Palace marks 70th year of Japan’s surrender

Malacañang commemorated Wednesday the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, described as a “turning point” in the country’s history.

On Sept. 2, 1945, Japan surrendered to the US-led Allied forces, officially ending the Second World War.

To mark the event, the Palace-based by the Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office (PCDSPO) designed a special

page on the Internet (https://www.gov.ph/featured/ww2/) with links to a timeline, archival photos, videos and a number of articles highlighting the extent of the war nationwide.

One of the articles, titled “World War II in the Philippines: The lasting effect on the Filipino People,” asserted that “for a people without experience of war, World War II created a “new sense of Filipinohood” and has had lasting effects on the Filipino character.

The article, written by Alfonso J. Aluit and part of the Free Press Century Book collection argued that the war came as “the crucible for Filipinos, the ultimate test for the individual and the nation, a test of the effectiveness of the institutions of government and religion, a test of faith in truth, justice and freedom, in fact a test of all the beliefs Filipinos subscribed to,” Aluit argued.

The Japanese invasion in December 1941 “had no precedent in the memory of most Filipinos of that period,” he wrote. The US invasion in 1898 “had been a reality only to disparate groups in the country. The Philippine-American War was not of a national character, having been limited to certain areas in Luzon and the Visayas, and was but academic in nature in Mindanao.” But World War II, which lasted from December 1941 to August 1945 was a “national experience the reality of which was felt by every Filipino of every age in every inhabited region of the archipelago,” he said.

According to Aluit, the occupation of the Philippines by Japanese forces led to at least two conditions that would have a permanent effect on Filipinos.

He also wrote that “what may not have been anticipated either by the American allies was the ferocity and intensity of the Filipino response to the invasion.”