Address to the National Defense College

By Beth Day Romulo

 

On March 14, 2007, at a Roundtable Discussion on  the Quo Vadis Corregidor issues, Beth Day Romulo addressed the the National Defense College, Camp Emilio Aguinaldo, Quezon City. 

 

Members of the National Defense College

 

To refresh our memories, I'd like to explain why Corregidor has a very special resonance for me. It furnished the refuge for the government inexile after the Japanese invasion of Manila in late 1941. It provided the home for President Quezon and his family, General Macarthur and his family,and my late husband, Carlos P. Romulo, whose task it was to broadcast "theVoice of Freedom" from an improvised radio room in a lateral of Malinta Tunnel, to help keep up the morale of the Filipino people. Today a sound and light show evokes those harrowing days, when air raids sent hundreds ofpeople huddling inside the tunnel.

 

Evacuated from the island before it fell to the Japanese, on orders of  President Roosevelt, the Quezons were taken to America, where the government in exile was set up, Macarthur was ordered to Australia to head the war in the Pacific and he later arranged for Romulo to get off, since there was aprice on his head because of his "Voice of Freedom" broadcasts and if captured, he would have been killed. On the day that Corregidor was finally re-taken, March 2, 1945, General Douglas Macarthur said "No soil on Earth ismore deeply consecrated to the cause of human liberty than the island of Corregidor."

 

Yet, Corregidor, which guards the entrance to Manila Bay, is much more than a World War Two memorial. During the Spanish period, a lighthouse was installed-which the Spanish Embassy commemorated with a historical marker a few years ago - and military installations were built. During the American Period, Corregidor was developed into a full-fledged modern military camp with 23 seaside batteries defending the island. The ruins from the Spanish and American Period, as well as World War Two, make Corregidor one of the most important military museums in the world.

 

When the Corregidor Foundation, which includes representatives of the Department of National Defense and the AFP was founded, under the Departmentof Tourism, in 1987, following General Romulo's death, I was invited to represent the Romulos. At that time, Nini Quezon Avencena, who had actually lived on Corregidor with her family, represented her father.

 

We were mandated to preserve this memorable military memorial, maintain its historic ruins, resist commercialization, and develop it as a major tourist mecca (it is only a day trip to and from Manila) and as a learningexperience for young Filipinos, as well as international memorial for friends from abroad. I recently had a 15-year old great grandson of General Romulo, make his first trip to Corregidor and he came back profoundly impressed and asked for CPR's description of life on Corregidor in "I Saw The Fall of The Philippines."

 

Friends from abroad marvel that we have kept Corregidor so pure to its intent as an international memorial, with well-kept piers, roads and ruins,and a museum whose displays and inscriptions were rehabilitated by FAME, theFilipino-Amercian Memorial Endowment which has been a great help to us through the restoration of the Death March markers from Bataan to Capas, and the Eternal Flame on Topside which was lit two years ago through solarpower, through the efforts of FAME with Sun Power Manufacturing.

 

Those with a sense of history marvel at the extent of the ruins that have survived. President Bill Clinton had to be pulled away by his aides and reminded that a crowd was awaiting his speech on the mainland. I was with former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick when he commented that Corregidor was the high point of his Asian Tour.

 

The problem for the Corregidor Foundation has always been maintenance. With funding from a percent on tourist arrivals augmented, as necessary, by the Department of Tourism through the Philippines Tourism Authority, we have managed to maintain roads, piers, deep wells and generators for energy. But we have never had the kind of serious financial support needed to shore up the fragile ruins, which lose sections of walls each year due to falling trees and storms. For the past decade we have appealed for international help, three times to UNESCO (hoping to have it declared a historic site) to no avail. I have written to secretaries of state and congressmen and at one time it looked like we had a deal until we were forced to forfeit it for reasons of sovereignty. Perhaps this could be revived under different terms.

 

But all this to say that I couldn't have been more delighted when our own government Department of Budget released some funds through the National Historical Institute to make a plan to help save Middleside Barracks which was the worst hit in the last typhoons. Lt. Col. Matibag will give you the details on the operation. Mrs. Murray of FAME and I visited the site and were happily surprised to find that after the initial cleanup, the front of Middleside Barracks was visible to the first time and wall inscriptions and dates cleaned of debris could be read.

 

So perhaps you can understand with what consternations I was told that we were being attacked on the internet for "desecrating" Corregidor. The initial charges were about trees, removed in an 8-meter safety perimeter around the barracks according to the recommendation of the structural engineer commissioned by the National Historical Institute. To begin with, those trees were not there in 1945, and if they fall during a storm, they would destroy more of the barracks walls.

 

It was also charged that workers were seen using acetylene torches to cut dangerous dangling wires with slabs of concrete hanging from them. Workmen also used torches to trim exposed ends of steel bars which were deemed equally dangerous to human life.

 

Why not leave the trees and undergrowth like Ankor Wat, we were asked. There is a great difference. The Ankor Wat ruins are stones, not concrete. Fallen trees do not destroy solid rock, but they do topple fragile, unsupported concrete walls and their roots crack flooring. Phase three of the plan will shore up the walls that exist with steel bars that lie flush with the interior, and are not visible from the outside.

 

When the clearing, cleaning and supporting is done Middleside Barracks will look like Topside's Milelong Barracks which escaped collapsed walls because the area is free of trees. Eventually we hope to shore up all the remaining historic structures on Corregidor including the ruins of the hospital and cinema buildings.

 

As one of the world's most important military memorials, Corregidor deserves to be maintained, as best we can, for posterity. Left to the ravages of nature, it will eventually disappear. Those who really are concerned about Corregidor should help, and not condemn our efforts to sustain it.

 

Beth Day Romulo