This is an excerpt from Flyboys, A True Story Of Courage; James Bradley, 2003.
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As vice president under William McKinley, then as president in his own right, Teddy Roosevelt had relished the chance to bring Christian civilization to America's first major colonial possession in the Pacific, the Phillippines. "Not one competent witness who has actually known the facts believes the Filipinos capable of self-government at the present," Roosevelt said. He found it unthinkable to "abandon the Phillippines to their own tribes." To him, the Filipino freedom fighters were "a syndicate of Chinese half-breeds," and to grant them self-government "would be like granting self-government to an Apache reservation under some local chief."
Christian intellectuals saw nothing wrong with "helping" Filipinos by denying them freedom. The Literary Digest polled 192 editors of Christian publications and found only three who recommended independence for the Phillippines. "Has it ever occured to you that Jesus was the most imperial of the imperialists?" asked the Missionary Record.
Just three decades before Enomoto-san (Emperor of Japan) was taught that the Chinese were beasts, American veterans of the Indian wars sailed off to the Phillippines. "We had been taught...that the Filipinos were savages no better than our Indians," an American officer said. When Senator Joseph Burton of Kansas defended the slaughter of Filipinos on the Senate floor as "entirely within the regulations of civilized warfare" by citing earlier massacres of Indians as a precedent, "no one even bothered to respond."
America would cause the deaths of more than 250,000 Filipinos - men, women, and children, from the beginning of the hostilities on February 4, 1899, to July 4, 1902, when president Roosevelt declared the Philippines "pacified." That is pretty serious killing. America fought WWII over a period of fifty-six months with approximately 400,000 casualties on all fronts. So Hitler and Tojo combined, with all their mechanized weaponry, killed about the same per month - 7,000, as the American "civilizers" did in the Philippines.
The Filipino uprising against their former Spanish masters had been a guerilla operation, a popular insurgency supported by the civilian population. The brutality of the Spanish response had been one of the American rationales for kicking Spain out in the first place. Now America replaced the oppressor and adopted the same methods - widespread torture, concentration camps, the killing of disarmed prisoners and helpless civilians - but with a ruthlessness that surpassed even that of the Spanish. The majority of Filipinos killed by the American soldiers were civilians. An army circular attempted to assuage any guilt by rationalizing that "it is an inevitable consequence of war that the innocent must generally suffer with the guilty," and since all natives were treacherous, it was impossible to recognize the "actively bad from only the passively so".
One American army captain wrote of "one of the prettiest little towns we have passed through" -- the people there "desire peace and are friendly to Los Americanos. When we came along this road, the natives that had remained stood along the side of the road, took off their hats, touched their foreheads with their hands. 'Buenos Dias, Senors'. The good American boys then proceeded to slaughter the residents and ransack the town.
Anthony Michea of the Third Artillery wrote, "We bombarded a place called Malabon, and then we went in and killed every native we met, including men, women, and children." Another soldier described the fun of killing innocent civlians: "This shooting human beings is a 'hot game', and beats rabbit hunting all to pieces. We charged them and such a slaughter you never saw. We killed them like rabbits; hundreds, yes thousands of them. Everyone was crazy."
"I want no prisoners," one American general ordered. "I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me." An officer asked for clarification, "to know the limit of age to respect." The general replied in writing to kill all of those above "ten years of age."
Corporal Richard O'Brien wrote home about "The Beast of La Nog,", a Captain Fred Mcdonald who ravished a village by that name. "O'Brien described how his company had gunned down civilians waving white flags because McDonald had ordered to 'take no prisoners'. Only a beautiful mestizo woman was spared to be repeatedly raped by McDonald and several officers and then turned over to the men for their pleasure."
Americans back home knew what was happening in the Philippines. Private Joseph Sladen wrote home about a helpless group of enemy fighters his company trapped in the middle of a stream: " 'From then on the fun was fast and furious,' as dead Filipinos piled up 'thicker than buffalo chips,' Sladen recorded. Several western lads informed their dads that 'picking off niggers in the water' was 'more fun than a turkey shoot.' " A soldier from Kingston, New York, wrote his parents a letter that was soon published nationally about the massacre of a thousand civilians in the town of Titatia: "I am probably growing hard-hearted, for I am in my glory when I can sight a gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger. Tell all my inquiring friends that I am doing everything I can for Old Glory and for America I love so well."
Killing Filipino POWs was official American policy, Commanders were told that whenever an American soldier was "murdered," the commander was to "by lot select a POW - preferably one from the village in which the assassination took place - and execute him." Officers set the example. "Colonel Funston not only ordered the regiment to take no prisoners, but he bragged to reporters that he had personally strung up thirty-five civilians suspected of being insurrectos. Major Edwin Glenn did not even deny the charge that he made forty-seven prisoners knell and 'repent of their sins' before ordering them bayoneted and clubbed to death."
For those unfortunates who made it alive into American hands, widespread torture was the rule. Hardvard-educated First Lieutenant Grover Flint later recalled for a Senate panel the routine torture of Filipino combatants and civilians - thirty here, forty there. Lieutenant Flint described the "water cure," the standard U.S. Army torture:
A man is thrown down on his back and three of four men sit or stand on his arms and legs and hold him down, and either a gun barrel or a rifle or a carbine barrel or a stick as big as a belaying pin, is simply thrust into his jaws and his jaws are thrust back, and, if possible, a wood log or stone to put under...his neck, so he can be held firmly. In the case of very old men I have seen their teeth fall out - I mean when it was done a little roughly. He is simply held down, and then water is poured into his face, down his throat and nose from a jar, and that is kept up until the man gives some sign of giving up or going unconscious, in which case he is allowed to breathe until he comes to. A man suffers tremendously...there is no doubt...his suffering must be that of a man who is drowning, but cannot drown.
President Theodore Roosevelt excused his army's atrocities in the Philippines and hailed "the bravery of American soldiers" who fought "for the triumph of civilization over the black chaos of savagery and barbarism." To Roosevelt, the extermination of hundreds of thousands of civilians and defenseless POWs in the Philippines represented "the most glorious war in the nation's history."
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As vice president under William McKinley, then as president in his own right, Teddy Roosevelt had relished the chance to bring Christian civilization to America's first major colonial possession in the Pacific, the Phillippines. "Not one competent witness who has actually known the facts believes the Filipinos capable of self-government at the present," Roosevelt said. He found it unthinkable to "abandon the Phillippines to their own tribes." To him, the Filipino freedom fighters were "a syndicate of Chinese half-breeds," and to grant them self-government "would be like granting self-government to an Apache reservation under some local chief."
Christian intellectuals saw nothing wrong with "helping" Filipinos by denying them freedom. The Literary Digest polled 192 editors of Christian publications and found only three who recommended independence for the Phillippines. "Has it ever occured to you that Jesus was the most imperial of the imperialists?" asked the Missionary Record.
Just three decades before Enomoto-san (Emperor of Japan) was taught that the Chinese were beasts, American veterans of the Indian wars sailed off to the Phillippines. "We had been taught...that the Filipinos were savages no better than our Indians," an American officer said. When Senator Joseph Burton of Kansas defended the slaughter of Filipinos on the Senate floor as "entirely within the regulations of civilized warfare" by citing earlier massacres of Indians as a precedent, "no one even bothered to respond."
America would cause the deaths of more than 250,000 Filipinos - men, women, and children, from the beginning of the hostilities on February 4, 1899, to July 4, 1902, when president Roosevelt declared the Philippines "pacified." That is pretty serious killing. America fought WWII over a period of fifty-six months with approximately 400,000 casualties on all fronts. So Hitler and Tojo combined, with all their mechanized weaponry, killed about the same per month - 7,000, as the American "civilizers" did in the Philippines.
The Filipino uprising against their former Spanish masters had been a guerilla operation, a popular insurgency supported by the civilian population. The brutality of the Spanish response had been one of the American rationales for kicking Spain out in the first place. Now America replaced the oppressor and adopted the same methods - widespread torture, concentration camps, the killing of disarmed prisoners and helpless civilians - but with a ruthlessness that surpassed even that of the Spanish. The majority of Filipinos killed by the American soldiers were civilians. An army circular attempted to assuage any guilt by rationalizing that "it is an inevitable consequence of war that the innocent must generally suffer with the guilty," and since all natives were treacherous, it was impossible to recognize the "actively bad from only the passively so".
One American army captain wrote of "one of the prettiest little towns we have passed through" -- the people there "desire peace and are friendly to Los Americanos. When we came along this road, the natives that had remained stood along the side of the road, took off their hats, touched their foreheads with their hands. 'Buenos Dias, Senors'. The good American boys then proceeded to slaughter the residents and ransack the town.
Anthony Michea of the Third Artillery wrote, "We bombarded a place called Malabon, and then we went in and killed every native we met, including men, women, and children." Another soldier described the fun of killing innocent civlians: "This shooting human beings is a 'hot game', and beats rabbit hunting all to pieces. We charged them and such a slaughter you never saw. We killed them like rabbits; hundreds, yes thousands of them. Everyone was crazy."
"I want no prisoners," one American general ordered. "I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me." An officer asked for clarification, "to know the limit of age to respect." The general replied in writing to kill all of those above "ten years of age."
Corporal Richard O'Brien wrote home about "The Beast of La Nog,", a Captain Fred Mcdonald who ravished a village by that name. "O'Brien described how his company had gunned down civilians waving white flags because McDonald had ordered to 'take no prisoners'. Only a beautiful mestizo woman was spared to be repeatedly raped by McDonald and several officers and then turned over to the men for their pleasure."
Americans back home knew what was happening in the Philippines. Private Joseph Sladen wrote home about a helpless group of enemy fighters his company trapped in the middle of a stream: " 'From then on the fun was fast and furious,' as dead Filipinos piled up 'thicker than buffalo chips,' Sladen recorded. Several western lads informed their dads that 'picking off niggers in the water' was 'more fun than a turkey shoot.' " A soldier from Kingston, New York, wrote his parents a letter that was soon published nationally about the massacre of a thousand civilians in the town of Titatia: "I am probably growing hard-hearted, for I am in my glory when I can sight a gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger. Tell all my inquiring friends that I am doing everything I can for Old Glory and for America I love so well."
Killing Filipino POWs was official American policy, Commanders were told that whenever an American soldier was "murdered," the commander was to "by lot select a POW - preferably one from the village in which the assassination took place - and execute him." Officers set the example. "Colonel Funston not only ordered the regiment to take no prisoners, but he bragged to reporters that he had personally strung up thirty-five civilians suspected of being insurrectos. Major Edwin Glenn did not even deny the charge that he made forty-seven prisoners knell and 'repent of their sins' before ordering them bayoneted and clubbed to death."
For those unfortunates who made it alive into American hands, widespread torture was the rule. Hardvard-educated First Lieutenant Grover Flint later recalled for a Senate panel the routine torture of Filipino combatants and civilians - thirty here, forty there. Lieutenant Flint described the "water cure," the standard U.S. Army torture:
A man is thrown down on his back and three of four men sit or stand on his arms and legs and hold him down, and either a gun barrel or a rifle or a carbine barrel or a stick as big as a belaying pin, is simply thrust into his jaws and his jaws are thrust back, and, if possible, a wood log or stone to put under...his neck, so he can be held firmly. In the case of very old men I have seen their teeth fall out - I mean when it was done a little roughly. He is simply held down, and then water is poured into his face, down his throat and nose from a jar, and that is kept up until the man gives some sign of giving up or going unconscious, in which case he is allowed to breathe until he comes to. A man suffers tremendously...there is no doubt...his suffering must be that of a man who is drowning, but cannot drown.
President Theodore Roosevelt excused his army's atrocities in the Philippines and hailed "the bravery of American soldiers" who fought "for the triumph of civilization over the black chaos of savagery and barbarism." To Roosevelt, the extermination of hundreds of thousands of civilians and defenseless POWs in the Philippines represented "the most glorious war in the nation's history."
