By Carmen Guerrero Nakpil
Special to the BusinessMirror

The handful of surviving Filipinos, who, like me, spent their early years as subjects of the only American colony, remember with mixed feelings and queasy confusion the 13th of August, which was celebrated every year with great pomp and ceremony as “Occupation Day.” It was a school holiday and a national fiesta with triumphalist speeches on the Luneta.   We were taught that it was the day the Americans took possession of Manila in 1898, obviously a cause for rejoicing, since it meant the end of the nefarious centuries we had spent in Spanish convents and the beginning of our dalliance with English and Hollywood .

Nobody was ever told the exact circumstances of that event, for American policy was (and still is) steadfast denial of historical truths. But I had a dissident grandfather who spent the day in a cold fury, bursting out every so often with denunciations, rendered with clenched teeth and blazing eyes, about how Filipinos, that fateful August, had already surrounded Intramuros and reduced the Spaniards to starvation and despair but were prevented from taking over the city by the Americans, who had pretended they were allies only until they were able to land enough troops to take Manila themselves.

This is the documented account of the American Occupation of Manila, on August 13, 1898. That day, three combatants were locked in an epic confrontation. The Filipinos, about 80,000 troops of the Revolutionary Army, commanded by Gens. Emilio Aguinaldo, Antonio Luna, Mariano Noriel and other officers, had laid siege to Spanish Manila since mid-June and now held the walled city with a stranglehold of concrete blockhouses and trenches from Caloocan to Pasay . Behind them was the whole of liberated Luzon . But they lacked weapons and ammunition and knew they were exposed to the guns of the American warships anchored in Manila Bay .

A dispatch from a British officer, Major Younghusband, who was sent from Singapore to report on the situation in Manila , described the average Filipino soldier thus: “The physique is not good, but from all accounts very brave and imbued with an admirable spirit and fine fighting qualities. The soldiers are docile and disciplined, [dressed] in coat and trousers of cotton with a thin blue and white line and a wide straw hat with a red, white and blue rosette. Boots are not much worn. The weapons are Remington and Mauser rifles. Around his waist, the soldier wears a belt with capacious ammunition pouches, occasionally a bayonet, but the majority prefer the national long knife. He was paid only 10 cents a day and had to ‘find in himself in food.’”  The army “of the young republic…had a huge reservoir of young, virile, simple-minded peasants, lacking industrial skills and adequate schooling.”

Facing them was the American army, recently arrived in four expeditions in July and quartered in Cavite , 470 officers and 10,000 men from the Regular Corps and the Volunteer Corps. Of them, the same British officer Major Younghusband wrote: “The officers of the Regulars are very smart and well up to the average of any nation. The officers of the Volunteers are slovenly and ignorant of their profession.” The troops “are brawny, of powerful build…filthy and few of them know anything about a rifle, and are undisciplined. The Volunteers were given Springfields, the Regulars, Krags. Their monthly pay was $15 [gold] with 20-percent hazard pay and a monthly clothing allowance of $10.” They had the wrong clothes for Manila ’s hot and humid weather: flannel shirts, woolen or canvas pants and jumpers, felt hats and brown boots.”

A state of war had existed between the US and Spain since April 24, 1898, over the still-controversial blowing up of the USS Maine in Cuba . But the US probably had an eye on another quarry: the Philippine Islands across the Pacific, which fitted neatly into the American new policy of Manifest Destiny in China , Asia and the Pacific. Conveniently enough, a naval squadron under Commodore George Dewey happened to be parked in Hong Kong and was sent to attack Manila . At dawn on May 1, Dewey steamed into Manila Bay and sank, with a few volleys, the decrepit Spanish fleet of wooded vessels under Admiral Patricio Montojo (incidentally, an ancestor of today’s reigning business empire of Zobel de Ayala). But Dewey had no land troops. For three months the Americans were becalmed, waiting for the troops under Gen. Wesley Merritt to arrive, meanwhile playing the role of protector, ally and friend of the Filipinos, who had unwisely given away their hearts’ desire by proclaiming their independence at Cavite on June 12, 1898, in the presence of an American officer.

Bottled up within the walls of Intramuros were the Spaniards, headed by Governor-General Basilio Agusti, subsidiary potentates, peninsulares, creoles and their male relatives and hangers-on. The women had been sent to hideaways in the provinces and thousands of Chinese had fled in their junks and rented vessels. Waterless, panic-stricken and hysterical, the descendants of the conquistadores were eating their horses, dogs, cats and assorted vermin. The Spanish Governor-General had been ordered by Madrid twice, on June 8 and June 29, to capitulate, but only to the Americans and, by no means, to the indio who would presumably have 333 years of scores to settle. The Governor-General, only a few months in office, sent word to Dewey, imploring him to stage a mock shelling of Manila, sparing Intramuros and Binondo (the rich business district), so that their surrender could take place without too much damage to their honor.

On August 10 in Washington , D.C. , a draft protocol to end hostilities was transmitted by the US Secretary of State to the Spaniards and the French ambassador who represented Spain ’s interests. At 5 pm on August 12, notice of the ending of hostilities was dispatched to the Americans in Manila . But Dewey had cut the submarine cable in the bay and the announcement was received only on August 16.

During the long siege of Manila by the Filipinos, both the Americans and the Spaniards had propositioned Aguinaldo. Spain had 15,000 troops in Intramuros and about 20,000 scattered (though unaccounted for) in the provinces. It also had a stockpile of German guns and ordnance sorely needed by the Filipinos. The Spaniards promised autonomy for the Philippines , if Aguinaldo would agree to turn his back on his American friends. After three-and-a- half centuries of almost yearly revolts and one big, massive, successful revolution? Self-rule? Esta usted loco?

For their part, the US had a naval blockade, warships, batteries of new cannon in Cavite , unlimited funds. What’s more, they were reputed to be high-minded, governed by the high principles of their Constitution, believers in equality, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They promised that, together, Filipinos and Americans would march through the Spanish gates to joint, glorious victory.

Only one problem remained. Filipino troops controlled all approaches to the Walled City and held all the key positions to the Camino Real, the road leading to the Puerta Real (now the entrance through General Luna). The American general begged: Couldn’t they temporarily vacate the trenches on the beach next to Fort San Antonio Abad? Yes, if Aguinaldo received a written request. And since time was of the essence, could General Merritt send the letter tomorrow, after the withdrawal had been executed? The letter was never sent. Aguinaldo ordered the Filipino troops to withdraw from the trenches along Fort San Antonio Abad (now the Bangko Sentral gardens.) The Americans moved in, and General Noriel cursed and wept as the American flag was hoisted over the key outpost he had won so arduously.

At this point in the narrative of that febrile event, we must ask: How could the Americans have been so brazenly high-handed? Did they take Aguinaldo for a fool? After all, he was the commander in chief of the Revolutionary Army. He had won battle after battle against Spain with his barefoot troops and had held Manila since June in a vise of blockhouses and trenches.

But letters from US Consul R. Wildman (The Story of the Philippines by Murat Halstead, 1898) give a different picture.  One says that, in Hong Kong, Aguinaldo had importuned him, offering two provinces and the Manila Customs house in exchange for a shipment of arms, to be paid with 25-percent profit to the US , upon recognition of his government by the US . Another says that Aguinaldo was “childish” and “far more interested in the kind of cane he will carry or the breastplate he will wear than in the figure he will make in history.” Had the Americans perceived Filipino leaders as venal politicians and the Philippines a negotiable pawn? The “official reports of the capture of Manila by Major-General Merritt, commanding the Philippine Expedition” (in the same book) are a ludicrous tale of “insolent and aggressive acts,” “treachery,” Filipinos harassing the “heroism of American troops.”

That was the story fed us when we were children in colonial Philippines . This is what they didn’t tell us. All this time, anchored in Manila Bay , were the gunboats of five other colonizing powers: the British, French, German, Russian and Japanese. They had been watching and waiting for weeks for one of the three combatants on land to make one false move. It looked increasingly like the triple quandary might turn into a free-for-all.

The London Spectator published an analysis of the situation. Spain , which had once ruled an empire on which the sun never set, was now a “negligible, second-rate” power with Manila and the Philippines irretrievably lost. As the world’s dominant naval power, Great Britain made its influence felt. The other European powers were interested in the Philippines but knew that any or all of them could be defeated by the British. The supercilious Brits offered the suggestion that, if the US would stand by its anticolonial Constitution, they would not annex the Philippines , but if they shrugged off their Constitution as a lot of “rubbish,” the US would certainly declare and enforce proprietary rights over the Philippines . In which case it would be nice to have another English-speaking colony in their colonial club. In any case, the white men agreed that England already “had too many colonies” and “pagan” Japan would not be acceptable because the Philippines was Christian (a fact that was apparently still unknown to US President William McKinley.) “Fierce jealousies and far-reaching ambitions were awakened by the Philippines ,” concluded the London Spectator.

Still in the dark about the peace and the end of hostilities that had been signed three days before in Washington , D.C. , the Spanish-American face-saving stage show now proceeded in Manila . “On the morning of the 13th, with the city cooled by the monsoon rains and a stiff breeze, Dewey’s guns lobbed a few shells over the rooftops,” wrote O.D. Corpuz, taking care not to hit historic Intramuros or rich Binondo, as requested by the Spaniards. The US shelled the native towns like Santa Ana , for the sake of Spanish honor. The Spaniards raised a white flag at the Puerta Real. The instructions were that there be “no loss of life.” But General Luna refused to obey Aguinaldo’s orders and there was street fighting in his command post.

The US troops emerged on the Camino Real, the road that led straight into the main gate and entered the Walled City all by themselves. An army band played the US campaign and drinking song, “There’ll Be a Hot Time in The Old Town Tonight.” Manila Archbishop Nozaleda called the whole affair “one of the most disgraceful farces in history.”

The Filipinos stood stoically at their posts, eating their hearts out or sporadically firing at the American troops. In five months their fury would explode in the battle of San Juan , the first of the Filipino-American War. Dewey himself in his autobiography said that the Filipinos “had not only advanced their lines along the beach but had invested the city on the inland side, as well…. Our pickets were having a dull time, for they did not have the excitement as the insurgents were attending to that duty a few hundred yards to the front.”

In his history of Manila, Manila, My Manila, Nick Joaquin wrote thus about the 13th of August: “Aguinaldo had been dislodged, outflanked, double-crossed, bypassed, left behind, kicked out of the Camino Real. Alone the Gringo entered Manila in triumph. But his was a fake victory. Did the shame of that sham ever haunt the Gringo? The Filipino he had duped had done all his fighting for him.”

In some kind of atonement some years ago, the US Congress formally stopped calling the Filipino-American War an “insurrection,” and American historians have been revisiting their own records and discovering hidden facts, although the USA has still to apologize to the Republic of the Philippines and its people for their betrayal every step of the way to what is now called the “special Fil-American relationship.”

What really happened on August 13, 1898, was a sham battle to disguise the humiliation of the tottering Spanish empire, a misbegotten Occupation of an ally’s territory, that undeservedly catapulted the US into world power and, worst of all, the strangling at birth of the infant Philippine nation.

Examining unflinchingly and reliving the shock and awe of August 13, 1898, is one of the small favors we Filipinos, of all ages, can do for country.