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My TIMES, My TRAVELS
* * * * * * by Ray V. Reyes
. . . . . Traveling began at a very early age for me -- along with thousands of other children of nomads like my parents -- including the many times my father and mother and I moved from house to house, at least a half-dozen times that I remember before I turned 12. Now, this was in the days before there were any such thing as U-Haul. I'm not even sure there is a U-Haul Co. in the Philippines.
From a little house in a Manila suburb to another, then to Caloocan -- in the U. S. Commonwealth of the Philippines-- where both parents were born in different years. Then to my Grandmother [Rosario] Chayong's house by the Manila Railroad Central Station. She was widowed early by the death, at age 60, of my grandfather, Modesto R. Reyes, who was fiscal officer of Manila in the '20's. I vaguely remember riding my tricycle around his coffin as he lay in state at home, when I was about three. I have little recollection of him alive.
During the World War II years, we lived with my maternal grandparents' home in Caloocan, along with three uncles, four aunts and several maids and servants who were called "helpers", "katulong"] in the Tagalog language which we spoke at home. My father, however, spoke to me consistently in [American] English, at one point mentioning that someday I would go to America, a bewildering and incredible prospect to me. I knew nothing about this so-called America at the time.
Any opportunity I had to bond with my father was taken away when Dad was murdered by a fellow-townsman who had grown up with him and would pass by our little house and request, through our open window, a tune for my Dad to play on the piano. I was so shocked at how my father died just like that, in Manila General Hospital, that I could not shed one tear for him. He appeared in a dream wearing the same light sport jacket and salmon-colored shirt he had just purchased within that same month, and a relative told me that he was thereby asking for prayers. I have never stopped praying for my dad. The murderer was caught and killed by the Manila Police Department -- not by the occupation Japanese Imperial Armed Forces.
Our little family evacuated to different regions of the island of Luzon, several little towns of which I have but a vague recollection. There are more than 7,000 islands in the Philippine Archipelago, most of them so small that there is no electricity or running water. But that's the South Pacific-- as represented in countless travel magazine advertisements. Most of our traveling was on the main island of Luzon, on which the capital, Manila, was located.
These "evacuations" notwithstanding, there were occasions when I really experienced the traveling life in a very genuine sense. The word "genuine" took on a sense of importance during the war years because of all the ersatz food and merchandise being sold on the street corners by jobless people who had to make a living, one of them my own father who bought and sold cigarette lots and nichrome wire and other items just so we could have food on the table.
From the base of my grandfather's home in Caloocan, a town of 9,000 population, it had grown to over a half million by the 2000's, to the house of my paternal grandmother in Manila, I was the eldest of the cousins who regarded me as their older brother. In Caloocan, I lived with my cousins, three of my mother's brothers and three of her sisters. With my grandmother's family in Manila were three of my Dad's sisters and one brother.
I couldn't help wishing that I had my own siblings. In fact, during the war, when there were no medical advances like incubators for premature babies, my mother had another son, my brother Augusto, who lived no more than two months, and a daughter, my sister, Melinda, who lived little more than one week. I wanted to have my sister and brother alive to play with and to take my side in disputes with my cousins.
I really envied my cousins who lived with their own siblings. I kept hoping that my mother would have some more children, but they might have been born prematurely also and not survived the war. I later learned that my mother had had several miscarriages before and after I had been born. She remained slim all her life, never showing any pregnancy.
The last residence we had in the Philippines was in another part of Manila, with my Uncle Tony. He was the youngest of the three males and three females on my father's side. That was the main departure point, in Santa Mesa, Manila, where a gushing fountain was the center of a turnabout filled with autos day and night in post-War Manila. I was older than my cousins, five girls and two boys, several now living in California, in the United States.
In 1946, I said goodbye to San Beda College Preparatory where one of my classmates was Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino, who in 1980 was assassinated for his opposition to the tyranny of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. While we were in the same class, the boy Aquino was constantly asking questions of the teaching Franciscan brothers and mouthing off in class like the true politician that he almost became.
My widowed mother, journalist Ligaya Victorio Reyes Fruto, was writing for the Philippines Free Press in 1946. Before the war she had worked for the Manila Tribune where my Dad had been a commercial artist, doing page layouts and designing department store window displays. My Mom's editor at the Free Press, Mr. Modesto Farolan, was appointed by the first president elected in the postwar country, Manuel Roxas, to be the first consul-general the nation ever had, in Hawaii. There were many Filipinos who had gone to work as laborers in the pineapple and sugar cane fields of Hawaii in the 1930's. For years, until the Consulate-General was established, there was no official connection these former laborers had with their homeland. Mr. Farolan appointed my mother the consulate social secretary and, thus, we were sent away from the Philippines to live and work in Hawaii.
We left Manila in mid-December 1946, flying aboard a Philippine
Air Lines Lockheed DC-6 propeller airliner. First stop was Kwajalein Atoll of which I had heard so much during the War as a bloody battleground for the victorious GI's of the United States and Allies. We could not take a tour of the, at that time, "fresh" relics of the War's devastation like sunken warships and torpedo boats, now-rusting big guns and other artillery, wrecked trucks and other vehicles. These have all been pictured in news magazines like LIFE and Colliers and LOOK.
Then we landed on Guam which looked so much larger, even though it was also an island in the Pacific Ocean like Kwajalein. The plane again took off after refueling. The passengers "refueled" as well. We eventually landed at Honolulu Airport after we had flown over the International Dateline. A day and a half of flying was my first legitimate travel experience. Not that all the others were illegitimate ones. Past traveling was not that lengthy.
We were met at Honolulu Airport by several news reporters and photographers who interviewed the newly-arrived consular staff before
we were whisked away by taxi to the Niumalu Hotel, not too far from where the Farolan family was staying, the Halekulani Hotel, both close
to the beach at Waikiki. The hotels had been recently remodeled, I recall that we were told. Later, we moved in with certain other Filipino families while the Philippine Consulate-General began officially to take shape on Nuuanu Blvd. in the city of Honolulu.
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Me and World War II
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