Papa's Tattoos

This is what Papa’s Ateneo students knew about his ink: Sir Joey had trekked to the furthest, deepest corners of the Philippines, seeking out each elusive ethnic group to learn their secret techniques and their secret ways and their secret music. Lo, they were astonished with his own mastery and technique, and so bestowed their own secret symbol and colors upon his flesh to mark him as one of theirs. These symbols were said to cover his entire body: from his chest, to his back, to the tops of his thighs and his shins.

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War Came to the Hacienda

She found herself suddenly and jerkily whisked away towards the back of their house where the deep well was located. Warnings of an invasion reached her father days before, and he had prepared their hiding place. The Japanese had already shelled Manila and massacred people in their own houses. Nobody would care to look inside the well, he thought.

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A Child’s Eye View of World War II

Mom was napping in her cot one day when there was a bombing raid. Her mother was ill at the time and her two brothers, both in their early teens, had carried her mother all the way to a relative’s house before they realized that they’d left the baby behind. Her oldest brother, my uncle Juny, who must have been thirteen at the time, ran back for her, pushing his way against a solid tide of desperate, fleeing people, with planes screaming overhead, dropping their deadly loads.

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Notes from 49 Valley Road

As with other houses in the neighborhood, my family’s on Valley Road was taken over by the Japanese military. It was designated to be the headquarters of some Japanese officers. My grandparents, Mary and Pacifico Sr., had no choice but to surrender the house, so they sent their children to live with Eusebio and Frances, who by then were residing at the top of Poinsettia Street, on España extension. 

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