For us workers to get that extra cash in our paycheck, thousands had to give up their lives in the days leading up to April 9, 1942, which we mark today — the Day of Valor or Araw ng Kagitingan — which was usually known as the Fall of Bataan in the hands of Japanese invasion forces.
That resistance allowed Gen. Douglas MacArthur and President Manuel Quezon, along with some other Filipino public officials, to evacuate to Australia in May, a month later, and eventually move to the US, where the president eventually set up a government-in-exile.
The troops that managed to escape the Death March after the Fall of Bataan joined the guerrillas and carried on with their resistance.
Three seemingly endless years later, in 1945, thousands of other people, civilian and military, also died, especially in Manila, in the effort by American and Filipino fighters to liberate the Philippines from the occupation forces.
The Allies won, and on July 4, 1946, the US recognized our independence.
In June 1987, then-President Corazon Aquino issued an executive order changing the name of the holiday, which shifted the focus of its commemoration: from the defeat of Filipino troops and their American buddies to their refusal to just give up — despite a lack of food, arms, ammunition, and reinforcements from the US.
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