Challenging Narratives of the “Good War”: Filipino Perspectives of World War II

• In Event: (Re)membering the History of World War II from the Asian Theater

Abstract

The “good war” narrative promoted during the Cold War years memorializes US efforts during World War II as a fight to liberate the people of the Asian Pacific region from Japan’s barbaric militarism and racial backwardness (Yoneyama, 2003). As a former colony of the United States, the Philippines is often touted as a primary example of American benevolence in its broader project of democratization. Yet, this pervasive narrative overlooks Filipinos’ complex responses to Japanese and American colonial rule, both during and after World War II (Mateo, 2006).
This paper draws on decolonial frameworks and discourse analysis to examine primary and secondary sources and unearth previously overlooked perspectives that challenge the “good war” narrative through two case studies (Chen, 2021; Gee, 2024).
The first case analyzes how Filipino guerrilla fighters gave voice to peasants who were drawn to the Hukbalahap in response to both Japanese oppression and the American colonial government’s support of the Filipino landed elite. The Hukbalahap, a Filipino guerrilla force, drew on democratic socialist discourses to oppose Japanese occupation during World War II, but faced public backlash in the post-war era (Kerkvliet, 2002). The second case highlights Filipino soldiers who fought alongside U.S. troops with the promise of U.S. citizenship, whose rights and benefits were revoked in the ensuing years (King, 2024), and whose grassroots efforts culminated in restitution in 2009 (Raimondo, 2010).
These two cases underline the necessity of unearthing and (re)membering multiple histories of World War II from the Filipino perspectives to help students in U.S. K–12 schools understand how the colonized “became further displaced as a result of the political and economic disparities” that are rooted in the transnational memory of the war and the (im)possibility of decolonization in the post-war era. (Yoneyama, 2003, p. 60).

Author

• Theresa Alviar Martin, Kennesaw State University