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  “A TERRIFIC READ … IN OUR IMAGE IS 22-KARAT GOLD.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Penetrating … With sweeping historical breadth, Karnow explores two countries caught in an obsessive parent-child relationship.… [He] traces these developments with authority and great insight.… Karnow provides fascinating new details about Ronald Reagan’s reluctant abandonment of Marcos and his less than warm relationship with Corazon Aquino.”

  —Time

  “Eloquent and panoramic … Karnow’s chronicle begins where it should, half a millenium ago with the accidental landing of Ferdinand Magellan in 1521… . There is a multitude of surprises here, notably in the author’s concise and vivid portraits of the many players in this 500-year drama.”

  —New York Newsday

  “Karnow’s book should be required reading at the State Department’s Asia desk and damage-control sections.… A first-rate historical study, brimming with insight.”

  —Houston Chronicle

  “[Karnow] details the brutality and blindness with which America, flexing its new imperialist muscles as victor in the Spanish-American War, took over its first colony in 1898. And he unveils the racism and vainglory that marked the colonial administrations.”

  —Newsweek

  “Richly detailed … An engrossing, entertaining, and impressively researched study of an adventure in empire that dared not speak its name … To understand the whole is to understand the part, and it is to Karnow’s immense credit that he helps us do both.”

  —The New Republic

  “Engrossing … Revealing … Karnow is a journalist by trade, and a distinguished one, but in this book, he also excels as a historian.”

  —The New Yorker

  BY STANLEY KARNOW

  Vietnam: A History

  Mao and China: From Revolution to Revolution

  Southeast Asia

  In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines

  Copyright © 1989 by Stanley Karnow

  Maps copyright © 1989 by Anita Karl and Jim Kemp

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  http://www.randomhouse.com

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89-90934

  eISBN: 978-0-307-77543-6

  This edition published by arrangement with Random House, Inc., NY

  v3.1

  FOR

  Curtis and Marilyn,

  Catherine, Michael and Benjamin

  Facing west from California’s shores,

  Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,

  I, a child, very old, over waves, toward the house

  of maternity, the land of migrations, look afar,

  Look off the shore of my Western sea, the circle

  almost encircled… .

  WALT WHITMAN

  “Facing West from California’s Shores”

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  List of Maps

  Preface

  1. All in the Family

  2. In Search of Spices and Souls

  3. The Spanish Bond

  4. America Goes Global

  5. Imperial Democracy

  6. Civilizing with a Krag

  7. Little Brown Brothers

  8. America Exports Itself

  9. Stumbling Toward Self-rule

  10. MacArthur’s Mandate

  11. War and Redemption

  12. Dependent Independence

  13. Conjugal Autocracy

  14. Martyr and Madonna

  15. Revolution and Restoration

  Chronology

  Cast of Principal Characters

  Notes on Sources

  LIST OF MAPS

  Republic of the Philippines

  Pacific Ocean

  Manila Bay

  South China Sea

  Manila and Suburbs on Eve of Philippine-American War, February 4, 1899

  United States Conquest of Luzon, 1899–1901

  Japanese Invasion of Luzon, December 24, 1941-January 6, 1942

  Route of the Death March, April 1942

  American Campaign in Leyte, October 21-December 15, 1944

  Battle for Leyte Gulf, October 23–26, 1944

  Hukbalahap Rebellion, 1949–1953

  Communist and Muslim Insurgencies, 1980s

  PREFACE

  The origins of this book date back thirty years, when as a foreign correspondent I first began to report from Asia. My vast territory included the Philippines, a country that for me differed drastically from any other in the region—or, indeed, from any I had previously covered in Europe, Africa or the Middle East. Here I was, in a former U.S. possession, immediately familiar to an American. Most of the people I initially met spoke Americanized English, and many had been educated in the United States or in American schools. They knew far more about the United States than I knew about the Philippines, as if they were some kind of lost American tribe that had somehow become detached from the U.S. mainland and floated across the Pacific. But with each successive visit I perceived that their values and traditions, though frequently concealed under an American veneer, were their own—and often antithetical to the American model. My observations eventually led to this book, which essentially addresses three questions: What propelled the Americans into the Philippines? What did they do there? And what has been the legacy of their rule? So this is not a history of the Philippines as much as it is the story of America’s only major colonial experience.

  If journalism is history written under pressure, as Macaulay said, this is history written by a journalist at a more leisurely pace. But though I was spared the deadlines that dictated my schedule as a correspondent, I have nevertheless tried to narrate events as they unfolded in an effort to give them a fresh, kinetic quality. The reader will, I hope, note the transition as I shift from the accounts of others to my own recollections in my descriptions and analyses of the characters and their conduct. In any case, I have attempted to tell the story through individuals as they behaved at the time, avoiding the revisionist tendency to impose today’s ethics on yesterday’s norms. I have not dodged judgments, yet my general attitude, if I can sum it up succinctly, has been one of humility in the face of an enormously complicated subject. One of the lessons I learned as a reporter was that the more I knew the less I knew.

  I cannot adequately express my gratitude to Claude Buss, emeritus professor of history at Stanford University, who carefully read the manuscript and generously shared with me the encyclopedic knowledge and profound wisdom he accumulated from more than fifty years in Asia. I am also grateful to Jill Brett for her comments on the manuscript, and my thanks as well to Carmen Nakpil Guerrero, F. Sionil Jose, Virginia Benitez Licuanan, Nicholas Platt, Sheila Platt, Sixto Roxas and Kwoh Yu-pei.

  I relied heavily on research assistance from Jenny Springer until, captivated by the subject, she went off to the Philippines as a Peace Corps volunteer. My thanks to her successors: Anne Chamberlin, Susan Cooper, Betty Fisher, Brian Nienhaus, Jacqueline Sheehan and Jane Shorall. Louis Plummer performed ably as picture researcher.

  Peter Osnos, my editor at Random House, and Mitchell Ivers, chief copy editor, furnished me with valuable help. My friend and agent, Ronald Gold-farb, was as usual a source of support and sound advice.

  This book is linked with In Our Image, a series of television programs conceived with my colleague Andrew Pearson. A veteran television producer and correspondent, Mr. Pearson spent
years in Asia, acquiring in the process a rare ability to understand and empathize with its customs and culture. I am deeply indebted to him for his collaboration. My gratitude as well to other members of the television project: Eric Neudel, Alison Smith, Catherine Tse, Jeanne Hallacy, Frank Coakley and Mark Gunning.

  Finally, I depended more than she realizes on my wife, Annette, for her extraordinary patience, forbearance and encouragement.

  S.K.

  Potomac, Maryland

  November 1988

  1. ALL IN THE FAMILY

  * * *

  By September 1986, after four years as secretary of state, George Shultz had grown accustomed to presiding over official dinners for foreign dignitaries visiting Washington: the rigorous protocol, the solemn oratory, the contrived cordiality. But he could not recall an occasion equal to this night. He was honoring Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, the new president of the Philippines, and a spontaneous charge of emotion electrified the affair. Americans and Filipinos had shared history, tragedy, triumph, ideals—experiences that had left them with a sense of kinship. Shultz captured that spirit exactly: A “Cory” doll pinned to his lapel, his Buddha-like face beamed and his nasal voice lilted with rare elation. Breaking with routine, he delivered his toast before the banquet—in effect telling the guests to relax and enjoy. “This,” he said, “is a family evening.”

  Cory’s appeal transcended her American connections. Seven months earlier, she had toppled Ferdinand Marcos in an episode almost too melodramatic to be true—a morality play, a reenactment of the Passion: The pious widow of Marcos’s chief opponent, the martyred Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, she had risen from his death to rally her people against the corrupt despot, his egregious wife and their wicked regime. Throughout the world she became an instant celebrity, a household icon: the saintly Cory who, perhaps through divine intervention, had emerged from obscurity to exorcise evil. Elsewhere in Asia, in Taiwan and in South Korea, demonstrators invoked her name in their protests against autocracy.

  Most Americans may have forgotten, perhaps never even knew, that the Philippines had been a U.S. possession; for those who remembered, Cory symbolized anew that special relationship. During its half-century of colonial tutelage, America had endowed the Filipinos with universal education, a common language, public hygiene, roads, bridges and, above all, republican institutions. Americans and Filipinos had fought and died side by side at Bataan and Corregidor and perished together on the ghastly Death March. The United States was still in the Philippines, the site of its two largest overseas bases, and more than a million Filipinos lived in America. By backing Marcos, even as an expedient, the United States had betrayed its protégés and its own principles, but, as if by miracle, Cory Aquino had redeemed her nation—and redeemed America as well.

  Shultz’s role in her achievement, though belated, had been decisive. He was frustrated by unresolved challenges: Central America, the Middle East, negotiations with the Soviet Union. Not the least of his problems were his rivals in President Ronald Reagan’s entourage, constantly nibbling at his authority. Here he had scored a visible victory: He had finally won the Washington debate over dumping Marcos—despite recollections of the disasters that had followed past U.S. maneuvers against such unwanted clients as South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and the shah of Iran. At his urgent behest, Reagan begrudgingly consented to discard Marcos and hustle him off to Honolulu. A bloodbath had been narrowly averted in Manila, and Cory had restored democracy to the Philippines. Now, on this autumn evening, Cory beside him, Shultz savored her success, his success. In what for him was an explosion of enthusiasm, he remarked that the occasion had “a real good feel to it.”

  Even the chronically foul Washington weather felt good. The summer heat had faded, leaving the air as soft as satin. From the terrace outside the State Department’s top-floor dining room, the capital resembled a tourist poster. Lights flooded the Washington Monument and the majestic dome of the Capitol and between them, like a giant lantern, hung a full harvest moon as yellow as butter. Aquino, while enduring her husband’s imprisonment under Marcos, had borrowed yellow as her signature color from the poignant Civil War ballad: “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Around the Old Oak Tree.” When a guest noted the felicitous coincidence, Shultz’s spokesman, Bernard Kalb, quipped, “The CIA can do anything.”

  Cory desperately needed economic aid and investment, and Shultz had carefully reviewed the guest list, inviting a heavyweight contingent from Congress along with some of America’s major bankers and corporate executives. Present, too, were the handful of State Department officials who had lobbied for her against Reagan’s reticence and the opposition of his staff. Diplomats, publishers, journalists, scholars and lawyers were also there, and a group of influential Filipino businessmen had flown in from Manila. The place was “loaded,” Shultz said proudly, with “important people who make things happen.”

  By seven-thirty, the guests were filing through the reception chambers furnished with elegant American antiques, their walls adorned with vintage portraits of America’s founders: Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, John Quincy Adams. With Shultz towering above her in the receiving line, Cory wore a pink gown with butterfly sleeves, reserving yellow for her address to Congress the next day. Nobody who knew her, as I had for twenty years, could have foreseen this magic moment. Nor could she, for all her belief in providence, have ever thought it possible. I imagined her reply had I, possessed of some superhuman faculty, predicted this occasion even a couple of years before. “Golly, Stan,” she would have remonstrated, “you must be crazy.” Yet here she was, a woman of fifty-three, a grandmother, serene and poised, shaking hands, bussing an old friend, her broad smile and amazing grace radiating a natural incandescence. And, as we dined in the spacious Benjamin Franklin Room, a euphoric glow kindled the gathering. Guests table-hopped to exchange nostalgic anecdotes. One effusive congressman was appareled in a lustrous yellow matched set of bow tie, cummerbund and handkerchief, and another sported a yellow badge proclaiming: “I Cory.” As entertainment, Shultz had brought in a loony washboard combo from San Francisco—a frivolous touch described by one of his assistants as “real American.”

  Vice President George Bush, acting as official greeter, had paid a call on Aquino the previous day at her hotel suite. As they posed for the photo opportunity, she smiled stiffly. Of course she would not spoil the occasion by dredging up old grievances, but Bush was anathema to her for his effulgent praise of Marcos during a visit to Manila in 1981. The Marcoses, masters at lavishing attention on important guests, had laid on an opulent dinner for him at the Malacañang, the presidential palace. Scripted by the State Department to reassure Marcos of the Reagan administration’s “friendship,” Bush toasted Marcos’s “adherence to democratic principles and to the democratic processes.” The inane remark had clung to him for years, and he knew that Cory remembered it. Now, however, he sought to reassure her. There was “no resistance of any kind to you” within the administration, he told her, predicting that she and Reagan would “get along very well … in terms of chemistry.”

  He was wrong. A man who prized loyalty, Reagan stuck by those who had been faithful to him—a trait he displayed in his reluctance to dismiss unethical subordinates. Nor did he easily shed illusions, as in his tendency to confuse movies with reality. Whatever Marcos’s faults, he still esteemed him an “old friend and ally,” an intrepid anti-Japanese guerrilla during World War II and a veteran “freedom fighter” in the struggle against communism. Besides, he had never forgotten his first trip to Manila in 1969, when he was governor of California. President Richard Nixon had sent him and Nancy there to represent the United States at the opening of a cultural center, and the Marcoses had treated them like royalty. By contrast, he instinctively distrusted Cory. On one occasion he had proposed that she compromise with Marcos, which to her was tantamount to a pact with the devil, and despite massive evidence of chicanery by Marcos’s followers during the election, he publicly suggested that her s
upporters had been equally fraudulent. He was angry when she banished Marcos from the Philippines rather than permit him to retire to his native province.

  Not until April, a full two months after her victory, did he personally congratulate her by telephone. She interpreted the delay as an indirect reproach—and, a few days later, he exacerbated it with a gesture that she could justifiably consider an insult. En route to Asia, he had stopped for a few days in Hawaii and actually contemplated driving over to see Marcos, who was now living there in splendid exile. Shultz had all he could do to dissuade him, and Reagan telephoned Marcos instead. Marcos, his voice slurred, carried on almost endlessly, insisting that he was still the rightful president of the Philippines, denouncing Cory as incompetent and soft on communism and complaining about his confiscated property. His wife, Imelda, pouring out her heart to Nancy, blubbered that the press had maligned her with exaggerated reports of the thousands of shoes and sundry glitz she had left behind in Manila. The maudlin performance embarrassed the Reagans—all the more so because Imelda, to show that the Marcos connection with the United States was intact, had violated the privacy of the conversation by arranging for a Honolulu television station to broadcast a silent segment. Administration spokesmen, fearing that Reagan’s contact with Marcos might alarm Cory, hastily expressed his endorsement of her, but she was unconvinced. She continued to believe that Reagan still yearned for Marcos’s restoration to power. And now, five months afterward, as her motorcade sped to the White House, she was rankled as well by Reagan’s refusal to elevate her journey to Washington to the full panoply of a “state visit”—an honor that he had accorded the Marcoses in September 1982, which in diplomatic semiotics signified unqualified recognition as a chief of state.

  Her intuition was not misplaced. Though Reagan had by now reconciled himself to her ascension to office, he still harbored misgivings about her abilities. But he was a courtly host. After an amiable luncheon with Cory, he listened to her account of the “economic devastation” caused by Marcos’s excesses. He was “bullish” on the Philippines, he said, and vowed to “do all we can” to help in its recovery. His real concern, however, was the Communist insurrection nagging the country. Aquino, who had recently begun discussions with the rebels under a cease-fire, explained to him that she was seeking a political solution while keeping open her “military option.” The strategy struck him as naïve, even dangerous. After all, he was dedicated to the effort of the contras to topple the left-wing Sandinista regime in Nicaragua and, he implied, she had to act tough. Emphasizing the importance of force, he cautioned her to watch herself. “I’ve had experience dealing with communists,” he said.