“What acts of bravery are we consigning to fading memory?”
We see them everyday, but barely give a thought to who they were.
But for the last three decades, their visages on our one-thousand-peso note honored the heroism and sacrifices of Chief Justice Jose Abad Santos, Brig. Gen. Vicente Lim and Girl Scouts of the Philippines founder Josefa Llanes Escoda, who were killed during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines.
Now, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas plans to issue a new one-thousand-peso note that replaces them with the Philippine Eagle. The BSP says the new P1,000 bill, which will be issued in 2022, is the first in “a new series of Philippine currency that will focus on the country’s rich flora and fauna,” it added.
What acts of bravery are we consigning to fading memory and the history books when we take these heroes out of currency?
Abad Santos, the fifth chief justice of the Supreme Court and the acting president of the Philippine Commonwealth, refused to cooperate with the Japanese invaders and was executed on May 2, 1942, under a coconut tree near a river bank. A Japanese interpreter who testified at a war crimes trial, said Abad Santos was “magnificently serene when he heard his death sentence.” All he asked for, the interpreter said, was to speak to his son Pepito, who was interred with him in Malabang, Lanao, for 10 minutes. “Do not cry, Pepito,” Abad Santos told his son. “Show these people that you are brave. It is a rare opportunity for me to die for our country. Not everybody is given that chance.”
His Japanese captors later said he refused to be blind-folded and did not accept the cigarette offered to him by a member of the firing squad.
Lim, the first Filipino to enter West Point and a brigadier general in the fledgling Philippine Army, led the 41st Infantry Division that held off the Japanese advance in Bataan, and later survived the infamous Death March. Later released, Lim refused any role in the puppet government installed by the Japanese, and secretly funded various guerrilla activities in the provinces. He also passed along regular weekly reports about Japanese troop movements, disposition, and military installations that helped American and Filipino military operations to liberate the Philippines. But Lim’s involvement in the underground and guerrilla operations made him a target of the Japanese Military Police, and he was arrested in 1944 , held in Fort Santiago where he was said to have been tortured, and later transferred to the old Bilibid Prison under a death sentence. Nothing was heard of him after his transfer, and records pronounced Lim “missing” in 1944. But five decades later, a Japanese witness said Lim and 50 or so guerrillas were taken to the Chinese Cemetery where a long trench had been dug. They were all made to kneel and beheaded, and their bodies were then thrown into the trench and covered. Lim’s body was never found.
Josefa Llanes Escoda was a civic leader, social worker, a suffragette and a World War II heroine. She is most famously known for campaigning for women’s suffrage and as the founder of the Girl Scouts of the Philippines. During World War II, she and her husband Antonio supplied medicine, food, clothes and messages to Filipino and American prisoners of war in the concentration camps.
They were arrested in 1944 and her husband was executed in the same year, along with Lim. She was last seen alive in January 1945, but severely beaten and weak. It is presumed she was executed and buried in an unmarked grave.
Lawmakers have begun to question the wisdom of the BSP decision, but perhaps the most poignant argument against this move comes from the heroes’ descendants.
Vicente Lim IV, Lim’s great-grandson, acknowledged that most Filipinos do not remember the three martyrs, even before the redesign, but also emphasized that images still have some impact on remembering heroism.
“The banknotes do offer a look into Philippine history, even if to an audience with just a fleeting interest in it. I have nothing against our national bird and national flower. I am all for promoting awareness of such national treasures. However, placing these on the P1,000 bill comes at the cost of erasing one of the last few (ubiquitous) ways through which we remember and honor our storied past, and the heroes who martyred themselves for our country.”
We couldn’t have said it any better.