The Walk

I was invited by the Bataan Historical Society to be part of a panel asked to present our life experiences during WWII in the Philippines. I came to a realization that I always found it difficult to write about the war. From the time we were liberated in 1945 from the clutches of the Japanese Military, I would jot down notes about incidents I recalled. The thoughts in these notes were usually without beginnings or endings. Then I would get rid of them, not knowing why. They seemed important at the time.

When I was teaching Tagalog at Berkeley, I found myself rewriting those "beginnings" in the Tagalog language. I was surprised to find myself producing streams of thoughts that had coherent beginnings and endings. All of them were about the war. I realized that the Filipino side of me was the active speaker. I am half Anglo-American and half Filipina. What did the Filipina side have that made her able to speak? I have decided it is time to write about that of which I had not been aware.