‘A nasty little war’

On Feb. 4, 1899, just two days before the Treaty of Paris was ratified by the US Senate, ending the Spanish-American War, conflict between American and Philippine forces around Manila broke out when US sentries fired on Filipino soldiers close to their outposts. The Spanish-American War would at times be referred to as “a splendid little war” because of its short duration and little loss of American lives and treasure. On the other hand, the Philippine-American War that began on Feb. 4, 1899, and officially ended on July 4, 1902—fighting continued in several areas in the country—was called “a nasty little war.” It had cost the United States more than 4,000 dead (almost the same number of losses suffered in the invasion of Iraq in 2003) and over $4 billion.

One other reason the Philippine-American War turned out to be nasty, was because of the cruelty and abusive behavior of US forces toward enemy combatants and the civilian population. The “water cure” was the favored method used by army interrogators to extract information from prisoners. Not an American original, the water cure, so-called for it supposedly “cured” Filipinos of their reluctance to betray fellow freedom fighters, was actually used during the Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834) when it was forbidden by the Catholic Church to draw blood or inflict permanent injury during questioning by inquisitors. Water torture left no marks but it inflicted excruciating pain and terror. Confessions, or whatever the gringos wanted to hear, followed quickly. First Lt. Grover Flint served in the Philippines from November 1899 to April 1901, and described the water cure to a US Senate panel investigating the abuses: “A man is thrown down on his back and three or four men sit or stand on his arms and legs to hold him down, and either a gun barrel or a stick is simply thrust into his jaws and if possible, a piece of wood is put under his neck. He is simply held down and then water is poured into his face, down his throat and nose, and that is kept up until the man gives signs of giving in, or becomes unconscious.”

One of the war’s most controversial figures in the use of the water cure was Capt. Edwin Forbes Glenn, a West Point graduate, lawyer, amateur historian, and Alaska explorer. Along with Lt. Arthur Conger Jr., they moved to dismantle organized resistance on the island of Panay. Conger was a Harvard graduate who joined the Army in 1898 and became a field intelligence operative and leader of an infantry unit known as Gordon’s Scouts operating in the Visayas. Together they entered the town of Igbaras and got hold of the mayor, Joveniano Ealdama, demanding to know the location of the island’s most prominent guerilla commander, Gen. Martin Delgado. Using the “water cure,” they were able to secure information on Delgado’s whereabouts that eventually brought about his surrender. Glenn ordered the town of Igbaras burned. Of 500 structures, only 20 remained standing. A Republican congressman who visited the Philippines in 1901 declared: “Our soldiers took no prisoners, they kept no records; they simply swept the country and wherever and whenever they could get hold of a Filipino, they killed him” (from “Honor in the Dust,” by Gregg Jones, an investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist).

The reports about torture and military abuses in the Philippine-American War were at times made by US Army officers. Maj. Cornelius Gardener, who served as military governor of Tayabas, submitted a five-page report detailing how “US troops were burning villages to deprive the guerillas of shelter, torturing Filipinos to obtain information, and treating natives as though they were all ‘insurrectos.’”

Surprisingly, or perhaps as expected, after two trials for misdeeds in the Philippines, water cure specialist Capt. Edwin Glenn, continued his rise through Army ranks, reaching brigadier general as the US entered World War I in 1917. Promoted to major general soon after, he commanded US troops in France before retirement in 1919. Glenn Highway in Alaska is named after him. Maj. Cornelius Gardener, the whistleblower on US military abuses, never got beyond the rank of colonel.

We Filipinos paid a heavy price. US forces by their own count killed some 20,000 enemy combatants along with as many as 200,000 civilians to include atrocities committed by both sides. “The devastation of the country was reflected in a single statistic: the number of carabaos, without which the rural population could not plant or harvest rice, shrank by 90 percent during the war” (from “In Our Image,” by Stanley Karnow, Pulitzer Prize winner).

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