Philippine Vets Hold the Line in Benefits Fight

MANILA —  The Philippines’ dwindling band of veterans who fought for the United States in World War II is waging one last battle--this time for the benefits President Franklin D. Roosevelt promised in 1941.

It is a battle that has dragged on since the 1960s, when the veterans began pressing the issue, and one that still strikes an emotional chord in this former U.S. commonwealth, where 45,000 aging veterans who fought side by side with U.S. troops are said to be dying at the rate of five a day.

“Yes, there’s a feeling of bitterness,” said Revilla Garcia, 74, a one-eyed former guerrilla whose body bears the scars of Japanese bayonet wounds. “We fought under the American flag. We sang the American national anthem. All we want is recognition for our service.”

At issue, in both the U.S. Congress and the halls of the Veterans Federation of the Philippines, is whether veterans here should be eligible for the full benefits accorded U.S. veterans. The benefits for Filipinos would fulfill a promise made just before Japan’s invasion of the Philippines in December 1941. In July that year, Roosevelt ordered the Philippine military into the services of the U.S. armed forces. Rather than merely placing them under U.S. command, the order in effect made them U.S. soldiers, entitling them to citizenship and full benefits.

“No one’s ever said we didn’t fight heroically,” said a 75-year-old patient at a medical clinic that Garcia runs for veterans of the war. The Filipinos’ resistance to Japanese occupation for more than three years was fierce and courageous and helped turned the tide of war in the Pacific. At Bataan, Corregidor and other battle sites, they suffered no less than the Americans.

Yet after the war, with independence only months away, the Manila government feared a loss of manpower to the United States. The U.S. Congress in turn had little enthusiasm for taking on additional veterans’ obligations. Congress appropriated $200 million for the Philippine armed forces but attached a rider saying no Filipino had fought in the military “of the United States or in any component thereof. . . .”

President Truman signed the bill reluctantly in 1946. Truman went on to note that the Filipinos had fought as American nationals. “I consider it a moral obligation of the United States,” he said, “to look after the welfare of the Filipino army veterans.”

“You can imagine how we felt to have fought for the American flag and then be told, ‘You’re not one of us,’ ” said Emmanuel de Ocampo, chairman of the Veterans Federation. De Ocampo took to the mountains in 1942 as an ROTC cadet and ended up commanding one of the commonwealth’s most effective guerrilla units.

The move to secure full military benefits for eligible veterans is being led by Rep. Bob Filner (D-San Diego), a Freedom Rider during the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1960s who spent two months in a Mississippi jail for challenging segregation laws. He has 208 sponsors in the House, which last weekend wrapped up its 1998 sessions, for what is known as the Filipino Veterans Equity Act.

“Congress adjourned without acting,” Filner said by telephone from Washington. “So we fell short, but we’ve come a long way. We’ll start over again in the next session. The opposition has greatly inflated the estimates of what it would cost.”

The Congressional Budget Office says it will cost $4.5 billion over five years to give Philippine veterans full benefits. De Ocampo, who says the pensions and benefits are negotiable, estimates the five-year costs at about $50 million.

Washington now spends about $55 million a year on 13,000 Philippine veterans disabled during service in World War II.

Filner’s bill would extend benefits beyond wartime disabilities. Eligible veterans would qualify, as do U.S. veterans, for military pensions, medical care not connected with military service, and headstones for their grave site.

There were about 432,000 Filipinos fighting under U.S. command at the end of the war, with about 250,000 of them covered by Roosevelt’s 1941 promise. Only about 70,000 eligible veterans survive, about 45,000 living in the Philippines and the rest in the U.S.

Congress in 1990 made good on one part of Roosevelt’s promise by offering citizenship to Philippine veterans whose records proved that they had fought for the United States. About 20,000 Filipinos accepted the offer, with many of them settling in Los Angeles.