Dear Judge,
My time in the Philippines is nearly through, though I only covered the places that you were the first year of your experience here. While many of the places you lived and survived were challenging to find, Bilibid is something else all together.
Bilibid Prison, where you spent the last two torturous years as a “Special Prisoner,” still exists and serves as one of Manila’s primary jails.
I have been warned many times that the jail is inaccessible except from a distance and that it is in a very rough neighborhood in Manila. Regardless, I’ve retraced your footsteps all across the country and I’m not going to let a few hookers and pickpockets prevent me from seeing the prison where you suffered so long and were ultimately freed from years later.
The road to Bilibid
Where your escape through the wilderness was an amazing test of physical endurance and strength, hope is what kept you going.
Once recaptured, after miraculously surviving a Japanese Court Marshall for your escape, you were put in a windowless cell with four to six men.
You where made to sit a certain way all day and where not even allowed to speak. There was nothing to eat except for a daily small bowl of bug filled rice. The men around you lost their minds, one by one. Unlike the jungle, this place felt hopeless.
I walk down an impoverished and unnamed Manila street towards Bilibid, which towers in the distance. A woman with no legs screams at me from a crude wheelchair. The street is narrow and crowded.
Rats gnaw on the corpse of a cat that rests against a stand selling vegetables.
A group of young kids follow behind me. Nervously I move my wallet to my front pocket. A pimp offers a selection of transgendered prostitutes for a “very good price.” He gets hostile when I ignore him. This happens again a few steps down. And again…
There are a lot of prostitutes working and it is noon on a Tuesday.
The street, like most streets in Manila is clogged with cars. There are few traffic lights, hundreds of people, and very little law enforcement to ensure that the traffic runs with any kind of efficiency. The angry honks of jeepney drivers only add to my anxiety as I move towards Bilibid. I begin to think that going here is a bad idea.
As I begin to entertain the thought of turning back, I see a large crowd outside a gate. The crowd seems hostile. People scream through the fence. Police try to hold them back. On the other side of the fence is Bilibid. I’ve arrived and it is a nightmare.
I walk along the edge of the massive institution. It is industrial looking and surrounded by an old but efficient looking chain link fence. Guards stand with machine guns every few feet. I push past the massive crowd towards the entrance of the prison, not sure what I am going to do once I get there. There is no chance that some prison warden is going to let me come in and have a look around, nor is there a historian who could point me to my grandfather’s cell.
That said, I ask anyway.
A guard, not understanding what I am asking, shakes his head and urges me in tagalog to go home. I am not satisfied. A gate opens and a truck of some sort moves in. I follow behind it and am now nearly inside the walls of the prison. All that is left is one simple gate which I have watched open twice.
Last glance at Bilibid before heading back to America.
I want to get in. I want to see it, but once again, there is a fence. And men armed with machine guns. And I am alone in a slum. I am putting myself at risk to get into a place that you spent two long years praying you would get out.
This is the last stop on my trip. I have to get into this place and see it. The guard who told me to split sees me again and walks towards me.
He is not happy. It looks like this is as far as I go.
I pretend to be confused and make my way back from the gate of the prison, apologizing profusely as I go. I wait for the disappointment that comes with not succeeding in going where I want to go, but it doesn’t come.
I walk down that nefarious street towards The Manila Hotel a few miles away, I feel the sun on my face. I wonder if you walked down this same road the day you were liberated. I note once again the dense tropical air.
I think about how you left home a boy. How you came to The Philippines to defend America. I think about how you survived the jungles and the hells of incarceration. I think about the friends you watched die. I think about the Torres family and I think about our family.
Berry and his family on his 80th birthday.
The family that exists only because you survived. I walk once again past the group of children that earlier had made me so nervous. They wave to me. I wave back.
I walk away from that prison towards the rest of my life. And with each step, I take, I feel more and more free myself.
You said in your book “Death in quest for freedom is preferable to life in spiritless captivity." This personal quest to retrace your footsteps has ended and as I walk away from the prison, towards the beautiful Manila Hotel, overlooking Manila Bay, right where your journey began I tell myself, finally… I have walked in your footsteps.
And I am pretty sure that the whole time, on my own beautiful quest for freedom, that the whole time you were right there with me.
Matthew
To read more letters please click the following links: Letter One, Letter Two, Letter Three, Letter Four
This article is the copyrighted property of the writer and Communities @ WashingtonTimes.com. Written permission must be obtained before reprint in online or print media. REPRINTING TWTC CONTENT WITHOUT PERMISSION AND/OR PAYMENT IS THEFT AND PUNISHABLE BY LAW.
