KIDAPAWAN CITY (MindaNews / 29 November)—What happened in Kidapawan during the Second World War?
A year ago, I was in the University of Tokyo for the Fifth Philippine Studies Conference in Japan (PSCJ) to answer just that.
With the financial and logistic support of the University of Tokyo, the Ateneo de Davao University, and generous private sponsors from Kidapawan, I was able to present before an audience of Japanese and Filipino researchers the narratives I gathered about the town’s experiences in the years leading up to, during, and after Japanese occupation.
Kidapawan having very poor archival records, almost all the details of Kidapawan’s World War Two experiences have been transmitted down orally. I spent the better part of two years talking to survivors of the War, piecing together accounts with the very little that has been recorded to form a coherent picture.
The results of my research were published as an article in The Silliman Journal, “Persons of a Common Destiny Become Brothers: Documenting Narratives of the Second World War in Kidapawan.”
My participation in the PSCJ was an opportunity to give an overview of the paper. But it was also a poignant, full circle moment for Kidapawan history, as it brought the memories of many personalities and events during the War (including casualties) to the land of the war’s aggressors.
Among the personalities I mentioned was the late Judge Eliseo Dayao Sr., perhaps the most prominent casualty of the War in Kidapawan.
A Justice of the Peace assigned in the area during the Commonwealth period, Dayao had settled in Kidapawan from Bulacan with his large family. When the War broke out, he agreed to cooperate with the local Japanese authorities, but he was in fact giving assistance to some of the many emerging guerrilla outfits. The Japanese discovered this, and in order to send a message, they ambushed him on 19 November 1942 when he was on his way home. He was never seen again, and his family speculates his remains had been buried somewhere in what is today Barangay Mua-an.
I did not only mention locals, as one of the most important figures whose memory I was able to recover from near oblivion was that of Captain Hayao Nakamura, the last official to command Japanese soldiers in Kidapawan. From what I could gather, Capt. Nakamura ended up marrying a local, Rosalina Madrid, and this marriage played a direct part in ensuring the Japanese treated the people of Kidapawan humanely during the latter portion of the War.
Tragically, Nakamura had to leave behind Madrid and their unborn daughter as the War came to an end, and he was killed in action. Like Dayao his remains were never found, and like Dayao (whose sole surviving witness is his youngest daughter, Elma), only one surviving person was alive who had met him in person, Madrid’s nephew Bonifacio Madrid (who died a few months after I interviewed him).
Aside from the casualties, I also mentioned survivors. Most inspiring among them was Datu Patadon Tungao, from whose surviving letter I took the paper’s title.
Born in Dulawan to a scion of the Maguindanao and Buayan royal houses, Datu Patadon had been planted by the Americans among the Japanese collaborators to serve as spy. The Japanese discovered his espionage, and he was subjected to severe torture. He was about to be executed in Manila when the War ended, and he made his way from Manila back to Kidapawan, where he would be one of the founders of the municipality. A barangay in Kidapawan today is named after this war hero, where his descendants continue to live.
Several other interesting stories of escape and survival were also shared. There was the miraculous survival of a young Juan Sibug, who had been kidnapped by the Japanese and taken to Davao del Sur, where he was rescued by an indigenous person and taken back to his parents (his family speculates he may have been the youngest prisoner of war during the Second World War).
There was the escape of Lorenzo Saniel, who was about to be executed by Japanese soldiers when he managed to run away from them while they were distracted. And then there was Kidapawan’s only known Bataan Death March Survivor, Dr. Gil Gadi, a medic forced into the march but who managed to get himself out of it by pretending to be an altar boy in one of the churches the march passed by. Sibug, Saniel, and Gadi would survive the War and go on to be Kidapawan mayors.
Perhaps most fascinating to share during the conference was Kidapawan’s indigenous resistance, with a piece of culinary cunning. The Kollut Poisonings, which according to Monuvu history took place in several locations, involved the Monuvu deliberately mixing the root crops they carried with Kollut (Dioscorea hispida), which if not subjected to a complex process of detoxification, is lethal when eaten. The Japanese soldiers unwittingly stole these poisonous wild yams from the Monuvu and poisoned themselves.
More details of these personalities and incidents are in “Persons of a Common Destiny Become Brothers.” What I was not able to include (because information only emerged after I came back from Tokyo) was the valour of Datu Kawata Bayawan, who was forced by Japanese soldiers to act as guide up the Marbol River but who ended up killing several of them, some with his bare hands. Fascinatingly enough, Datu Kawata paid tribute to one of the Japanese soldiers he had killed, naming one of his sons “Miskitela,” ostensibly after this soldier.
The Second World War happened almost a century ago, and in a city like Kidapawan with a very poor collective memory it becomes all the more imperative to continue remembering these stories before they and the insights we can draw from them are lost.
I ended my talk in Tokyo with a note on how the War shaped us all, and it became a prompt for us to recognize the humanity we all share across cultures and national and political borders. We have all been made human by the War.
(Mindaviews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Karlo Antonio G. David has been writing the history of Kidapawan City for the past thirteen years. He has documented seven previously unrecorded civilian massacres, the lives of many local historical figures, and the details of dozens of forgotten historical incidents in Kidapawan. He was invested by the Obo Monuvu of Kidapawan as “Datu Pontivug,” with the Gaa (traditional epithet) of “Piyak nod Pobpohangon nod Kotuwig don od Ukaa” (Hatchling with a large Cockscomb, Already Gifted at Crowing). The Don Carlos Palanca and Nick Joaquin Literary Awardee has seen print in Mindanao, Cebu, Dumaguete, Manila, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore, and Tokyo. His first collection of short stories, “Proclivities: Stories from Kidapawan,” came out in 2022.)
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On this section of Moppiyon Kahi diid Patoy, we remember important dates and incidents that took place in Kidapawan history.
23 November 2009 – Atty. Concepcion Jayme Brizuela, whose family is from the Greater Kidapawan Area (President Roxas), was among the casualties of the Maguindanao Massacre.
25 November 1987 – The Fatima Junction Encounter, which saw armed fighting between NPA and military. Three members of the Integrated Civil Home Defense Forces (ICHDF) and one policeman were killed, while seven houses were burned.
28 November 1987 – Francisco Semilla of M’lang (another part of the Greater Kidapawan Area) was murdered by elements of the violent Tadtad militia, part of the wave of state sponsored church persecutions in the Kidapawan diocese in the 1980s.