A Tribute to our vanishing World War (WW) 2 generation

by Vic A
(as published 4 years ago in MVP)

How many older people do we have left who experienced the dramas of WW 2?  My guess is, not many.  If you know people who are at least 80 years old then they would have witnessed the war and they would have memories of it.  This group of people is now vanishing one day at a time.  They are becoming a rarity, similar to the old houses of our town that Manong Mario featured in his earlier article.  Just look around your own family, I am positive that there are not many left who are in their 80s.  Not far from now, no one will be around to tell the tales of WW 2.  Kids will just be reading about it from history books as opposed to hearing it from people who actually experienced the real accounts of the war.

If I look at my immediate family, I probably have only 3 aunties left who are in their 80s – Auntie Eb, Auntie Rosal and Auntie Doming.  They are our family’s only living connection to the past, our window to the years gone by when life was so much slower and very much uncomplicated.  Thank God for them, they are a very strong reason why we still call Magsingal home.

Auntie Eb is now the only remaining window to our family's past

Do you remember those times growing up when our bed time stories were mainly World War 2 stories as told by our parents and grandparents.  I remember my father used to give his tales of how they went to the boondocks to hide and they fed on ‘balangeg’, ‘bisukol’ and whatever there was available at the time.  Sometimes they would even eat their food uncooked because they were constantly in hiding and on the move.  And these night time stories are still fresh in my memory bank.  I don’t know why that is but maybe because during those days, life was so uncluttered that there were not many distractions when these stories were told - they actually sunk in.

The stories were often told after dinner while we all sat on a ‘palangka’ or those hard wooden benches that were our version of the cushioned sofas these days.  The ‘lampara’ provided the much needed light while emitting its kerosene fumes, and the ‘olds’ were emitting their own ‘tabako’ and ‘sigarilyo’ fumes, as if to compete with the lamps.  This probably explains why I am suffering from asthma even up to now, but that’s another story.  There was also this kind of ‘gasera’ that we used to use only on special occasions (I forgot the name of that now), where there is a gauze-like material that you buy from Tang Sianing, which then serves as the filament for the ‘gasera’.  Then you have to pump the bottom part which contains the kerosene.  We definitely have gone a long, long way.  Those were the pre-ISECO days when there was no electricity in the town yet.

Such was the impact of the WW 2 in the Filipino psyche, that even during the town fiestas, I remember that the black and white movies in the plaza mainly revolved around the war against the Japanese.  Somehow, as a child, it has been planted in my mind that the Japanese are a bad people - some kind of enemy who made the lives of countless Filipinos miserable.  At the time, when we talk of war, we talk about the Japanese.  Some older people haven’t gotten over their dislike for anything Japanese as a result of their war experiences.

In fact, I remember delivering a declamation piece in high school around a family caught up in the middle of the Japanese occupation.  Although I would never fully understand the agony that these people have gone through, I know that telling the story was part of their journey to total freedom.

Not that the children should be told about the gory details of the carnage that happened but I think the older generation who experienced the war had this need to tell their stories as part of their own healing process.   And by them telling us, we understand better the difficulties that they went through and we appreciate more what we are currently enjoying as our freedom.

Wouldn’t it be great if we can keep a photo gallery of our old folks for the younger people to see and keep.

Auntie Doming passed away 2 years ago

Auntie Rosal passed away 3 years ago