UMPHA TELL ME YOUR MEMORIES II

This afternoon I scanned all the questions and found out that the idea of answering them here will be better since there are questions that do not apply to me. Coming from the tropics, there are many questions that will be left blank...example: we don't have snow in the tropics, so I can't have my first "snowman." What is the norm and standard here in the United States will be not be the same as in the Philippines. What I am going to do here is try to tell you as much as I can about me while in growing up.

SCHOOLS:

I think I was about five years old when I had my first experience of what a school is. In those days there is no such thing as preschool yet. At this time we are still living in Pasig. I remember that my mother planted some papaya trees on the side of the house. In front of that house was a very tall "rimas' tree (bread fruit). Another tree besides that was a "dalungian" (another type of bread fruit but with seeds). The first one is good cooked in heavy raw sugar ("panocha"), candied and air-dried. The latter was picked young and cooked with pork and shrimps as a vegetable dish, but when they are very mature, the seeds are boiled with salt and can be eaten as a snack....Back to schooling, five days a week, with some of the neighborhood children of the same age we attended a "one room" school which also served as a "capilla" (Chapel). We walked all the way rain or shine to that place. There were times that the unpredicted rain would drop down on us on our way home. We would scurry to any house with banana plants and would ask the owner if we could have some fronds to cover our heads...and soon we were on our way home. This is one of those fun moments because we would remove our wooden shoes, walk bare footed and no puddles along the way were missed. The chapel is made out of quarried stone, looks old and does not have good lighting . There we are taught the "ABC's"; which I already knew and practice writing. What came to stick in my mind was the little brown seed (ipil-ipil) from the acacia pods that we used to create an art piece.

By the time I was six years old we relocated to Manila with the insistence of my paternal grandfather. My parents were able to get a house in the heart of the city; the district of Paco. There my mom opened a dress shop. I was sent to a Catholic school this time. I can still remember those "huge" Belgian nuns. Those days everything looked very huge to me....funny isn't it? This was my first school encounter. Since I know how to read and write at that time, I took the tasks of whatever my teacher would give us nonchalantly. My papers always came back with big red "A's." By the time the school year was ending, every afternoon, I was sent to another building with a lot of other students from different grades. There we are sealed and our names are called. I was told that when my name comes up, I will stand and go the the Mother Superior who was seated on the center stage. I have no idea what was happening. After several days of this happening, I asked my father about it; every time I went to the Mother Superior, she would pinch my left chest. It was not until later that evening, I made my father very proud of me. The Mother Superior had pinned a medal on my chest shirt...with the announcement for, "HIGHEST IN EXCELLENCE" award. How naive I was them and took it like as if it does not matter! The medal was treasured but was burned and melted among the ruins of our house in Paco.

I think it was a hard time for the family. The only income we had in the house was coming from the dress shop. My father was going to school to be a dentist like his father. I am sure now that money was short and why I was enrolled in the public school. It didn't matter to me school is school. I was always at the top of the class and I had no idea of the difference. I was in third grade when WWII broke out. My sister started going to school too. She would come out earlier than me and she would wait for me in the playground, then we would go home together. School in the Philippines was a whole day affair. We have one centavo, equivalent to two cents American money as our allowance. We'd go back to our house to eat lunch, and then back to school again until about 4:00 o'clock. Bullying is unheard of in our school those days. We can play with the neighbor children until supper time. If we have assignments, it was mostly reading. By the way, my father graduated from Philippine Dental College and came out as the "topnotcher" in the board exam among hundreds of examinees.

By the time I was in fourth grade the school system in the Philippines included Japanese language. We are taught the basics. Every morning there was an assembly in the playground for the singing of the Japanese national anthem followed by calisthenics. I can't remember what happened...suddenly I was not in the school anymore but had more free time to play and gallivant with some of my two other contemporaries. We went to the beach, and went to other districts in the city which was a very daring thing to do because the young inhabitants of any districts were very territorial. One can be beaten by just your presence in their places. We were able to avoid that and were never beaten at all. Since our house is situated along the national highway, I considered myself not belonging to any "gangs." Most of the "gangs" are those that lived on different district side streets of the city. My friends and I avoided those places. We spent our time mostly at the beach, which is not quite near to Paco, so we just ambled and walked to get there. On the way we always visited the Paco Cemetery...a remains of the Spanish era...played hide and seek among the dilapidated tombs and crypts. The beach does not have sands but boulders all along the boulevard that leads to the Manila Hotel, to the Port of Manila and the walled city (Intramuros). We'd catch small crabs (talangka) in the crevices of the boulders or dig with our foot while in the water for some clams to eat. I can say now that it was a very simple way to spend time and have fun at the same time. We did not ask for anything else. I still remember faces of my friends then but can't remember their names.

I was in Pasig, in my grandparents' house when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor because it was the town fiesta...I remember that people started to "evacuate" some place they think the war will not reach them. I found this very funny today because in their simple minds, they tried to save themselves of what they did not know. So, another adventure in my life was evolving. This will be elaborated more when I start the blog of my youth during the war.

When Manila was declared an "open city, meaning that it could not be bombed by the Americans, our relatives from Pasig "evacuated" and ended up in our house. The dress shop was closed then and our front where the shop was became a store for everything. It is more like a grocery store. Since we are close to the train station where unloading of commodities from the provinces occurred, we catered to the vendors or as we called them "viajeos" and the store evolved into an eatery. We sold coconut, and "maruya" banana and sweet potato fritters. Yes we fried coconut wedges which were called "kastaniyog." I helped my mom with cooking and did some buying in the market or in some speciality places where I can get steamed rice cakes...We have to resolve to eating rice cake because there was a scarcity of wheat flour to make bread. Remember, this was during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. Every thing specially rice was hard to come by. We are lucky that my father can bicycle his way to Cavite, where they have some rice field and he will come back with half a sack of rice once a week. That was a long way to cycle back and forth but it was done. The amazing thing was that the sack of rice was able to pass by any Japanese sentries along the way. It was said that his uncle, the patriarch of the Arayata family (he is related to the mother of my father) possessed a power coming from an amulet he owned and with prayers and probably some chants and drawings written on a piece of paper, he would put that inside the sack to be "invisible" from eyes of the Japanese. Sometimes you have to believe on those (amulets) "anting-anting." At present I have a few pieces of the amulet that my father have. I collected and saved them after he died in Canada. It is now encased inside a skull and is a piece of art that has been displayed in an art show as part of my "Amulet Keeper" series. Anything like the rice was usually confiscated by the Japanese for their own consumption. One had to be careful in every way. The Japanese soldiers had their ways of intimidating the occupied people. One had to bow to any Japanese soldier you meet or you will be slapped and there would be nothing you could do about it. At least there was not many soldiers in Manila. Their barracks were mostly in the suburbs. The best part of this war for me was the experience of just being there during the time. Last week on the History Channel, they were showing "Dogfights." For those who do not know what a "Dogfight" is, it is a battle of two planes (Japanese and American) in the air. It was a deja vu for me. I have seen many "Dogfights" in those days..and the American planes always downed the Japanese planes! My grandfather's house had an "air raid shelter." They dug a big "hole" for the family to fit in just in case there is an air raid. It was under the big mango tree and the dirt that was taken was put on top as the roof....How naive can you get! Bombs can penetrate that....thank God nothing disastrous happened. We all survived the war. All of our family members were together when the Americans liberated the Philippines except my father who was with the guerrillas somewhere in the province. All American soldiers back then were called "Joe." I don't know why...! I think "GI Joe" was coined in the Philippines and remained as the basic handle for them throughout the world.

My mother and I went to Manila to see what was left of our house. We poked everywhere...nothing was spared. I remember my mother saw her wedding gown intact among the ashes of the armoire, but it deteriorated when touched. In the kitchen area the gas range was a heap of a blob. The gas range was my mother's pride and joy. We are the only one in the block that had one...a four burner stove and an oven. My mom loved to cook. One of the baked good I still remember was
"Araro" (arrowroot flour cookies) that melted in your mouth. What I really like to remember about that range was it was fueled by natural gas, we have a "contador" (meter counter box) but the difference here is that we had to put some coins in a provision box with a slot...I think a ten centavos would last for quite a while. Then every month a collector would come and collect those coins. I don't think my siblings had any idea about this. Most of then were not born yet and Wilfrido was still very young then.

The big green "prasco" bottles where she keep olive oil, vinegar, soy sauce and fish sauce became like blobs of emeralds among the ashes. Manila was burned down! One could walk the streets and see dead and burned Japanese soldiers. Funny that I am able to recall them now and to think that it did not give me any aftermath trauma. I guess when a child is gradually introduced to war and its atrocities, one can be tough and will be able to face the future. That's how I feel. I was watching a movie on the UCSD channel. It was a Japanese film about a Japanese soldier's hardship during the war in the Philippines in 1943. The film was made in Japan. I have heard about it... that the Japanese soldiers became cannibals, eating their soldiers that died to survive, but the movie was the one that gave credence to the fact. It was a good black and white movie with emphasis to one soldier that wouldn't eat any of his comrades. Yes, war is HELL!