R01FU, Alexis (Ally) Baker ‘16, Amante Corpuz, Grandfather, 1933, Philippines
I interviewed my maternal grandfather, Amante Corpuz, by telephone on October 5, 2014. He is 81 years old and living in the Philippines. My grandfather, whom I call “Papa,” is from Ilocos Norte, in the north of the Philippines, and his native language is Ilocano, so his English is often broken and grammatically incorrect. As I wanted the transcript to remain authentic, I recorded his words in the way he spoke, but included notes in areas where some clarification might be necessary.
Although a stoic man by nature, he gave me thorough information about his life around the time of World War II. When I felt like he was going to be upset, I often changed the topic to farming or raising animals in the context of the war, as his love of nature and wildlife allowed him to elaborate and keep the flow of the interview going.
Alexis (A): Hi, Papa!
Papa (P): Ally? Hi anack [my child], how is your schoolwork? Are you doing good?
A: I just have a history assignment, could you help me with a history assignment? I want to interview you about World War II. How did it affect your life in the Philippines?
P: Well, very much. It affected my going to school, I stopped schooling.
A: How old were you? Where and when were you born?
P: I was eight years old. I was born in Darayday, Laoag, Ilocos Norte, on March 9, 1933.
A: How did the war affect your family?
P: We evacuated, we went to a place, we had been hiding. I noticed that the grown-up people had been putting up fences on the road, so that the Japanese cannot come, but they still would come!
A: Where were you living before you evacuated?
P: Our house in the Philippines, in Laoag, in the village, in Ilocos Norte.
A: Then where did you evacuate?
P: We evacuated to the place where we have to go to harvest rice, but then the Japanese were all over. The first time they came, the older people made a place on the mountain where the whole community had to go and hide. But then later on, when it was settled down, we came out, and it was all right.
A: Did you end up meeting Japanese people? Would they talk to you? How did they treat you?
P: One time, coming home from the vacation, I ride on the bull cart. More than half people travel with the bull cart. And then when we passed in front of the church by Dingras, which was the headquarters of the Japanese, everybody had to get out of the bull cart, and go fall in line in front of the Japanese people. Not knowing how they talk, they just say “Kora! Kora! Kora! Kora!” like that, and then some people understanding about the Japanese how to talk, they talked. When we fell in line, everybody bow their heads. They all came down from the bull cart. You have to bow down, real low. But I did not know that I had to bow like that. I’m only the youngest one. I was only eleven years old. The Japanese came to me, and then knocked my head! [starts laughing]. Until the people that understood told me to bow. So I bow, alright.
A: Did it hurt?
P: Oh yeah!
A: So Papa, did you ever learn any Japanese songs, or did you learn how to speak a little Japanese?
P: After the place calmed down, they opened school. We have to go to school in Japanese, from 1942 to 1944.
A: Did you go to school in Japanese?
P: No, with Filipino. All Filipino. Filipino teacher, but they teach Japanese. They teach you first the alphabet. Ah, eh, i, eh, eh, oh, oh. Something like that.
A: Did you learn any songs?
P: Yeah, Haru kuru nou, hana no en, something like that. Meguru saka suki, see? I know little bit, I still remember. [laughs] You know what that means?
A: I think it means something about the flowers and the spring. Do you remember how the Japanese came?
P: Yeah, first, they had a battle in Bataan, and then they captured Bataan, they captured Manila. The Japanese would know Bataan and Corregidor.
A: When the Japanese occupied, was it just the Japanese men, or were there women or children also?
P: No. Only soldiers. Yeah, there was a Japanese store that had been selling bicycles before, and he had a son, maybe same age as us. When the Japanese came, he was already a Captain! They come around, with the son. We called him Pedro. He did stay there after the war, that son. He had been working with a private corporation. That’s all I know. But I don’t know the name of his father.
And then when the American people had been bombing the airport close to our place, and then the guerillas pushed the Japanese, we evacuated.
A: Do you remember where you evacuated?
P: About ten miles away. I remember we had goats and cows, and the goats had just had babies. We put them in a pushcart and moved everyone into the mountain. We had cow, carabao, goat, sheep, like that. And the sheep just had little babies that time. I put them inside the pushcart. But the big ones, they walked.
A: How did this affect you and your siblings and the rest of your family? Did they go with you?
P: I was grade three at the time. And then so many years later, 1945, Philippine school opened. I went for grade four, grade five, and grade six.
A: Were you the oldest?
P: No, I had an older brother, who died already. In 2011, I think. The father of your Auntie Tessie.
A: How old was he when all of this happened?
P: He was born in 1926. [starts counting] He was fifteen when the war broke out. He didn’t go to school, because our father need help in the farm. Only starting from me, went to school.
A: How many siblings did you have?
P: And then Auntie Tessie’s father, me, Marcelino, Maximo, Severo, your grandma Gandi, there was seven of us. [Note: Gandi is my grandfather’s sister. In Filipino culture, all relatives over the age of 50 are commonly referred to as “grandma” or “grandpa,” regardless of the biological connection.] I had another older brother who died during the war. We don’t know where. We don’t know what happened to him. But then he went to somewhere around Manila but then, from what I understand, some people say that he joined the military and then he went to fight in Bataan and then he went from Bataan to Tarlac. We think he was in prison in there. But plenty guys get sick. They had been dying in there. That’s all what we heard about them. They said he died.
A: Was your family farming the whole time?
P: We planted vegetables, sugar cane, we plant corn, beans, like that, and cotton. My mother used to spin cotton thread and make clothes.
A: Okay, that should be enough for now then! Thanks, Papa. I’ll talk to you later!
P: Bye bye, Anak.