US Congressional gold medal for Filipino WWII veterans

On April 7 at the historic Presidio in San Francisco, surviving Filipino World War II veterans or their next of kin living in Northern California, will receive bronze replicas of the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award conferred by the United States.

The original gold medal (not to be confused with the Congressional Medal of Honor) will be permanently displayed at the Smithsonian, alongside those of other recipients, such as George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, Douglas MacArthur, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, St. Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, the Navajo Talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen, and the fatalities in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack, to mention a few.

Suffice it to say that our old soldiers will be in heroic company.

Last Oct. 25, 2017, at the Emancipation Hall in the US Congress, the first batch of Filipino veterans, as well as the immediate relatives of those who had died, received their medals. Doing the honors were House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, both Republicans, and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrats.

The ceremony in Washington DC came 76 years after the call to arms issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941, a few months before the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. It also came 71 years after the passage of the Rescission Act of 1946 that singled out Filipinos as being ineligible for veterans’ benefits — a colossal injustice inflicted by the US Congress and signed into law by then President Harry S. Truman, despite knowing that it was discriminatory.

The Congressional Gold Medal officially rectifies the discrimination and acknowledges the gallantry and heroism of the 260,000 young Filipinos who answered Roosevelt’s call to arms.

The road to this formal acknowledgement has been long and arduous — a struggle that I characterized in one column as The Second Death March.

In 1997, in connection with the 1st Filipino American National Empowerment Conference in Washington DC ( that resulted in the formation of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations), several aging veterans marched in front of the White House and some chained themselves to the fence to attract media attention to the injustice. The old soldiers were arrested and fined $50 each but the media exposure made the civil disobedience worthwhile.

The intensive lobbying conducted by veterans’ advocates, NaFFAA, and FilAm community leaders subsequently resulted in some grudging concessions by Congress, including health benefits and eligibility for citizenship. But it was not until 2009 that an appropriation of $198 million was provided for surviving veterans (estimated at only 18,000 at that point).

Ironically, the appropriation was just a rider in an economic stimulus package that Congress badly needed to pass to jumpstart the flagging US economy. And it happened only through the dogged sponsorship of Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii.

At any rate, the amount translated into one-time payments of $ 15,000 for those who had become US citizens and $9,000 for non-citizens, mainly residing in the Philippines.

Concerning this appropriation, a CNN news story could not have stated it more sardonically: “More than 60 years after reneging on a promise to the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who fought for the United States during World War II, the US government will soon be sending out checks — to the few who are still alive.”

But the FilAm community did not think that the one-time payment was enough rectification of the injustice. Thus, was formed the Filipino Veterans Recognition and Education Project