Vice Consul Mok

Until about 15 years ago, I would visit the Chinese Cemetery in Manila every All Saints’ Day to pay homage to my maternal grandparents. The cemetery would be teeming with the living, including tourists, curious about this City of the Dead with its grand mausoleums.

The cemetery has several memorials or shrines put up to honor the Chinese, Filipinos and Americans who gave up their lives for the Philippines during World War II. I knew of, but never really looked into, these shrines. I forgot them when our family stopped going to the cemetery, after my grandparents’ remains were moved into a church columbarium.

Last Saturday I returned to the cemetery with a group called Outbound, the cemetery being our last stop in a planned educational tour for students, to raise their awareness of Chinese-Filipino culture. I had looked up information on the cemetery and the war memorials, so this time I regarded the shrines with reverence. I walked slowly around the area, overwhelmed by the number of martyrs whose names were etched on the memorials.

In another part of the cemetery is the Clarence Kuangson Young memorial honoring staff members of the Chinese consulate in Manila, eight of whom were imprisoned, tortured and executed. The memorial is named after the Chinese consul general. The Japanese had told the Chinese their lives would be spared if they would endorse the Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which was Japan’s ploy to recruit collaborators from the countries they had invaded. For the Philippines in particular, which was at that time under the Americans, Japan’s slogan of “Asia for Asians” was attractive.

But the Chinese consulate staff refused to cooperate, and were executed. There were many other local Chinese who met similar fates because they refused to collaborate with the Japanese. Some were arrested right after the Japanese invaded the Philippines; others went underground, joining Filipino guerrillas, and were killed in battle.

It was an emotional visit and I told the Outbound staff we definitely had to give time to explain to the students what these memorials meant. I also committed myself to looking up more information on the involvement of ethnic Chinese in resisting the Japanese occupation.

Uncle Fred

Imagine my surprise then when, two days after the visit to the cemetery, I received a phone call from someone in the United States who asked if I could help him find information on his father, Vice Consul Clement K. Y. Mok (Chinese name: Mok Kai Yan), who was one of those killed by the Japanese. Even more startling was that the caller was a family friend, Fred Mok, who I always knew as “Uncle Fred,” a Chinese-American from California, rather than as someone who had lived in the Philippines.

For the next hour Uncle Fred told me about his father and life in Manila. He later e-mailed some Chinese newspaper articles he had found, allowing me to piece together a story of honor and valor.

Vice Consul Mok was born in 1893 and was among several young Chinese sent by their government to study in the United States and Britain, with the hope that they could bring back western science and technology to rebuild China. The young Mok got a degree in electrical engineering from Yale, and worked with General Electric as an inspector of electric motors installed in US submarines. After he returned to China he was assigned to run a German-built power plant in Shenyang.

In 1929, Mok agreed to join the Chinese consulate in Manila. He came over with his family, which included Uncle Fred, then only a few months old. He was later appointed vice consul and served in Manila for 13 years, until his death.

The Moks lived in Pasay and then later in Sta. Mesa, Manila. Uncle Fred said his father loved the Philippines and Filipinos, turning down three offers for more attractive consular posts.

After the Japanese invaded China in 1937, Vice Consul Mok began to warn Filipinos and the local Chinese about Japan’s imperial ambitions. Uncle Fred recalled that his father stayed up long hours writing a weekly diary on Japanese aggression for the Chinese Commercial News, a local newspaper produced by Yu Yi Tung, later to be executed by the Japanese. Many of the local Chinese shared Mok’s apprehensions, and organized various activities to raise awareness on Japanese aggression, including a boycott of Japanese goods. Among these “boycott Japan” Chinese businessmen was my maternal grandfather, Lim Su An (Joaquin Lim), who had become a close friend of Vice Consul Mok.

Japanese occupation

The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and within a month, they had occupied several Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines. There were many Japanese living in the Philippines even before the invasion and they had been monitoring the local Chinese and their anti-Japanese activities. So when the Japanese occupied the Philippines, one of the first things they did was arrest the anti-Japanese leaders, including the consulate staff.

Vice Consul Mok and the other members of the consulate staff were first detained in the house of the UP president, where they could still receive visitors. Uncle Fred was only 12 then, but he remembers his father’s stories about resisting offers of freedom in exchange for an endorsement of the Japanese occupation. Mok quoted the American patriot Patrick Henry about having only one regret, which was to have only one life to offer for his country.

The Japanese transferred the Chinese consulate staff to Fort Santiago, which was notorious for the torture of prisoners. And then the staff disappeared. Uncle Fred’s mother, like many other Chinese, supported the anti-Japanese guerrillas all throughout the war, hoping that her husband was still alive, perhaps in the underground. Alas, as the war came to an end, she learned that he was executed together with the other members of the consulate staff in April 1942.

After the war Mok’s widow and her children emigrated to the United States. Uncle Fred became a successful stockbroker but never forgot his father and recently began to look for the latter’s burial site. He has since learned that the vice consul’s remains are buried in a cemetery in Nanjing. He will travel to Nanjing in April, for the Chinese Qingming, “to sweep my father’s grave.”

Chinese journalists have heard of his visit and asked to interview him on the vice consul’s 13 years in Manila, but Uncle Fred said he had very little information on his father other than memories.

I told Uncle Fred that I had just visited the Chinese Cemetery and that I felt I owed his father and the other martyrs a column. So I write today to honor them, with the hope that some readers might have additional information, or stories and anecdotes, on Vice Consul Mok.

I have another appeal, and this is for readers to document other unsung heroes in our families and histories.  Time is running out; the survivors of World War II are now quite elderly. We owe it to our many patriots and martyrs to keep their memories, and ideals, alive.

(Email: mtan@inquirer.com.ph)