‘Small’ heroes

Early this month, the Quezon City government and the University of the Philippines convened a well-attended conference on Melchora Aquino, better known as Tandang Sora. The occasion was the 200th birth anniversary of Tandang Sora who, although already 84 during the Philippine Revolution, was still able to contribute to the cause of the Katipuneros.

I’ve already written about her but a quick review of her life is important to set the tone for my column today. Tandang Sora not only gave the revolutionaries material assistance but also allowed them to use her home for meetings, and as a refuge for the wounded. The Spaniards arrested this subversive grandmother and tortured her, but she did not betray anyone.

I was asked to deliver a paper at the conference on “ordinary people” who end up heroes, and over lunch right before the lecture, UP Social Work Dean Rosalinda Ofreneo told me about the problems of piecing together the very limited information on Tandang Sora. One of our history professors, Neil Santillan, had lectured earlier and confirmed there was very little documentation on this grand old woman’s life.

I sighed and said my talk was going to remind the conference participants—many of them teachers from public schools—that we do need to move away from viewing heroes only as “malalaking tao” (big people) and to honor the “maliit na tao” (“small people”)  that do become heroes.

For the last two weeks I’ve been trying to track down more information on our martyrs from the Japanese occupation, spurred by a request from Frederick Mok, the son of Chinese Vice Consul Clement K. Y. Mok, who was executed by the Japanese in 1942. I’m realizing that this is such a forgotten phase of our history, with its thousands of unsung heroes.

Patriots and traitors

I will do another column about the war’s martyrs in April but for now I want to share a touching account of heroism that I found in a newspaper clipping sent by Mr. Mok. The article was from a newspaper, Manila New Day, that appeared as World War II was coming to an end; it featured an interview with May Mok, the vice consul’s widow, where she recalled visiting her husband while he was under Japanese detention. When her husband told her about the Japanese’s offer of privileges and an easy life if he would just endorse their occupation of the Philippines, she answered: “I would rather be the widow of a patriot than the wife of a traitor.”

Now that’s heroism, too, and a reminder that there were many women who quietly stayed in the background, knowing fully well and willing to make the sacrifices needed for one’s community or nation.

I am sure there were many other such “small people” with heroic feats, through the Spanish period and into the American occupation. Alas, there seems to be a blank when it comes to Filipino heroes during that period, and this is because the Americans succeeded in depicting the insurgents as bandits and the nationalists as subversives.

Then there’s the Japanese occupation. Rightly, we remember the Filipinos and Americans who died in the Bataan Death March, but there were many other heroes from the war. Just go to the Chinese cemetery and you’ll find several memorials to the hundreds of Chinese who joined the resistance and died in battle, in cities and in the countryside. Many of them were “maliit na tao.”

Not all the heroes were in the underground. Many others were heroes, too, with their support for the guerrillas. Mr. Mok told me that the Chinese community also provided support for the widows and bereaved families of those executed by the Japanese. He had profuse words of praise and thanks for a “Simon Ong,” one of their neighbors in Santa Mesa—information which thrilled me when I realized that “Simon Ong” was “Uncle Kayao” to me, a close family friend now in his 90s.

There are many more of such heroes and heroines in our families and communities, their stories waiting to be told. In time, we will hear more stories of valor from the dark martial law period. Dr. Ferdinand Llanes, a history professor at UP, is finalizing an anthology, “Tibak Rising: Activism in the Days of Martial Law.” I reviewed the manuscript and will never forget one account from theater director Behn Cervantes about how the military had raided his home and gathered anti-martial law documents. His elderly mother intervened quickly, claiming that she owned the documents—an attempt to shield Behn from prosecution. The raiding team didn’t believe her but one of the officers told Behn later he was so impressed by her courage.

Ordinary, extraordinary

At the Tandang Sora conference, I gave a very short list of names of “small heroes” to see if people were aware of them. Almost no one had heard of Nellie Banaag and Filomena Tatlonghari—teachers in Batangas who gave up their lives in defense of ballot boxes. People remembered Melanie Dirain only when I described how her assassination was caught on closed-circuit TV just recently. She was a forestry specialist of the environment department shot down in her office because she was becoming too good at tracking down anomalies.

I also mentioned Rodrigo Sultan, a member of the Cordova Marine Watch, and other Bantay Dagat volunteers, killed while protecting environmental resources for future generations. Then there are the many journalists and mass media workers assassinated for being too outspoken.

I held my head down in shame, admitting, too, that I could not remember the name of a midwife from the Cordillera who drowned in a swollen river during a storm while delivering vaccines to a remote village.

Heroism takes many forms, including simply doing one’s job amid adversity, against great odds, ordinary people doing extraordinary things. We have many of them in our times, their names sometimes appearing in the papers for quick praise, and then fading from public memory. How many remember Efren Peñaflorida and his kariton schools, whose quiet heroism went unnoticed for many years until a CNN award brought him first to the attention of the world and then to his fellow Filipinos’?

I reminded the participants of the Tandang Sora conference that we can still revive memories of these “maliit na tao” by doing local histories. Map out your own community’s historic places … and the maliit na tao who made those sites historic. Look up older members of the community and get their stories. Families may have photographs and other memorabilia. The point is to begin to record the voices and images. As we look to the past, we will find many Filipinos to be proud of—their lives and deaths, providing us the moral and social strength to tackle challenges in the future.

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Erratum: In my column on Vice Consul Mok last week, I attributed to Patrick Henry the quote “I only regret I have one life to give for my country.” Several readers wrote in to say it should have been Nathan Hale.

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Email: mtan@inquirer.com.ph