Lessons from OZ - 9/11, Corregidor, Bataan, the Spanish American War

Perspectives of Oz

A masterful twist in storytelling the musical Wicked demonstrates the power of perspective as they tell the story of Dorothy's journey to Oz from the perspective of Glenda the Good Witch who revealed the goodness of the Wicked Witch of the West.  The twist sent me reeling through historic images representing multiple stories told, lectured, memorized, assessed - from the perspective I was taught which was the perspective in the textbook or at least the perspectives I can find on the Internet.

Corregidor

I knew MacArthur and his famous promise to return, but I didn't get the battle.  I didn't get the pounding it out in muggy heat on a small island infested with enemies.  I didn't get the danger of manning ginormous outdated guns designed for warships and the bravery of privates, sergeants, corporals and colonels who died beneath those guns fighting, protecting each other until their very last breath.  I didn't get the ominous fear of looking at Bataan every single day where 78,000 comrades were captured and marching to their death.  I didn't get the heroic in being overtaken by tortuous cruel enemies in 157 days instead of in the 50 days the enemy had planned.    I didn't get the pride in surrendering to hell ships knowing that the 157 day fight on your little island kept Australia and Hawaii from invasion, and knowing your upcoming boat ride would lead to starvation, disease, and most likely death. I didn't get it until I read the plaques honoring heroes of every rank as if they were of equal rank and stood beneath batteries named after the simple and elite heroes who last fired them.  I didn't get it until I walked through the monuments representing the dog tags that littered the island when the Japanese were finally defeated.  I didn't understand the Pacific side of this war.

The Twist

So what's the lesson from Oz from Corregidor?  There's the Western Hemisphere twist where I learned about Hitler and the Holocaust (which are very valuable) in school.  I am not certain if the Pacific stories weren't covered or I just wasn't interested.  Whichever it was, I had a sense of shame reading of American heroes who were known and honored by foreigners but not by me.  My grandfather had fought in the Pacific.  He wouldn't speak of it.  Others tell me that their grandfathers wouldn't speak of it either.  Did their inability to speak of those atrocities keep them from my history class?  The loudest story gets remembered.

Then of course, there is the Japanese twist.  The "Wicked Witch of the East" in our war story.  They don't see themselves as wicked.  Just like Alexander the Great saw himself as the great liberator setting nation after nation free from the control of the Persians, General Tojo saw Japan as a freeing force liberating the Asian world from Western Imperialism.  His little island lacked resources to survive in the 20th century market place.  By conquering Allied colonies in Asia while those Western powers were busy with Hitler, he would save Asian from the West and obtain valuable resources for his fledgling nation.  They weren't destroyers.  They were saviors.  Conquering Western colonies in Asia would also protect the world from the rising Chinese.

The Japanese visit Corregidor.  Interestingly they take a different bus tour than Filipinos and Americans.  It is presented in Japanese by Japanese tour guides.  The Filipino tour guide, once asked a Japanese tourist what they spoke about on their  tour.  The tourist replied, "Hiroshima and Nagasaki."  The colonizing Americans are the evil force in the Japanese version of the story.  Perspective. We will have come a long way when both tours contain both stories.

Evil Colonizers

"The Spanish gave us religion and the Americans gave us education."   Filipinos are the most flexible thinking people I have every met.  Their positive outlook and ability to see stories from multiple perspectives is a testament to their respect for the diversity that defines the Philippines.  They appear to be very grateful for their past, even the "evil colonizers."  That is one aspect of the Corregidor story that the Japanese got wrong.  The Filipinos were quite happy to fight alongside the Americans who were defending Filipino and American independence.  They appreciated the American presence.  

When the Spanish came to the Philippines, it was not a nation.  It contained multitudes of islands and disconnected tribes.  The Spanish developed plantations that Filipinos worked.  They brought priests who united Filipinos under one religion, but the Filipinos were not allowed to learn Spanish.  They were somewhat enslaved by the Spanish who ruled them through Mexico for three centuries.  The island of Bacolod stands as a testament to that colonization with remnants of grand mansion homes smattered about the island and remnants of plantations owned by wealthy landlords with poor tenant farmers scraping out a living from the soil.  The Spanish burned the mansions to keep them from the encroaching Japanese, so only shells remain.

So the twist in the imperialism story is in the GI Joe.  That's what Filipinos call white people, those they believe to be American.  In 1987 I didn't investigate the nickname much.  I just hung my head each time in the shame of knowing that we had occupied and controlled another nation that we had bought from a powerful abusive empire.  This time I asked.  Turns out it is a term of endearment.  It's not a slam.  There are those among the Filipino who are anti-western in the fact that they want their people to shake the colonized part of their culture.  They want Filipinos to be strong and independent.  They protest US military activity in their area and want the Filipino military to stand on its own, but they don't hate Americans or call us derogatory names.  "Joe" is a kind-hearted knick name for a gentle overseer that Filipinos fought and died with for the sake of obtaining freedom.

Marcos

In 1987 I heard about a rebellion that ousted a miserable dictator.  I heard about a first lady with multitudes of shoes and a mansion overlooking horrific Philippine slums.  I "knew" that Filipinos hated these leaders and celebrated the new era of freedom, but I was wrong.  One of our host teacher spoke lovingly of Imelda Marcos who came from his island.  He told me everything that Marcos had done to push the Philippines forward economically.  I held my opinions to myself and listened to Filipinos speak of Marcos.  Most did not seem to hate him as we did.  Corruption is integral to Filipino culture, Maybe from having to bribe occupiers and live as colonists for so long.  He was not the Wicked Witch of East to all Filipinos.

So the Wizard of Oz told from the Wicked perspective highlights the twists in story lines throughout history as the history is seen from a variety of perspectives.  A unifying theme in each story though is the call for freedom from every direction.  We can even hear echos of cries to be themselves, to be free, to be human, to control their own resources, to be respected in their differences, to be able to pursue a higher quality of life from the hijackers of 9/11 who left such civilian destruction in their wake.  We all want to be free and fight the oppression we perceive even as those who fight us perceive us to be oppressive.  The rallying call of so many stories throughout history is freedom.  Maybe we will find it if we refrain from labeling those who oppose us as witches and begin to care for their freedom as well as our own.