Pinoy-Hapon United Foundation (PHUF), a non-profit organization, Honorary Chairman Takeshi Asanuma

　One was the “intelligence organization against Japan” led by “Mr. Ramon Magsaysay (1907–1957),” which went underground after the surrender of the American forces (May 1942).

　While commanding anti-Japanese guerrilla units, he used his position as an inconspicuous “Malay” to build an “intelligence organization,” kept in touch with former local officers and others, and supplied information to the “American forces.” The Americans secretly supported him as well, and are said to have delivered “the latest radio equipment” and other gear by submarine. He also fed “false information” to the Japanese military and succeeded in considerably confusing the occupying Japanese forces.

　After the war, his record was recognized: he went from local politics to the national level, becoming a member of the House of Representatives and then Secretary of National Defense, and devoted himself to wiping out “anti-establishment” elements such as “communists.” He ran in the 1953 presidential election, defeated the incumbent “President Quirino,” and became “President.” He worked hard to establish the anti-communist “Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO)” and sought to advance “land reform,” but this was blocked by the “establishment,” and it seems it proved difficult.

　In March 1957, while campaigning in the Visayas, he died young in an “airplane crash,” at the age of 50. To honor his achievements and mourn his death, the “Magsaysay Award,” also called the “Nobel Prize of Asia,” was founded, and it continues to this day with the backing of the “Nobel Foundation”; several Japanese have won it.

　The other was the “Hukbalahap (an abbreviation of “Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon,” the “People’s Army Against Japan”),” also known as the “Huk.” It was an extremely political organization with a “communist ideology” behind it, and its leader was “Mr. Luis Taruc (1913–2005).”

　Immediately after the Japanese military occupied Luzon, it was organized in north-central Luzon by low-income peasants. From the start it waged “armed struggle” and threw the Japanese military into confusion across Luzon. The Japanese military attempted to suppress them, but, with their strong knowledge of the terrain, they ran rings around the Japanese.

　From around the beginning of 1944, when the “Japanese military’s” war situation began to worsen, they also exchanged information with “American-aligned underground organizations” and attacked the Japanese military from the flanks and rear, to good effect. They cooperated with the “American forces” aiming to take Manila at various points, and during the “Battle of Manila (February 1945)” joined the fighting from the flank.

　A considerable number of “guerrillas” taken prisoner by the Japanese military in battles in various places were executed after “summary trials.” These were treated as “massacres of prisoners” in the “postwar military trials led by the American forces,” and dozens of “former Japanese soldiers” were punished, with “General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the commander-in-chief,” also receiving the ultimate penalty.

　”Japan was defeated.” “Mr. Taruc” laid down his arms for a time, was elected a “legislator” in the 1946 election, and sought to promote a “land-reform policy,” but was expelled from the “legislature” by the “establishment,” and in 1947 organized the “People’s Liberation Army (Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan = HMB)” and entered armed conflict to “overthrow the government.” They clashed with “national army security forces” in various places. Gradually weakening, they returned to government authority in 1954, and the “New People’s Army” was dissolved.

　Even so, afterward “armed guerrillas” professing “national liberation” and the like continued to carry out “anti-government activities” one after another in various places, inflicting heavy damage on the “national army” and civilians. The government has been kept busy responding, but it seems things have somehow quieted down recently, perhaps? . . .