*Originally published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer with the blogger's by-line
There is a nondescript tomb in the cemetery along the national highway in Barangay Lingsat in San Fernando City, La Union, Philippines. It pales in comparison with the other tombs with their garish paint and expensive marble lapida (tombstone).
Few in the city know that the nondescript tomb contains the remains of Jose Nisperos, a soldier.
In fact, Nisperos is a hero, the first Filipino to win the United States congressional medal of honor, the highest military award given by the American people.
Nisperos was a member of the 34th Company of the Philippine Scouts in the US Army that saw action in several skirmishes with Moro rebels in Mindanao.
In one of those fights, he showed extraordinary courage and bravery that earned him the respect of the Americans and eventually won for him the most coveted medal.
Basilan Battle
It was on Sept. 24, 1911, in Basilan, where Nisperos and the Americans had just landed and were closing in on the rebels who were actually Yakan tribesmen.
The bandit leader and his group were inside a cluster of huts and other armed rebels were hiding in the surrounding cogon grasses. Then they attacked the small band of lawmen.
Many of the Scouts, including Nisperos, were badly wounded. The Ilocano soldier's left arm was broken by a Yakan sword and was shot above the elbow. He was weakened by continuous bleeding.
But planting his wounded arm in the ground and using his other arm, he continued to fire back at the rebels until reinforcement arrived and the Yakans fled into the forested area in the interior.
Nisperos' gallant stand prevented what could have been a humiliating defeat for the Americans. Many of them would have died and their bodies would have been mutilated by the Yakans as was their practice in their time.
Twenty-one fully armed men participated in the battle. The dangerous mission was led by Navy Ensign Charles Hovey who was the lone casualty.
It took sometime for the Americans to recognize the extraordinary bravery of Nisperos.
On Feb. 3, 1913, a military parade in review was held in his honor at the Luneta Park. For his gallantry in action, Maj. Gen. Franklin Bell, then chief of the US Army in the Philippines, presented Nisperos the award.
It was a moment of glory for the Ilocano soldier. No other Filipino has been lionized by the Americans.
Nisperos' left arm was eventually amputated at the shoulder joint and with his other wounds, he was rendered unfit for military service and given a pension of $55 a month by the American government.
Nisperos enlisted in the Philippine Scouts as corporal and left it as a sergeant.
The wounds that Nisperos suffered in the Basilan battle and the amputated arm told on his health. In 1922, he died in his hometown of San Fernando. No records show he was given a hero's burial. He left behind his wife Potenciana and three young daughters.
Sad Postscript
With his death, everything would have been forgotten about him, including his heroic act. But there is a sad postscript concerning his heirs that cannot be written off.
Until now his three daughters, now in their late 70s, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are still wondering whether they (including his widow who failed in her lifetime to get any compensation despite the special US Congress Act to the effect) are still entitled to benefits and claims as surviving relatives of the hero.
The story started in 1952 when Dr. Gilbert Perez, then chief of the vocational educational division of the Bureau of Public Schools, came to La Union on an inspection tour of public schools.
Perez met Nisperos' widow and was informed of her plight. She told that since 1922, she and her daughters have been depending on relatives for support beside doing laundry and other odd jobs.
It would have been a different life had she succeeded in getting the money due her as a result of her husband's death.
A special act of the US Congress entitled her to receive a lifetime pension of $55, the same amount her husband was receiving when he was alive.
But the widow could not prove that her husband's death was a result of military service. Her claim was not approved. And when she lost the metal which she believed was necessary to support her claim, she lost heart to pursue the case.
"Actually, the medal was taken sometime in 1922 by a certain Dr. Jose Bantug, a former professor from Manila and former director of what was then Philippine Museum," said Virginia Viduya, a granddaughter of Nisperos.
Virginia is the daughter of Nisperos' eldest daughter, Esperanza, who died in 1990.
Vuduya, a retired government employee, said Bantug took the medal to support the pension claim of Potenciana, but nothing came out of the promise and the medal was never returned.
At any rate, Perez took the matter with the United States Veterans Administration in Manila
and the agency promised to take action.
In 1957, Dr. Perez deplored the fact that Washington never responded to him. He died soon after.
Potenciana died in 1969. Concepcion and Leonila are still alive and living with the family of Viduya in a rundown house on Padre Burgos Street in San Fernando City.
Since 1960, they have tried several times to get compensation benfits as surviving heirs of Nisperos. All failed. Last year, they sought assistance from influential people but to no avail.
US Appeal
A Chicago-based Filipino journalist wrote Viduya, informing her that he had contacted a lawyer who would handle the case with the Board of Veterans Appeal in Washington, D.C.
This was in response to Viduya's letter to the journalist that she was planning to file an appeal for compensation claims to the board.
"But I don't have the kind of money that the journalist said would be needed to handle the case," Viduya said. The amount included a $5,000 acceptance fee, if there is a case.
The journalist listed several options to generate the needed money, including a possible movie project about Nisperos' exploits and his role in the Basilan battle.
Viduya has yet to respond to the journalist. But perhaps she never will.
Last April, she received a letter from the Manila office of the Department of Veterans Affairs, telling her the heirs of Nisperos were no longer eligible for compensation claims having reached the majority age.
But we can never go back in time and file the claims in the 1920s. Fact is no one helped my grandmother and her children then and no one told them the right thing to do," Viduya said.
She admitted the letter crushed all their hopes but she believed that they should be entitled to certain benefits.
"My grandfather served the Americans, served some of them and eventually died for them," she said. Nisperos' daughters, Concepcion and Leonila, are still hoping that the American dollars which their late mother never received would arrive before they die.
Leonila, who never married, recalled the hard life with their mother. "Perhaps it would have been different had our mother received the pension claim," she said in Ilocano.
Nisperos' daughters, now in their 70s, would die without knowing whether the United States did justice to the penniless widow of the man who received what was the first and highest award America could give to its citizens. And Nisperos was not even an American.
No comments:
Post a Comment