Gen. Vicente Lim was the first Filipino graduate of West Point, commanded troops on Bataan, and was executed by the Japanese in the closing weeks… Read More »Civilian-Military, and American-Filipino Military, relations in the late prewar Commonwealth, 1939
(Above: February 27, 1945: Douglas MacArhur and Sergio Osmeña at the ceremony in Malacañan Palace in which the civilian authority of Commonwealth was restored in… Read More »Endgame for Japan: From the Potsdam Declaration, the Atomic Bombs, and Surrender, the Defeat of Japan in Diaries from 75 Years Ago
News is that the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) has approved a Feasibility Study to proceed for the proposed Mindanao Railway Project. The map… Read More »Railways in Mindanao: Then and Now
This 1942 New World Order map attributed to Maurice Gomberg is interesting in that it gives a snapshot of emerging thought about the United… Read More »Philippine wartime views on the future of Indonesia, China and Japan
On December 16-17, 1941 (around midnight, hence the event straddling two dates), the S.S. Corregidor, an inter-island steamship of the Compañia Maritima, hit a mine… Read More »The sinking of the S.S. Corregidor, December 16-17, 1941
The Philippine Diary Project contains diary entries from a leading figure in the Leyte Landing: Major General Basilio J. Valdes. His diary, as encoded, edited,… Read More »Diary entries on the Leyte Landing: October, 1944
(Revised, April 8, 2017) The Philippine Diary Project includes the diaries of a father and his son: Victor Buencamino, and Felipe Buencamino III. At the… Read More »Bataan, 1942: views of a father and his son
(entry updated January 25, 2016) The beginning of World War 2, despite the immediate setback represented by Pearl Harbor, was greeted with optimism and a… Read More »The debate on taking the Philippines out of the war: January 28 to February 12, 1942
Photo above: recently offered for sale on eBay, a Baltimore Sun wirephoto of wounded soldiers aboard the S.S. Mactan. Late at night, on December 31,… Read More »The Great Escape of the S.S. Mactan: December 31, 1941