Way to verify vets’ records

THIS REFERS to Lourdes Santos Tancinco’s column, “Unfinished mission of Filipino World War II veterans” (Global Pinoy, 5/17/15), about Romeo de Fernandez, who was denied his claims for veterans benefits by the United States government on the ground that “he is not on the National Personnel Record Center’s (NPRC) list

of veterans.”

However, De Fernandez is receiving “veteran’s compensation for his service-connected disability from the VA,” Tancinco said. If “VA” refers to the US Veterans Administration, then De Fernandez’s name, for sure, is on the NPRC list because all veterans receiving VA benefits cannot receive such benefits unless their names are in the NPRC, the official repository of all personnel records of military and civilian employees of the US government. More so if De Fernandez has a “service-connected disability,” which means his sickness was incurred while in service during World War II. Hence, all he has to do is use his VA claim number and records to prove his status as a duly recognized US veteran.

However, if the “VA” refers to the Philippine Veterans’ Affairs Office, then it does not guarantee the inclusion of his name in the NPRC.

I used to work with the USVA offices at the US Embassy in Manila for 12 years (1966-1978), as a veterans counselor assigned to assist both Filipino and US veterans appealing their VA-denied claims, because their names allegedly did not appear on the NPRC list. There I discovered that some of these claims were denied because of wrong “alphabetization”—most especially where their surnames had prefixes like “De, Dela, Del, Delos, etc.”

For it was then the practice of some Filipinos, whose family names had a prefix, to separate the prefix from the main surname and adding it after the first name on their application forms. For instance, applicant “Juan dela Cruz,” would write “Cruz” as his family name and “Juan dela” under his first name. Thus, the NPRC would verify under “Cruz” instead of “Dela Cruz,” resulting in its certification of “no valid military service for ‘Cruz, Juan dela.’”

I handled several cases of this kind at the VA and almost 80 percent of those I referred to the NPRC yielded positive results after their names were verified under several variations—with the prefix before or after their family or first names and vice versa.

In De Fernandez’s case, he could request for a reverification under “De Fernandez, Romeo” or “Fernandez, Romeo de.”

I am writing this piece for all Filipino veterans whose claims for VA benefits might have been denied merely because of wrong alphabetization or wrongly spelled names. They should also inform the VA if they used other names or aliases during their military service, and ask the NPRC to verify their names under these aliases.

I remember the case of a certain veteran with the surname “Bandera.” For seven years, the VA denied his claim for lack of military records at the NPRC. When the case was assigned to me during one of his visits to the VA, I asked him if he had used an alias during the war. Bandera said he used the alias “Labandera,” which he indicated in his initial application for VA benefits. True enough, after a verification of his name under “Labandera,” the NPRC certified the existence of his official US military and medical records.

—ROMULO B. MACALINTAL,

senior citizens rights advocate,

Las Piñas City