. He insisted on fighting with excellent
guerrilla forces.
Confesor said that a
great many of the people who had been leading figures in the
Philippines—and became so again after the Japanese were defeated—worked
in collaboration with the Japanese occupiers. I have somewhere a large
file of newspapers published by the Japanese occupation forces in
English that name many of these people, and there are pictures of them
as well. A merchant seaman came back from Manila. He used to hear me on
the air. He came to my office with a big brown paper bag full of these
newspapers. He said, "Here, they're yours." And he left.
SHEARER:
The story that you
wrote was an expose of the existing power structure in the Philippines?
By this time General Roxas was in charge? He had run for president?
ROGER:
Later on he ran and
won. Confesor, who could have been part of the ruling group in the
Philippines, worked to raise the level of living of the Filipino
peasants by increasing their income, by developing programs for better
farming methods, by planning for good housing, medical centers and good
education. He said, for example, that landlords were very opposed to
education for the peasants because, as Confesor put it, "The landlords
didn't want the boys to think too much. They wanted them just to have
strong backs and weak minds."
SHEARER:
I'm trying to elicit
from you who would be so upset to have read this article? Would it be
Roxas, who was at that time another contender for power in opposition to
Confesor?
ROGER:
Tomas Confesor, for
a while, by the way, had been appointed Secretary of the Interior after
the war when a new government was established. But he wanted things that
would be anathema to these people who owned their plants and lands, the
breweries and the sugar cane and pineapple plantations.
The answer to your
question is the ruling class. Everything that finally developed and kept
the guerrilla movements alive, as they still are, were demands for a
different kind of land tenure. Confesor's ideas would be a threat to a
whole ruling class.
The rulers, who
usually control the police and the army, as well as the press and radio,
and don't take kindly to any threat to its existence. They use all the
force they command, including the force of the Army to put a stop to
this nonsense.
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