When the Elephants Dance

I
WOULD LIKE TO THANK:

My
lola
, Pelicula Fulgencio, and my parents, Salvador and Gloria Uriza, for filling my life with their love of stories. My best friend and husband, Jason Holthe, for his tough criticism and never-ending encouragement. The Uriza, Holthe, and Sirate families for their love and raucous laughter. My nephews and nieces: Paul and Bernadette Sirate, Anthony Mandap, and Gene, Sarina, Roman, Karl, and Chelsea Uriza for keeping me smiling. Nellie and Earl for keeping me on my toes.

My wonderful and wise agent and friend, Mary Ann Naples. Thank you for believing in this book and sending it down that yellow brick road. My editor, the talented Kristin Kiser, for helping me to give Domingo a heart and leading me through Oz. The Maui Writers Conference for allowing me to meet these two exceptional women in paradise. To everyone at Crown, Chip Gibson, Steve Ross, Andrew Martin, Katherine Beitner, Claudia Gabel, Lauren Dong, Jennifer O’Connor, Trisha Howell, Leta Evanthes, and the entire group, thank you for welcoming me into your family and embracing this book. The Book Passage of Corte Madera, for providing me with good coffee, great books, fine authors to meet, and a safe place to dream.

Robert Lapham, author of
Lapham’s Raiders
, University Press of Kentucky, where I found and was inspired by the quote “When the elephants dance it is unsafe for the chickens.” My dear friends and fellow writers Ellie Wood, John Fetto, Katrina Davidson, Desda Zuckerman, and Julie Tayco. Your friendship has been a blessing. Linda Watanabe McFerrin for your exercise A Myth in the Family. Christine Hom for encouraging me to “keep reaching.” Fellow writer Don Christians of KWMR 90.5 West Marin for trusting your radio program with my stories. The following friends who did not change the subject when I told them I was writing a book: Kristi Taylor, Rosalva Depillo, Paula Kravitz, Michelle Marks, Claudia Ruggles, Susan Cubinar, and Paul and Sandy Schaumleffel. God, for always lighting my way.

E
VER SINCE
I
CAN REMEMBER
, my father and
lola
(grandmother), who were both Filipino, entertained my family with tales of the supernatural, stories of ghosts and witches, always told with delicious darkness and magic. My brothers and sisters and I would sit, riveted, holding our breath. Their storytelling would cast a spell on me each time. I relished every word.

In addition to these tales, they spoke of their firsthand experiences during the Japanese invasion of their homeland, the Philippines, during World War II. These stories were told with the grave respect and pride that comes only from having survived such a tremendous experience. It is not surprising that many years later I have written a novel that interweaves both the devastation of the war and the kind of mythological tales I was told.

Both of my parents and their families experienced so much during the war. My mother Gloria was only eight years old. Though her family was further out in the Visayan countryside and not near the heavy fighting, they were not immune to the war. Her father, my
lolo
(grandfather), was serving in the United States Navy on the
U.S. Blackhawk
in the nearby Mariana Islands. His ship was sunk by Japanese aircraft during the Battle of Midway. He survived by holding onto pieces of the ship.

My father was thirteen years old when he and a group of other civilians were caught by the Japanese while chopping wood in an undesignated area, near the American army base in Luzon, Philippines, known as Fort McKinley. Their group was led into one of the nearby buildings and tortured. The opening scene of my novel is fictional, but based on his experience. My father’s family lived in Paco near the center of the American-Japanese battle for Manila. He remembers running for shelter carrying one of his sisters on his back as explosion after explosion ripped by them. “I shall never forget that time,” he used to say to us. Thirty-four years later, neither have I.

Researching this time period for the backdrop of my novel was like opening a treasure trove of memories. The images and voices of the people in the accounts and personal interviews that I have read paralleled many of the stories
I heard growing up. At times I felt like I was not alone in the room, that my
lolo
and
lola
were nearby, their spirits urging me on to write about our people. Growing up I longed to find the kind of fictional stories of the Philippines that I was told by my father and
lola
, but the shelves in the libraries held only travel guides. This book is my humble contribution to the empty shelf that I always longed to fill.

Many readers may wonder at the Spanish surnames given throughout my book. Few may know that the Philippine Islands were a Spanish colony for three hundred years. In fact, the archipelago of 7,107 islands was named after the Spanish king Philip II. In 1510 the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was granted an expedition by the Spanish king Charles V, and in 1521 he “discovered” the Philippine Islands, though in fact Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and Arab traders had been visiting and trading with the islands long before Magellan arrived.

Following is a brief historical note on the Philippine struggle for independence:

In February 1898, the U.S. Congress declared war against Spain. In the ensuing battle the United States defeated Spain. Spain then ceded the Philippines, after three hundred years of Spanish rule, to the United States under the Treaty of Paris.

Public schools were opened with American, Spanish, and Filipino teachers. The Spanish language was kept as a means of communication, but the Spanish legal system was exchanged for the American system. American troops were then installed on the islands and a military government was established by the United States. But the Filipinos had had enough—they wanted to rule themselves. What followed from 1899 to 1902 was the Philippine-American War for Philippine Independence. The war ended with the defeat of the Philippines, but the nationalist movement continued to receive popular support.

Before the Philippines could gain independence from the United States, World War II broke out in the Pacific theater. Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan on December 7, 1941. The following morning the Philippines were bombed by Japanese warplanes. The Allied troops, led by General Douglas MacArthur, a resident of the islands and military advisor to the Philippines, retreated to the Bataan Peninsula and the fortified island of Corregidor. Before his departure, MacArthur declared Manila an open city to spare it from Japanese bombings. The Japanese did not respect this edict and continued to bomb the city.

What followed for 70,000 American and Filipino troops was the horrible Bataan Death March. The troops, brutally treated by the Japanese, were forced
to march from the Bataan Peninsula to Camp O’Donnell in Tarlac where they were interned in P.O.W. camps. The Japanese continued to bomb the islands. Ill-prepared for such an attack, General Jonathan Wainwright, MacArthur’s successor, surrendered Corregidor on May 6, 1942. General Douglas MacArthur had retreated to Australia, where he would later help to organize a guerrilla island force in the Philippines via radio communications. The Philippine people were left to fend for themselves against the Japanese Imperial Army. The Japanese came under the guise of “Asia for the Asians” and with propaganda for stamping out Western imperialism. American schoolbooks were destroyed and schools later shut down. Any American troops and their families who had been left behind were interned as prisoners of war.

Houses were commandeered by the Imperial Army. Food became dangerously scarce and the civilians starved. The barter system came into play as people foraged for food to save their families. Families hid in cellars to avoid any suspicion of being guerrilla fighters and later to survive the battles and the bombings. For the next three years both Filipino and American guerrilla groups would start to form in the jungles, in the Zambales Mountains, and on the islands of Luzon and Mindanao, waiting for General Douglas MacArthur to keep his famous promise, “I shall return.” In October 1944 MacArthur did return and battled through to Manila with four Allied divisions. Finally, in 1945 the Japanese commanding officer general Tomoyuki Yamashita surrendered the Philippines to MacArthur.

~
P
APA EXPLAINS THE WAR LIKE THIS
:
“When the elephants dance, the chickens must be careful.” The great beasts, as they circle one another, shaking the trees and trumpeting loudly, are the Amerikanos and the Japanese as they fight. And our Philippine Islands? We are the small chickens. I think of baby chicks I can hold in the palm of my hand, flapping wings that are not yet grown, and I am frightened.