Extra Credit: On a prisoner’s life in Japanese-occupied Manila

This is the Colonial Department's Extra Credit, a bonus show that provides some nugget-sized tidbits of Philippine colonial history. It's based on the most recent episode so if you haven't yet, check out Season 6, Episode 10, a guerrilla stormant. Then hop on back here for some extra credit. A month back, I got a message from a listener, Ais Pasqual, who asked if I could do an episode on the Hunter's ROTC guerrilla group. Well, it just so happened that, at that time, I had a copy of a book, written by one of the founding members of the Hunters, a man named Gustavo Inglés. His grandson, Mickey, is a friend, and also the author of the excellent Pinoy fantasy novel Alinam, and he gave me his grandfather's book one time last year. For the longest time though, I avoided reading it because I felt that it would be very heavy and very heartbreaking. And I was right, the autobiography of World War II guerrilla leader Gustavo Inglés spans 174 pages. Rather than dwelling on his heroics, Inglés devotes much of the book to the torture she endured under the heavy hand of the Japanese secret police. He wrote it all down in such excruciating detail that it was sometimes very hard to keep on reading. I chose to focus my last episode on his accounts of torture as a way to remind us of the immense sacrifice that our grandparents and great-grandparents had to pay to fight for our freedom. My grandfather was also a World War II veteran. As a regular soldier in the Yousafi, he was forced into line at the Bataan Death March and miraculously survived. Gustavo, meanwhile, took up arms in secret but suffered his own terrible ordeal when he was finally captured by the Japanese. We salute them both. Beyond this account of torture, Inglés also had much to say about his day-to-day routine inside these various jails, the airport studio building, Fort Santiago, old Beliebid prison and the new Beliebid prison. Here are three details of his life inside that I had to leave on the cutting room floor. 1. When he was first brought inside Fort Santiago, Gustavo Inglés spied a little landing with a faded sign that said, "This stairway leads down to the dungeon where Dr. Jose Rizal was imprisoned." It was also in Fort Santiago that Inglés probably got his first bath since he was caught. The Japanese soldiers made every prisoner's trip naked and lined them up in front of a pipe with an outlet about six feet above the ground. One by one, the prisoners would get to stand underneath the strong, cold running water for two to three minutes before the guards roughly shoved them away. 2. In an old Beliebid prison, Gustavo was often assigned to Benjo Duty. Benjo is a Japanese word for toilet and as you can imagine, Benjo Duty wasn't the most appealing job in the world. Prisoners peed and crapped inside pails and twice a day those on Benjo Duty had to pull the stinking, steaming pails out of the cells through a little compartment built into the wall. They would then line up the pails in front of a guard who would inspect the human waste to see if there was anything fishy. When the guard gave the go signal, the Benjo patrollers would throw the waste out through a sewage hole and then wash each chamber pot. A guard would look at each pail one final time to make sure no messages were being smuggled to the prisoners and then the Benjo boys would return the clean containers to their pails. 3. Gustavo celebrated his 22nd birthday inside new Beliebid prison. That day also happened to be the Emperor's birthday which meant that the prison would be open to visitors. On that morning, Inglis woke up early, put on a clean uniform and turned down breakfast because he knew that his parents would bring him something to eat. He hadn't seen them in 10 months and he was looking forward to their visit. But suddenly, the warden cancelled all visits for that day for no reason but he did allow relatives and prisoners to talk on either side of the jail's perimeter fence. He tears were wept that day and for many days after. And now I leave you with a snippet from my interview with Gustavo Inglis's son Eric who reflected on how his father felt about war when peace finally came. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to tell you about that. That war started by old men and they used the young men who knew nothing of anything to promote their empire. And that's it. Hope you learned something new today and check back next week for a new episode of the Colonial Department. We're sailing to the high seas for the next episode as we take a look at the deadly pirate raid against the richest treasure ships of the sea, the Manila Galleon.