Filipino WW II veterans seek US benefits
By Oliver Teves
Associated Press
First Posted 09:01:00 11/23/2008
Filed Under: Veterans Affairs, history
MANILA, Philippines--It is the last Tuesday of the month, time for 88-year-old Dioscoro Valenzuela to lead a group of fellow World War II veterans on their regular trip to the clinic.
The free checkups and a monthly pension of P5,000 ($102) from the Philippine government are about all they get for fighting alongside American forces from 1941 to 1945, when their country was a US colony. And that strikes them as unfair.
The Filipinos have long sought US veterans benefits, citing a promise to them by wartime US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. US veterans get as much as $11,000 to $22,000 annually, depending on their disability status and number of dependents.
But a 1946 US law declared that the more than 250,000 Filipino soldiers who fought under the American flag were not in active service for the US military during the war, denying them any benefits.
Earlier this year, both houses of the US Congress passed bills to provide some benefits, but the bills differ. And with Congress preoccupied with other issues, it is unclear if the two houses will agree on a single bill to present to the president for approval.
"I am pessimistic," said Valenzuela, post commander in his hometown of Malolos for the Veterans Federation of the Philippines. The US "is engaged in all kinds of war. ... It is also in a difficult economic situation... It hurts me that America treats Filipino veterans differently."
Time is running out for the aging veterans. Of the 37 that Valenzuela led to the Veterans Center in the Manila suburb of Taguig last month, 30 were widows.
Equal treatment should be a right for all who served, said Remedios Sulit, an 84-year-old widow, herself a former spy and courier for guerrillas who continued the fight after the Japanese took control of the Philippines in 1942.
"If they give it to us, thanks," she said. "But what we are after is our right, and it was a promise they should keep."
The US estimates about 18,000 are still alive, though the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office puts the number at more than 36,000, plus nearly 80,000 surviving spouses.
His hair and thin mustache white, Valenzuela remains active and sprightly. He often travels alone to Manila to work on veterans issues, commuting the 20 miles (31 kilometers) on buses and the colorful open-sided minibuses known as jeepneys.
Like most elderly Filipinos, he relies on a large extended family. He lives in an old concrete and wood house with the families of a married son, a married daughter and another son who is a widower, like him. His monthly pension mostly goes to hypertension medicine and food supplements, he said.
He receives visitors in his home office, set off from the rest of the ground floor by a book shelf, and offers them chilled red wine. To help keep the electricity bill down, he works on a portable typewriter in the sunlight on the patio.
He likes to tell war stories while showing some of his memorabilia, including a laminated front page of the Dec. 7, 1941, Honolulu Star Bulletin's extra edition with a banner headline on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The US military, which provided security for the Philippines, had been mobilizing for months. Valenzuela and his college buddies were called to duty as part of the Commonwealth Army, which was made up of US-trained Filipino soldiers who became part of the US Army Forces in the Far East.
He was assigned to a machine gun company and deployed behind the front lines with the reserve forces.
In April 1942, he was among American and Filipino soldiers who surrendered to the Japanese in Bataan province.
"We were crying. It was surrender," he said.
He escaped on the first night of the infamous Bataan Death March, a brutal 65-mile (105-kilometer), weeklong trek during one of the country's hottest months. Of the 70,000 who started, 16,000 died.
Valenzuela and two other Filipino soldiers sneaked away under cover of darkness. After evading the Japanese for about a week, they split up. Valenzuela mixed with civilians and found his way back to Malolos.
In early 1943, he joined the guerrillas--as did two of his seven brothers--as part of a medical team.
Some Filipino veterans do receive US benefits, because they became US citizens under a 1990 law granting citizenship to selected veterans. Martin Tengco, 86, lived in the United States for eight years and still receives $1,300 a month in compensation for disabilities from his time as a prisoner of war, as well as a $400 monthly old-age benefit.
Tengco, also from Malolos, recalled how the Japanese arranged the prisoners in columns, four abreast.
"If someone steps out of the line, he is killed," Tengco said. "The man beside me was bayoneted. His body was pulled to the side of the road and bayoneted again and also shot to make sure he was dead."
Before the march started, local residents gave them food and water, but they soon stopped because Japanese soldiers began shooting civilians offering help, he said.
"We were given leftover water for the Japanese cavalry, but only a couple of gulps and that's it," Tengco said.
After a month in a prison camp and contracting malaria, he was released. Three months later, he too joined the guerrillas.
The Senate bill, which passed 96-1 in April, would give $4,500 a year to married Filipino veterans and $3,600 to unmarried ones. The House of Representatives bill would give one-time payments of $15,000 to those who are American citizens and $9,000 to non-citizens.
Jesus Terry Adevoso, the assistant secretary for veterans affairs in the Philippines, said the Senate version is preferable, because it recognizes the veterans as part of the US forces. Also, the money can go to widows, whereas the House version would pay only surviving veterans.
The 1946 law "made our country and our veterans mercenaries," said Adevoso, the son of famed World War II guerrilla leader Col. Terry Adevoso. "As far as the Philippine government is concerned, the important thing is the retrieval of their honor and dignity and the retrieval of the dignity of the Philippines as a nation."
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