History is replete with claims that people who worked with the Japanese during the war were labelled ‘collaborators.’ On top of the list was Jose P. Laurel, the wartime president.
Locally, several prominent political figures, according to published historical accounts, were dragged into the same malicious imputation which their families have consistently denied. The names include former governor Gregorio V. Cañeda (father of city councilor Pilar Braga), city engineer and mayor Alfredo Oboza, and governor, mayor and assemblyman Juan Sarenas.
But there are two sides to being considered a collaborator, and the dictionary is clear about this. A collaborator is defined as “a person who works jointly on an activity or project; an associate” or “a person who cooperates traitorously with an enemy; a defector.”
Collaboration, in the context of Davao experience, is an interesting development firstly because the individuals accused of conniving with the Japanese, later the enemy, were either public officials or private persons who were hired to defend in court Japanese cases.
At the height of abaca boom and until the creation of the Commonwealth, there were numerous land conflicts involving the Japanese in Davao, especially the issue of ownership that really made it to the courts. For obvious reason, lawyers were tapped to argue for their clients.
Public understanding of people who accepted position in the puppet Japanese-conceived local government was not encouraging. They were called traitors because they allowed themselves to be appointed by an administration that would later execute innocent civilians. But under threat, they did not have any other option.
The collaborators association with the Japanese started as a matter of friendship and this develop into professional relationship. In the first place, who would have known that the professional engagements would deteriorate into a forced partnership?
According to family lore and existing piece of documents made available, Cañeda worked as double-agent for the Philippine government given his inside track with Japanese clients. This development provided him the chance to negotiate the release of many Davaoeños who were ultimately spared the brutal death by firing squad or fixed bayonet.
Unlike Cañeda, Sarenas and Oboza accepted positions in Japanese-controlled government. The former became a legislator in the National Assembly while the latter was installed as wartime city mayor, replacing Pantaleon Pelayo, Sr. who served as acting governor in exile.
Despite the stigma that comes with the ‘collaborator’, it is interesting to note that the list of ‘Filipino collaborators with Imperial Japan’ online includes key persons in history, namely presidents, chief justices of the supreme court, lawmakers (senators and congressmen), Cabinet secretaries, and well-known government officials.
Jonathan Black, in a 2010 senior thesis presented to Claremont Mckenna College (California, USA), titled ‘Jose P. Laurel and Jorge B. Vargas: Issues of Collaboration and Loyalty during the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines,’ came out with a strong argument on war-time collaboration.
“This [issue of collaboration] is argumentative for the fact that people who do not have full knowledge of what was going on during these times are besmirching the very nature of Filipinos that were in charge during that time.
“Even more so, besmirching the head representatives of their country as ‘traitorous’ or as a ‘betrayer’ was going a step further than was necessary. The Filipinos themselves should be cleared of this fiction since what Vargas and Laurel intended to do was for the country and not for the Japanese. When the Japanese came in 1941, collaboration with them would not have been so universally stigmatized had they treated Filipinos kindly.
“But by April 1942, only four months into the Occupation, the horrors of the Bataan Death March had already afflicted the national consciousness. The Filipinos who collaborated with them were marked. Some were assassinated by the guerrillas.
“But, on the whole, many survived not just the stigma; they were appreciated, some were regarded as heroes, and many of them prospered. The election of Jose P. Laurel, the puppet president of the Japanese, to the Senate and of other collaborators and the amnesty granted them by President Quirino shortly after the country gained independence from the United States in 1946 resolved politically the collaboration issue.
“As a moral problem, however, it confuses the mind to this very day. Collaboration gnawed at the very heart of a nation; it was the ultimate treason because it sought justification not so much in its defense of survival, but because it was committed in the name of that nation itself. It also brings into question the idea of loyalty to one’s nation and those who would support that nation.
“One of the main reasons [why] Laurel and Vargas were tagged as traitors and collaborators was because they were seen as not being loyal to the people of the Philippines and the United States.” (Paragraphing mine.)
