The People's Struggle Against Japanese Imperialism

In the period following World War I, U.S. and British imperialism assigned Japan the role of being their special sentry at the backdoor of the first socialist state and principal Asian collaborator in the colonization of the Asian peoples. Japan was accorded the privilege of holding on to its old colonies and acquiring new ones so long as it did not challenge the Anglo-American hegemony. In the Philippines, Japanese enterprises were encouraged by U.S. imperialism to participate in the exploitation of the Filipino people, especially in Mindanao. However, the world capitalist crisis of the thirties shook the balance of power among and within the imperialist countries and fascism rose to power in a number of capitalist countries, including Japan, to threaten the peoples of the world.

Like all other fascist powers, Japanese imperialism decided to wage a war for redividing the world as a desperate means of saving itself from economic depression. It had the ambition of monopolizing Asia even against the wishes of its erstwhile Anglo-American masters. It launched a massive invasion of China in the thirties before it took on other countries in the course of World War II.

On December 7 and 8, 1941, the Japanese made a sudden air attack on U.S. military bases all over the Pacific Ocean and the China Sea, including those in Pearl Harbor and in the Philippines. The puppet commonwealth government immediately took orders from the U.S. military authorities and Manila was declared an “open city” on December 26 and was occupied by the Japanese on January 2, 1942. At the very start, it was obvious that the U.S. military strategy was to attend to Europe first and allow the Japanese to overstretch itself in Asia.

As the Japanese invaders had expected, MacArthur foolishly concentrated the USAFFE (U.S. Armed Forces in the Far East), composed of U.S. troops and Filipino volunteers, in Bataan and Corregidor. The Japanese imperialist troops freely invaded the Philippines from several points. Thus, they were able to encircle the USAFFE which surrendered in Bataan on April 9 and in Corregidor on May 7. The resistance put up in Bataan was of little value except to cover the flight of the U.S. colonial officials and the puppet commonwealth government from Corregidor. The U.S. generals surrendered their forces only to be forced into a death march from Bataan to the concentration camp in Capas, Tarlac.

The bureaucrat capitalists, puffed up by the U.S. imperialists, chose between two alternatives: to maintain their allegiance to U.S. imperialism or to shift it to Japanese imperialism. Such was also the choice to which the comprador big bourgeoisie and the big landlord class limited themselves. They did not consider at all that the fascist invasion, the result of interimperialist contradictions, was an occasion to assert the sovereignty of the Filipino people against both Japanese imperialism and U.S. imperialism. The comprador-landlord Nacionalista Party which had practically monopolized the puppet bureaucracy split into two factions, with one serving U.S. imperialism and the other serving Japanese imperialism. The bureaucrat capitalists who chose to side with U.S. imperialism either fled to Washington or joined the USAFFE which fought the people more than it did the Japanese fascists and their puppets.

Japanese imperialism came with the catchphrase “greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere” in the same fashion that U.S. imperialism had come with “benevolent assimilation.” The fascist invaders turned the Philippines into a colony and put up their own puppet government under the big traitor Jose Laurel. This was supported by the comprador big bourgeoisie and the landlord class. On October 14, 1943, the Japanese imperialists granted “independence’’ to the Philippines and rigged up a puppet republic in an obvious attempt to outbid the U.S. imperialists who had already pledged to do the same sham on July 4, 1946.

As late as three weeks after the Japanese occupation of Manila the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines was still in Manila. The Party leaders were arrested while they were meeting in the city. This event manifested in the clearest manner the lack of ample preparation against war. It showed the damaging influence of the agents of U.S. imperialism led by the Lavas and Tarucs who had maneuvered to preoccupy the Party leadership with bourgeois parliamentarism, pacifism and civil liberties.

Nevertheless, the revolutionary cadres and members of the Party succeeded in holding the Central Luzon Bureau Conference on February 6, 1942 and decided to fight the Japanese aggressors with a people’s army. Thus, the Party acquired the honor of being the only party that decided to fight the fascist invaders and assert the sovereignty of the Filipino people. It created the Anti-Japanese People’s Army (Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon -- Hukbalahap) on March 29, 1942 and rallied the people to armed resistance. The patriotism of the Communists and the Red fighters was demonstrated in heroic feats of combat against the enemy. These patriots aroused and mobilized the people and led them to gain a large measure of democratic power, particularly in Central Luzon and certain areas in Southern Luzon.

Within the Party, however, the bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas and Tarucs kept on sabotaging the people’s war. It spread the line of limiting the people’s struggle to one exclusively against the Japanese and hailing the return of U.S. imperialism and its puppet commonwealth government. At the height of the anti-fascist war, it adopted the cowardly line of “retreat for defense” which was no different from the ‘‘lie-low” policy of the USAFFE. The bourgeois reactionary gang of the Lavas and Tarucs contravened the line of the Third International to conduct unity and struggle in the united front at all times and use the anti-fascist popular front to establish a people’s democratic government.

The “retreat-for-defense” policy, the breaking up of Hukbalahap squadrons3 into miniscule units of three to five persons was exposed as erroneous by events. It hindered the growth and advance of the people’s army. Under the pressure of the revolutionary cadres and masses, the Party Central Committee repudiated this policy only in September 1944. The repudiation of the policy was timely to the extent that it paved the way for the victorious advance of the Hukbalahap even only in Central, Luzon and parts of Southern Luzon. In the succeeding month of October, the U.S. imperialist forces were already trying to recapture the Philippines.

Despite the efforts of the agents of U.S. imperialism to weaken them from within, the Party and the Hukbalahap distinguished themselves as the fiercest and most effective fighters against the Japanese fascists and their puppets. They made it difficult for the enemy to get their food, especially rice, from Central Luzon. They stood out as the strongest single guerrilla force with the greatest popular support and widest territory after the war.

In its ignoble scheme to recapture its colonies and seize new ones, U.S. imperialism engaged in naval and air battles with Japan just when the latter’s troops were already being wiped out in great numbers by every national liberation movement in Asia, especially in the great expanse of China. The most decisive defeats of Japanese imperialism in the entire anti-fascist war in Asia were inflicted by the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army led by Comrade Mao Tsetung. It was China which ate up the main bulk of Japanese aggressor troops that had been overextended in its immense territory since 1937. To the great Chinese people, the peoples of Asia owe the turning of the tide of war against Japanese imperialism as 1945 approached. It was a stupid gangster and racist act of U.S. imperialism to use the atomic bomb on the Japanese people in an effort to claim victory over Japan.

The entire people of the world, especially the people of Europe, owe the Soviet Union under the great leadership of Comrade Stalin the turning of the tide of the entire world war against fascism. It was the battle of Stalingrad that weakened the Axis powers to the core. From then on, the Soviet Red Army advanced and the fascist forces were annihilated and disintegrated without letup.

To themselves principally, the Filipino people owe their liberation from the Japanese imperialist invaders in their own country. It was the total effort of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the Hukbalahap and other patriotic guerrilla forces all over the country which broke the back of the Japanese invasionary and puppet forces. They were the ones who forced out the Japanese from garrisons in cities and towns and annihilated them in the flames of guerrilla warfare in the countryside. It was not U.S. imperialism which liberated the Philippines. U.S. imperialism merely returned to reimpose its colonial rule. In fact, it concentrated its air bombardment and artillery fire on the Filipino people and their homes in late 1944 and early 1945 to pave the way for their resubjugation. The Japanese imperialists competed with the U.S. imperialists in inflicting mass slaughter on the Filipino people. As soon as it returned, U.S. imperialism maneuvered to attack and disintegrate the Hukbalahap and other guerrilla forces that were independent of the USAFFE.