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Inside, a man's voice told Garcia he knew what had happened to his mother and asked him to join the resistance movement. Garcia and his friend agreed without hesitation.
The blindfolds came off. The room was dark, lit only by a few candles stuck in bottles on the floor. Garcia could not see the faces of most of the men moving through the room in the darkness. But he recognized the man standing before him as Guillermo Casas, a guerrilla leader from his town.
The boys were inducted into M Company, 3rd Battalion, Hunters-ROTC guerrillas, one link in a network of underground organizations throughout the Philippines under the command of the U.S. Armed Forces in the Far East. They were returned to their homes that night.
Garcia was happy: This would be his chance to take revenge on the Japanese. He might even be given a gun. He told no one what had happened, not his parents, none of his six brothers and sisters.
For three months, Garcia gathered information for the guerrillas: the location, size, and strength of the Japanese forces; how the Japanese were treating Filipino citizens. But the Japanese began tightening security in the area, and the guerrilla leaders feared that if Garcia were discovered, he might reveal information about the guerrillas because he was young. Casas decided that for security reasons, the boy should be moved to the guerrilla camp in the Sierra Madre mountains.
They hiked to the camp in darkness, climbing only at night, staying in place during the day to avoid being found by Japanese patrols. Garcia joined dozens of other guerrillas who had been living among the snakes, monkeys, and alligators in the jungle for months.
Garcia learned to use a rifle, though the first time he fired it the recoil hurt his shoulder so badly he wanted to give the gun back. Before long, Garcia became accustomed to the weapon, and regular soldiers taught him how to fight in combat.
With every shot he fired on a Japanese soldier, the 12-year-old worked his revenge on the enemy. His old Springfield was a tinkertoy compared to the modern Japanese guns and cannons. But Garcia didn't care; any weapon was enough to equalize his odds against the Japanese.
Barefooted and bareheaded, the guerrillas hid in the jungle; each had an antiquated firearm and a precious ration of 10 or 15 bullets for the Japanese. When the enemy would come near, the guerrillas would start firing. Skirmishes would typically last only about an hour before the guerrillas would run out of ammunition and withdraw.
They did not stay long in one place, moving their camp once every few days to avoid being discovered by the enemy. They lived on whatever food they could find -- bananas, dried wild boar, rice sometimes, more often sweet potatoes.
The guerrillas knew nothing about each other. Some had escaped the Japanese prisoner of war camps. Most were Filipinos, though some were Americans who had stayed behind after Corregidor to lead the guerrillas. But up in the mountains, they were all brothers in the harassment of the Japanese.
Marcelino Garcia was a boy when he went into the mountains. In a few short weeks, he became a soldier. Then he fought the Japanese relentlessly until 1944, when MacArthur returned to Leyte and began the recapture of the Philippines.
Shame in Our State
After the war, Fernando Ayes was called back to service in the New Philippine Scouts, the army that was formed after the U.S. recaptured the Philippines, until 1949. He then became a logging foreman on Mindanao, and later returned to his hometown on Leyte. A truck accident in Guam, where Ayes served under the U.S. Occupation forces, left him blind in his left eye and unable to walk without the use of a cane.
Now he shares a one-bedroom apartment on Mission Street with an elderly Filipino couple. Like many Filipino veterans, he relies on $750 a month in government assistance to make ends meet.
Marcelino Garcia finished high school while continuing to help with his father's fishing on weekends and holidays. He went to college for two years and studied radio engineering, but then had to quit because he needed to work to support his family. He took an assembly line job at an electronics factory in Manila, where he worked until he retired in 1991. He came to the United States that year, and he and his wife now live with their daughter in Daly City. They are supported by their five children.
Concepcion Figueras became a clerk for the Philippine army in Manila. When her father took ill a few years after the war ended, she returned to her hometown, Cordon. She took a clerical job for the municipal government, and later helped her sisters manage their farms when they immigrated to the United States in the 1980s. She followed them in 1992.
For more than 40 years, she lived what she calls a life "with all the vices." She became a born-again Christian in 1987, finding Jesus during a four-day revival in Cordon. Now, she resides in a residential hotel in the Tenderloin, living on $700 a month in SSI.
After World War II, Leonardo Asuncion returned to farming in Gerona, in central Luzon, where he lived until he immigrated to the U.S. in 1994. He lives with his youngest daughter in Van Nuys, and relies on $650 a month in SSI to pay his rent and other expenses. His wife is still in the Philippines; he wants her to join him, but her petition for a visa was denied. He calls her every Friday.
Since June 14, he and 30 other veterans have been protesting at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles to raise support for the Filipino Veterans Equity Act, Rep. Filner's bill. Every other night for the past three weeks, Asuncion has been sleeping at the park with a dozen other vets. The youngest of the protesting veterans is well into his 60s.
