Funnily enough, I was inspired to form the Society when I heard a member of the Titanic Historic Society describe how his society was formed after  precious documents relating to the sinking of the RMS Titanic were destroyed when there was no group to which those documents could be donated for preservation. There was also the prospect of establishing a small group of Corregidor History aficionados who might share in the esoteric knowledge of our compulsion.

Not everyone who is interested in Corregidor is in the USA, or able to visit the National Archives or Carlisle Barracks.

The Corregidor Historic Society publishes a number of Websites. 

I soon enough learned that there's a lot of the "el cheapo millenio" generation out there who think that everything on the internet should be free, because they are socially superior entities and thus deserving yo be served with large helpings of free stuff paid for by someone esle who must be forced to pay their fair share.  

So as to support the costs of publishing the website to good folk and freeloaders alike,  I established a membership fee.  The money went towards my regular payments to the Internet Service Provider and to my costs of keeping my computers going through the years.  It worked OK for a while, but there were two problems - firstly, there weren't enough members joining because we're in a really, and I mean really esoteric niche group. Besides, I had better things to do than turn myself into a serial pest chasing annual fees from a bunch of people who  considered that an annual fee was a once only payment for a lifetime membership.

I used to arrange an annual study trip to Corregidor for a week or ten days. I put these together for several years. I encouraged WWII Veterans come along to give us prespective. We had a great time, they sure were the Greatest Generation.  We bought a lot of beer on Corregidor too, which was great, because we listened and learned a lot.

In 2003, I  issued a CD-ROM Membership Disk. It contained a complete copy of the four Websites as they then were. It included a series of articles, resources and digital photographs that were not available on "free to air" Internet. It cost me several thousand dollars to put together. I never got my investment back, largely thanks to (a) the very small percentile of people who joined us in comparison with the larger number who preferred to steal apples from our tree and (b) the skinflint business practices of Magsaysay Lines (Corregidor Hotel) who couldn't sell them fast enough, yet couldn't pay me for them slow enough. In the end, I figured, why the fuck should I deliver disks on consignment, and then have to chase them for between six and nine months to get paid?  and (c) getting flooded out by Ondoy and losing my stock of covers and commercially produced disks.  So I have only a few left, and I've decided to ration them.  They're now $50.

In 2007, I put a documentary, Tiga Isla (The Islanders) together with a Filipino film director.  It was a great documentary, except for about 3 minutes of it. The director put apersonal voice-over over on it which so completely pissed off every American who saw it in the test screening that it became totally unsellable in its form  to any American.  We had a signed contract that obligated her to recut it for General Exhibition and to shit-can her diatribe, but I soon enough learned that signed contracts aren't worth shit for beans in the Philippines. I suppose that's the risk you run when you try to work with some ultra-Nationalist radical feminist U.P. film maker. 

For the last few years, I have been publishing a number of books through Blurb.com, a book printing business.  Ten books so far.  I didn't write them all, though I ghostwrote some, and had co-authors on others. They are all about Corregidor and the men of the 503d Parachute Regiment who fought there,  and I hoped they might appeal to our limited market. The books are of tremendous quality, but they're not cheap, because the printing costs are in excess of 90% of the selling price. I worked out that I could retire on the royalty cheques provided I published another two hundred titles during the next 150 years.

Besides, I lack the resources to promote the books.  That's the downside of printing companies who masquerade as publishing houses.

So, to bring the price points down, I converted a number of them to electronic publishing, which presently is limited to the iPad. Now, the books are just brilliant for the iPad technology, and only ten bucks a piece.  So what do I find? Two things:

       (a) Most people don't have iPads;

       (b) Those that do don't know squat about history.

In fact,  a lot of the "el cheapo millenio" generation are still out there thinking that everything on the internet should be free, because they deserve loads of free stuff paid for by someone else who should be forced to pay their fair share.  Luckily, the men of the Greatest Generation didn't think that way.

There are a bunch of people I shall thank, for all the friendship and extra assistance they have given me through the years.  Without each of them, the website would be so much poorer, as would be my life too.  They are, in a deliberately mixed up order so that no inferences can be drawn:

 If you are still of a mind to thank me for a decade of work by sending a donation, then I do have a bunch of the finest digital maps that ever were produced!  Mapmaster may well have been a bit of an anti-social prick sometimes, but he sure was a brilliant digital cartographer and a very kind and generous person who recognized that our Society website did need something to raise funds from new members, and to reward donors, and that the world's best Corregidor Map would be it. 

So that's what you get if you donate a minimum of  $50 to us.   

That, and a letter from me on behalf of all of the other guys and gals who I have just thanked.

So what's keeping you? 

Sincerely,
Paul Whitman.