“Bayang magiliw perlas ng silanganan, alab ng puso, sa dibdib mong bughaw…”
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My mind was traveling back and forth with lightning speed from the present to historical events almost 60 years ago as we sang the national anthem inside the darkened tunnel. As pictures of past and present events flashed in my mind, a cold chill surged through me.
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“Aming ligaya na ‘pag may mang-aapi ang mamatay ng dahil sa iyo.”
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There was a moment of silence after the last note, then noise suddenly erupted when the other end of the tunnel was finally opened and the kids started running out of the tunnel. I looked around for my friends Salve and Celestine. When I spotted them behind the two girls on my right, I walked to them, noticing their subdued countenance. I knew they were as affected as I was.
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“That made me sad,” I told my friends as we slowly made our way out of the tunnel.
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“Yes. That saddened me too,” my friends replied in unison.
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We were at the Malinta Tunnel in Corregidor, and we had just watched a light show about the World War II. We almost did not watch it because we were already tired from the morning tour. It’s a good thing we eventually decided to see it, as it was already the last leg of our day tour.
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The show is about the Japanese invasion to the Philippines. It focused on how bravely the Filipino-American allies tried to defend the country but failed with the fall of Bataan and of Corregidor. Highlights of the show are images of the death march, the return of Mc Arthur to fulfill his promise, and the subsequent mass suicide of the Japanese soldiers from the very tunnel where we watched the show to avoid having to surrender, or worse, being captured.
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As the scenes were flashed from several stations inside the tunnel amidst a moving narration and sound effects, I could feel my heart thumping with mixed feelings, primarily, of pride and desperation.
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I was proud for and thankful of the thousands of men and women who fought and died during those dark times of our history. But I also couldn’t help feeling very sad toward the end of the show, especially during the singing of the national anthem, with the Philippine flag proudly waving over us.
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As we sang, images of the thousands of men who marched to their death six decades ago kept flashing in my mind and I couldn’t help thinking: “God, here are the men who died for the country so we could be free, so we would have all the things that were denied them. But what have we done? And what are we doing?”
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Then images of what’s happening in our country now replaced the decades-old images, and I became even sadder.
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Viewed from the perspective of what the country has become after all those deaths and sacrifices, that part of our history, and even the other parts when our forefathers fought the earlier colonizers, take a very bleak appearance. It’s like everything was for naught. The lessons, glaring though they were, and still are, seem to have been lost to us.
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We are slaves still, though no longer with concrete chains. We, as a nation, are still slaves to the evils of corruption, to the crab mentality that has plagued us, to the evils of the need for power.
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We are still at war, only this time, no longer with outside forces, but with our fellowmen — and may I add — within ourselves.
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Just like the Japanese soldiers of the later part of World War II had been, we too are inside a very dark tunnel, preparing for suicide. Except that our reasons are not as honorable as the Japanese soldiers’ had been. They committed suicide because it would be a loss of honor for them to be captured, and honor was all that mattered to them; and surrender was not a part of their vocabulary.
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Whereas we are pushing our motherland to commit suicide, with the thoughtless acts of our leaders and the apathy in most of us.
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So I sang the national anthem with a sad heart and moist eyes. And a silent prayer. I prayed that we may find our way through all these things that are plaguing our nation now. That somehow, we would be able to give our children and our children’s children something to be proud of.
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As my friends and I walked to the waiting bus, my mind traveled fast forward to fifty years from now. And I shuddered as I wondered: “How would our grandchildren remember us when they look back to this part of history our generation is weaving?”
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Will they remember us as the generation that toppled a corrupt president, only to replace him with someone who is equally corrupt — if not more — and a liar? I closed my eyes and made a wish, that we will somehow eventually get things right, and be remembered as the generation that stood up against the evils of corruption, and who steered the country to a brighter future.
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I know my wishes are almost impossible at present. Everywhere we look, there is desperation. But let us not allow these negative feelings we have and the bad things that are happening in our to country destroy us as individuals. For even if our problems as a nation have become a tangled web which now seems impossible to straighten, we can do something still, as individuals and as small groups.
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I still think there is a ray of hope somewhere in this dark tunnel we are all in right now. Let us just keep moving, and doing our part. Small things do add up, and make up for bigger things.
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[Photo Caption: A scene from the Malinta Tunnel Light Show]
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//Sherma E. Benosa; 18 March 2008; 1:25am
For someone who had always had everything he needed, even if he had to work hard for it, imagining how it is like to be poor in the real sense of the word would be very difficult. It requires one to experience getting on in an empty stomach to know how it’s like not to have a roof over one’s head, or to send your kids to sleep without supper. Seeing emptiness on the eyes of people whose only possession is ‘nothing’ would never be enough to comprehend the desperation and the self-pity that set in in them who subsist on almost nothing.
