“Home for the Holidays” by Sean Labrador y Manzano
10 years ago.
November 2001, B-52s soften Taliban bases.
My mother does not know rapid dominance.
Does not distinguish desert from paddy
when I find her stilled, watching bombers clear
safe passage for “boots on the ground.” The remote
control in her hand, thumb hovers above buttons.
She does not change stations, fixed to the velocity
of cloud burst and contrail the smell of nipa huts
burning water buffalo dead with plow.
I imagine bloodstained paddies.
Craters where there should be harvest.
War in my family is dissociative.
Carries within it multiple personalities.
Palimpsests reveal battlefields.
Every war leaves a layer behind.
Layers emerge, mingle, echo.
What she felt that day 10 years ago,
happens to me when I watch Francis Ford Coppola’s
Apocalypse Now filmed entirely in the Philippines.
I watch Apocalypse Now, often, when home sick,
when I want to know who I am.
70-years ago.
The Imperial Japanese Army razed mother’s hometown,
Binalonan, on Christmas Eve, she is 3, youngest
of 10 children and USAFFE (United States Armed Forces
Far East) led by General Douglas MacArthur deploys
American troops with Pinoy Scouts (her brother among them) armed
with obsolete World War 1-era weapons. MacArthur chose Binalonan
a defensible position a days drive to Manila, in hopes
delays create windows of rescue? But how without
Pearl Harbor’s fleet? The bulkheads of sunken promises.
MacArthur warned Roosevelt and Congress this Day would come.
They ignored his pleas for more and modern weapons, more troops,
more planes. But the Arsenal of Democracy feared instead Germany.
How many of mother’s relatives, my relatives buried
in the rice? in the sugar cane? in the treadless ruts of
rusting vehicles? trying to escape the assault, the cross-
fire, the friendly fire? Did we even have a Christmas
tree? Delivered from the cool Cordillera Mountains?
How many died by bayonet? Or raped? Or eviscerated?
How many endured occupation in caves? There is a reason
mother hates insects. Why she hoards. Stories of supplementary
nutrition. Hunger the clamor of wingbeats drawn to fire.
In 2001:
A pundit appears on screen, explains mechanics and chemistry of bombs,
plots oxidation of air we breathe is no different here than there, or at any time,
my mother is three years old again, in stillness detonation petals petulant
returning to soft mud, mouthful of vinegar when tanks follow artillery and
aerial strafing.
2am:
I rouse, her, nightmares, to quiet. I know she regresses
to December 24, 1941, home, home, Horror.
In Apocalypse Now.
Captain Willard and the PBR Street Gang are escorted to the mouth
of the Nung River by the 1st Squadron 9th Air Cavalry Regiment.
(or 1st of the 9th) commanded by Colonel Kilgore.
In real life, not fictional Vietnam made possible by appropriating the lush Philippine landscape, the nickname of the 1st Squadron is “Headhunters.”
They are called Headhunters for scoring the highest enemy body count. The nickname for the 9th Cavalry is “Buffalo Soldiers.” The original 9th Cavalry was a segregated colored unit formed after the Civil War. So 1st of the 9th are the Headhunters of the Buffalo Soldiers.
The mouth of the Nung River was filmed at Baler Bay on the eastern coast
of the main Philippine Island of Luzon.
At the mouth of the Nung River is Charlie’s Point, a fishing village, at its center
an elementary school.
My mother’s hometown is a few miles inland from the Lingayen Gulf, on the western coast of the main Philippine Island of Luzon.
So when I imagine Binalonan, December 24, 1941, I superimpose
the assault on that fishing village at the mouth of the Nung River. I imagine
the Japanese Imperial Army in the valkyric shape of the 1st of the 9th.
I imagine my people resisting a modern, technologically
advanced war-machine. I imagine entire farms torched. I imagine villagers
collected, later executed. And I am awed how mother, 3 years old, escaped?
I imagine a Japanese officer similar to Colonel Kilgore, calling air strikes,
celebrating the smell of victory, prophetic the war will end. It never does.
War is eternal recurrence.
In 1899.
The United States defeated the Spanish, acquiring Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines. Instead of honoring its pledge to free the Philippines, to be the first Asian Republic, President McKinley, conceded and assimilated the country. The Philippine-American War followed, aka the Philippine Insurgency. Historians say it lasted 2-3 years. Some measure 10 years. Others claim, the war has yet to end, and will never end.
The U.S. Army practiced various methods fighting the insurgents. One method: corral suspected villagers into concentration camps, for their protection. Another method: the water cure, known today as waterboarding. Another method: torch villages and farms, and massacre as to deprive the insurgency aid and comfort.
As a form of retaliation as a form of pre-emption.
110 years ago.
The original 9th Cavalry, the Buffalo Soldiers, was sent to the Philippines to apply their skills at fighting Native Americans. As much as I do not imagine them destroying Pilipino villages in the manner of the Americans or Japanese, but in the context of Apocalypse Now—Coppola’s 1st of the 9th assaults a Pilipino fishing village dressed to look like a Vietnamese fishing village—they emerge killing Pilipino extras dressed to look like Vietnamese—they emerge killing Vietnamese refugees recruited to be extras in a film about Vietnamese resisting Americans, but really they are defending at a very chthonic level, the Philippines. Now, why don’t I remember the Buffalo Soldiers, this segregated unit, to be as brutal as their White counterparts? Because there was dissent in their ranks. Disgusted by Color vs. Color. Brown vs. Black. Their dissent produced a black Kurtz, the self-named General Fagen, who led indigenous troops and other defectors like himself against U.S. occupation. So, in real life we had our insane, gone native war chief, hunted down by the country he defied.