At night at the Shoreham Hotel.
Quezon told me the story of his visit to Corregidor in 1935 after he had been inaugurated as the first President of the Philippine Commonwealth. He was invited by General Kilbourne, the American officer then in command of the fortress, who was the man who had done so much to develop its defenses. Quezon said: “As I went ashore on Corregidor I saw there a whole regiment of Americans–not Philippine Scouts, drawn up as a guard of honor to salute me. I was quite overcome with emotion–just two miles away across the water was the little town of Mariveles, where thirty-four years earlier I had surrendered myself as an officer of Aguinaldo’s army to an American Lieutenant of artillery. If ever since that surrender I had felt any bitterness against America, it vanished when I looked upon that regiment of American soldiers drawn up to salute a Filipino President of the Commonwealth. This regiment seemed to me to epitomize the whole history of the United States in the Philippines. They had come there in the beginning with their soldiers to overcome us by force–and now the symbol of that force was drawn up to salute the Filipino head of a government of Filipinos which had been set up by the United States. The three most thrilling events of my life all occurred within a radius of two miles of that spot where I then stood:
(1) My surrender at Mariveles to the American officer
(2) An American regiment drawn up on Corregidor to do honor, and
(3) Besieged in the fortress of Corregidor by the Japanese.”