A quarter million Filipinos served for the U.S. in WWII, only to have their rights stripped at war's end. Now, the last survivors are fighting for what's rightfully theirs.
Patrick Ganio had lived to see his country invaded, its defenses smashed, and his comrades fall on the battlefield. But he had lived, and that was no small feat – not after the Allied surrender and the torturous march that followed, 60 miles inland from their defeat on the Bataan peninsula, all the way to the Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. Battered, wounded and starving, the soldiers who stumbled along the way were swiftly dispatched, run through with the blade of a Japanese bayonet. There would be no slowing down. To falter meant certain death.
Still, Ganio had survived. In a war that claimed nearly 57,000 Filipino soldiers and untold numbers of civilians, Ganio lived to see the dawn of the Philippine liberation. He was freed, allowed to go home to his family and rejoin the fight on behalf of the Philippine resistance. By 1945, three years of Japanese occupation were at a close, and the end of World War II was mere months away. All it would take would be one final push to effectively expel the Japanese Army from the Philippine Islands.
That's how Ganio found himself once again in the battlefield, this time pinched between two mountain ranges on the rugged slopes of Balete Pass. Sniper fire whistled down from the peaks, where enemy fighters had barricaded themselves inside caves and pillbox bunkers. Control over Luzon, the Philippines' main island, was at stake.
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Patriotism had first motivated Ganio to enlist back in 1941, fresh out of school at age 20. At the time, the Philippines were a United States territory — spoils from its victory in the Spanish-American War — and Ganio took to serving the United States military with zeal.
His father, a poor farmer, supported his decision to fight. He had always harbored high hopes for his bright young son. Ganio distinguished himself at an early age by learning to read using papers from the local Catholic church, and when it finally came time for Ganio to start school, his father cheered him on, carrying him to class atop his shoulders. He dreamt Ganio would escape the poverty that plagued the family. Ganio would have an education, a career, a future.
But the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, hit the Philippines like the opening blow in a one-two punch. Barely 10 hours later, as the U.S. scrambled to muster its defenses, the Japanese arrived on Philippine shores, ready to invade.
None of that shook Ganio's resolve. He was convinced the Allies would win, never wavering, not even after their defeat at Bataan and his imprisonment and torture.
And yes, the war would be won. The battle in Luzon would prove to be a decisive victory, the last major battle in the Philippines and a crucial step toward Japan's surrender. But it would not mark the end of the struggle for Philippine soldiers.
They would continue fighting for decades to come — only this time their goal was to reclaim the recognition stripped from them.
In 1946, barely a year after the war's close, the U.S. government would repeal all the "rights, privileges, or benefits" given to Filipino soldiers like Ganio, essentially denying that they had been active in the U.S. military at all.
