A World War Story (A Tuason World War Story)

A World War Story
A Tuason World War Story

By John Joseph Cornelius B. Tuason

(From February 3 to March 3, 1945, the American forces liberated Manila. Amidst the infamous destruction of the city and the massacre of its inhabitants, there were families who survived and their stories of hope were told to children, nephews, nieces and grandchildren including the writer, a 27 year old high school teacher who has a strong sense of family history.)
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I come from an old family. My father is the youngest of nine children and my grandfather was born in 1899. Every time my friends visit our house, I show them my grandparents’ pictures and they remark that they look like pictures from Philippine history books.

My father’s eldest sister, Auntie Nena, lived with us for a while when I was a kid. She would tell me stories from the Second World War when she was a teenager studying in Sta. Scholastica in Manila as an “interna”. The rest of the family was staying in Cagayan de Oro as my grandfather, the feisty entrepreneur Alejo Tuason was working for the Elizalde company. When Cagayan de Oro was bombed, they sought refuge in a nearby ranch bringing along with him his brood of seven: three teenagers, three children and a toddler. Maria, his wife, was heavy with child, the youngest, who would become my father.

I vividly remember Nena’s story when Pearl Harbor was bombed. They were having Mass in honor of the Immaculate Conception and all the girls were wearing their white gala. After the Mass, the German Benedictine nuns announced what had happened and soon cars were coming to fetch the students. Nena saw her friends and schoolmates leave one by one and began to get worried. A friend tried to convince her to come with them to San Pablo, Laguna. At nightfall, Nena’s aunts, Leonor and Teresa arrived to pick her up and brought her to their house in Reposo street, Sta. Mesa.

When they were entering the gate, fighter planes hovered above them. They dropped to the ground in fear that bombs would plummet from the planes. An old Chinese woman, their neighbor, was angrily shouting in Chinese at them. Nena realized that she was being reprimanded for wearing her white gala because the pilots might see her from above and bomb their district. But nothing of that sort happened that night. It was only days after that bombings and fires all over Manila were reported.

The family in Cagayan de Oro was worrying for Nena. Maria Muñoz de Tuason had given birth to a baby boy whom they named Cornelio Antonio, after Alejo’s father and the clan’s ancestor. When Manila was declared an open city, Alejo decided to bring the whole family there and look for her eldest daughter Nena. It was his strong conviction that if they will perish in the war, it is better that they were together with no one being left behind. Alejo convinced a Japanese coronel who was now occupying their big house in the city to allow them to take a Japanese cargo ship to Manila. It was a perilous journey for the big family with young children who only brought suitcases of clothes having left behind their furniture, with the ship evading Filipino guerillas. During this trip, they were with the Guingonas whose son, Tito, was a schoolmate and a close friend of Alejo’s son, Rafael, in the Ateneo de Cagayan.

When they arrived at Manila’s port, they were surprised to find out that there were few American cargadorres! The Japanese had forced them to become laborers and were now doing menial jobs at the harbour. Alejo hired two horse-driven karitelas to bring them to Sta. Mesa.
Now Alejo and Maria did not have any news about their daughter Nena and they were just hoping against all odds that when they reach Reposo street, they will find her living with Maria’s sisters. Upon arriving in the house, the sisters of Maria, with their families, were thrilled seeing that the family from Mindanao has arrived. Of course, Nena was there with them and was happy to be reunited with her family.

Alejo Tuason’s family lived for the rest of the occupation in this part of Sta. Mesa. They stayed in one of the houses of Maria’s eldest sister, Lucia Muñoz-Murphy who was married to an American and owned at least five houses in the neighborhood of V. Mapa. Lucy left with her husband and daughter for America before the outbreak of war. The other sisters and their families lived in the other houses.

My other aunt, Sr. Violeta of the Salesian sisters told me about their life in Sta. Mesa during this period. She was ten years old at the outbreak of war. In the middle of the occupation, everything seemed to return to normalcy or people were just trying to survive the hard times. Sr.Violeta and another sibling, Sonia, went to school and learned Niponggo. Rodolfo, the second son, was in charge of the marketing and kept the food supply. The Muñoz cousins would meet in the afternoons to play. Rafael, Alejo’s second son, even organized and coached a basketball team of boys in their early teens comprising brothers Alejito and Bobby, cousins Vicenting and Montong and neighbors Carlos Loyzaga and Tony Genato who both became basketball legends. Alumni players from different schools organized a basketball league and competed with each other. Since the Ateneo was supposedly closed by the Japanese, it joined with the team name ATEX which stood for “Ateneo ex-students.”

The girls on the other hand planned garden parties and formed clubs. Nena even celebrated her 18th birthday with a simple gathering. There is an existing picture of Lola Maria’s sisters and their husbands getting together in the dinning room with a plate of four pieces of bread most likely to be shared by the eight of them.

But then, dark incidents would remind them of the realities of war. One day, Japanese soldiers came to the house demanding to see Rafael who was about 17 at this time. Apparently they saw his name among the list suspected to be involved in the underground guerilla movement. Maria pleaded with the Japanese not to take Rafael away while the lad left the house through the backdoor and hid in the vast fields behind the house. The soldiers left without Rafael.

Relatives from San Juan were not that lucky. The Japanese took away the teenaged sons because they discovered a Knight of Columbus uniform and ceremonial saber inside a trunk and mistook these as a military uniform. They were never seen again.

Alejo, a brave and daring man, was good in doing business for his family of nine children to survive. “Buy-and-sell” was the usual strategy for the Filipinos to live. He also owned a short wave radio. At night, he would pile pillows on top of the radio while listening to The Voice of America which reported news regarding where the American forces were. There were few times when he would write it down in small notes and ask the children, Violeta and Bobby, to deliver these letters to close friends in the neigborhood to update them. The Japanese never suspected small children and thus, they were never dicovered.

Since the Japanese soldiers confiscated big houses for their use as headquarters, they repeatedly went to Alejo and demanded that they leave the house. The dignified gentleman always declined making the large family as an excuse. “We cannot live in the streets”, he would say.

“Okay, look for house”, the Japanese would say and while counting his fingers, ordered: “Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow (after seven days), you leave, we take house.”

“Okay”, Alejo would reply. “Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow (after ten days), we will leave.”
After ten days, the Japanese soldiers would return demanding for the family to leave. “But we have not found a house yet”, my grandfather reasoned out. “Okay”, the Japanese said. “Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow…!”

This happened again many times until the liberation of Manila. The Tuasons of Sta. Mesa were able to stay in their residence with this tactic until the end of the war and actually shared the “Tomorrow Method” with the Muñoz sisters because they were the few ones who remained in their houses while the neighborhood practically became a Japanese military office compound. Actually, Alejo was just delaying before he could move the family to San Juan where he purchased a summer house across the White Cross orphanage owned by the writer/ poet Jesus Balmori.

The remaining children of Alejo and Maria will never forget that fateful day in February when Manila was liberated at last by the American forces. That morning, the Japanese soldiers marched hurriedly out of Sta. Mesa going to San Juan. They left their warehouses open and the civilians went in at once to loot the provisions. The Tuason boys went home with sacks of rice and canned goods.

After that, the sky became red because nearby districts such as Malate and Ermita were on fire. Billows of smoke can be seen from afar. Who can ever forget the frightening bombings? Alejo led everybody down the air raid shelter, its entrance by the kitchen door. It was a small cavity dug out from the earth with benches where members of the family could sit. They usually prayed the rosary everytime they hid there during air raids and waited until the following day. This time, they were uncertain. The Americans have arrived but somehow, anxiety crept in their eager hearts. Nobody slept for who can sleep when your life was in danger? Even the young children knew this.

Suddenly, a bomb hit the house behind the Tuason residence and earth shook. Alejo, fearing that the house might colapse above them and they will be burried alive, quickly ordered everyone to rush out from the shelter and run to the street. He assigned the family in pairs, Nena carrying the youngest (my father) who was three years old at this time. It was already dark. The Manila Electric Company was burning, hence the blackout with only the red skies illuminating the night. The whole neigborhood was outside the streets waiting for what will happen next. At daybreak, the Tuason family managed to reunite and Alejo herded his family to a Japanese warehouse to stay. When night came, they returned to their house in V. Mapa.

They did this for a couple of days until a neighbor reported to Alejo that an American soldier by the name of Major Stratton was looking for a Tuason in the vicinity. Apparently, he wants his men to occupy the White Cross orphanage in San Juan and heard that one of the directors is a Tuason. Alejo at once contacted his distant cousin, Doña Paz, to ask permission in behalf of the American contingent and Major Stratton asked what could they do for the family in gratitude.

Now Alejo remembered the house he bought in front of White Cross during the war which was moderately damaged by one of the air raid bombings. The American soldiers offered to fix the house so that the family can stay there. And so Don Alejo Tuason’s family of nine children, all survivors of this terrible war, packed their things and were transferred to their new home in San Juan and slowly regained their normal lives.

Few people are reminded of those three years and few protagonists of this part of history remain. As the first Gospel of Christ was written 70 years after the resurrection, now is the time that more personal stories of how one survived the Second World War should flourish that it may never be forgotten and for whatever its worth. ****

---------March 2010

The Author

John Joseph Cornelius Tuason is a 28 year old high school teacher in a Catholic school in Parañaque. As a child, he would sit beside his old uncles and aunts and listened to their lively stories about their family’s history going back to the Spanish period, the Japanese occupation and interesting characters from the past. This developed his love for anything vintage particularly the 1920’s to the 1940’s. Upon recently realizing that his uncles and aunts are getting older (some have already died), he decided to preserve their stories on paper.