Japanese Occupation Of The Philippines

Adalia Marquez was a police reporter living in Manila under the Japanese Occupation during World War 2 when her husband was arrested by the Japanese Military Police for aiding the resistance. Following his escape, suspicion falls upon Adalia and she is detained in his place, along with her two children, and imprisoned in Fort Santiago. Facing torture and starvation, Adalia contacts the Filipino underground and agrees to help them from inside the prison in return for much-needed food and medicine. With a talent for manipulating her captors, Adalia is able to evade detection long enough to provide for herself and her children, as well as other detainees in urgent need of sustenance, until the deliverance of V-J Day.

Although much has been written on the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, one aspect of that period has remained uncovered: the Japanese point of view. This book, written by Japanese scholars and a Filipino, attempts to provide that point of view, presenting new perspectives of the Occupation based on Japanese and other hitherto unused primary sources.

Adalia Marquez was a police reporter living in Manila under the Japanese Occupation during World War 2 when her husband was arrested by the Japanese Military Police for aiding the resistance. Following his escape, suspicion falls upon Adalia and she is detained in his place, along with her two children, and imprisoned in Fort Santiago. Facing torture and starvation, Adalia contacts the Filipino underground and agrees to help them from inside the prison in return for much-needed food and medicine. With a talent for manipulating her captors, Adalia is able to evade detection long enough to provide for herself and her children, as well as other detainees in urgent need of sustenance, until the deliverance of V-J Day.

Among the extremely limited English language literature on the Chinese resistance movement in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation, this book is unique in making use of documents from the United States National Archives, supplemented by memorials and articles recently published in China and the Philippines. While the reliability of these original sources is questionable, the difficulty of interpreting these sources was dealt with openly and effort was made to compare contradictory accounts objectively. Meanwhile, the characteristics of the Chinese resistance movement were summarized in its historical social context, and the long-term effect of the resistance movement on the Chinese community in the Philippines was addressed. The book thus fills an important gap in Philippine historiography on the Second World War and in the understanding of the Philippine Chinese community and the effect of Japanese occupation upon it.