an island in your name
Philippine GRAPHIC magazine column for Sept. 12, 2005
What price patrimony?
by Alfred A. Yuson
A report from The Japan Times touts a plan by our Tourism Secretary to pitch a raffle gimmick to woo more Japanese tourists. “Would you like to have one of the 7,107 islands in the Philippines named after you?” the story’s intriguing lead goes.
“As part of its aggressive marketing to boost the country's sagging tourism industry, Philippine officials, with the help of Japanese public relations experts, hatched the idea to raffle off the naming of 25 islands to (sic) Japanese tourists.
“Dubbed ‘An Island in Your Name,’ (sic) Philippine Tourism Secretary Joseph Durano hopes the effort will lure more young and adventurous Japanese tourists to visit the Philippines, a nation considered dangerous by some Japanese.
“The 25 Japanese raffle winners will not own the islands, Durano explained. Instead, the winners ‘will have the prestige of having these islands named after them for a period of one year.’
“The 25 islands are part of 124 islets that dot Lingayen Gulf in Alaminos, a city in Pangasinan Province about 254 km north of Manila.”
Oh, my. Naming our islands AFTER Japanese tourists who can pay for the privilege — what an idea. Now a Mr. Yamashita-san in Sapporo or Kumamoto can boast to his friends after a summer dive in our Hundred Islands: “Hey, you guys go too. My island is right next to Quezon Island. But please, no graffiti from you to add to the brass plaque with my name on it, ne?”
So what’ll they think of next? How about raffling off the street names in Alaminos? Or Lingayen, where the American forces landed over 60 years ago for the campaign to retake Luzon from Mr. Yamashita-san’s forbears? Why not name one bangus after any Japanese patron before it’s grilled for a new Guinness record in the Dagupan fiesta? That clever bit of nomenclature ought too be more fitting, since ephemeral. It won’t take a year to wash the taste off any nationalist’s mouth. Why stop at Pangasinan? Or limit the campaign to Japanese tourists? Each endangered pine tree in Baguio can bear monthly plaques with the names of Korean honeymooners or English-language students. The Chocolate Hills of Bohol can assume multiple, international identities — German, Swiss, Italian, French. Why, the names of such generous sponsors can even be yodeled back and forth across the hills at a special midsummer rite, perchance performed by the Loboc Children’s Choir, the better for European TV coverage. Puerto Galera’s islets and beaches can be up for grabs if the Zobels and Locsins allow it, as well the limestone cliffs of Palawan, so that a Chinese tourist can suggest that the bird’s nest soup a neighbor is slurping might have come from HIS cliff in old Ma-yi, er, the Philippines.
See, like your average Pinoy, I have nothing much against the Japanese in particular, even if their 1940s edition did conduct the unconscionable act of pillage north of the Pasig in February 1945, the month I was born, mercifully, south of the river.
Yet I could only nod in agreement last month while listening to Dr. Michael Tan’s talk at UP, following a lecture by Dr. Lourdes Arellano Carandang on the merits of truth-telling, when he said that a prime failing thus far has been our weakness at memory-keeping. “We forget too easily,” Dr. Tan stressed, citing the ironic quality of the current diasporic urge whereby our women surrender their eyeteeth, and much more, for a chance to work as entertainers in Japan.
“We must disturb, we must provoke,” said Dr. Carandang, when questioned further on our government’s liability re national truth-telling. “We must resist becoming purveyors of myth (lest we indulge simply in) fictive history. We must avoid engaging in dangerous complicity in lies. What is at stake here is the future of our children.”
Memory-keeping, Dr. Tan said in turn, is a partner of truth-telling.
“Powerful forces, including media,” he warned, are often involved “in the infrastructure of deception.” And that is why we now export 120,000 women to Japan, a big jump from last year’s 80,000 despite the supposedly more stringent conditions.
Now, far be it from me or anyone to lecture any of these women that it isn’t right or proper to seek wasabi-green pastures in sushi country, the same whose soldiers had turned many of our “lolas” into so much fresh sashimi as so-called comfort women. But a line has to be drawn somewhere — between pragmatism and patriotism, between PR campaign brainstorms and a sense of patrimony. It may be all right to allow shrines for the Japanese war dead to sprout
all over our islands, as that might even help preserve the memory banks ofboth or all nations. Yet only feeble protest greeted the recent unveiling of a statue in tribute to the Kamikaze pilot in a field in Mabalacat, Pampanga.
Sec. Ace Durano should be a little more circumspect in assessing “inspired ideas” to boost our tourism prospects. Methinks he’s going too far in raffling off and renting out our islands to Japanese tourists. The fact is, the truth is, our Hundred Islands off Alaminos is a national
park. Let’s keep it that way. We have enough of world-class dive sites and brothels for international pleasure-sharing. Our own truths and our own memories we should keep for ourselves.
What price patrimony?
by Alfred A. Yuson
A report from The Japan Times touts a plan by our Tourism Secretary to pitch a raffle gimmick to woo more Japanese tourists. “Would you like to have one of the 7,107 islands in the Philippines named after you?” the story’s intriguing lead goes.
“As part of its aggressive marketing to boost the country's sagging tourism industry, Philippine officials, with the help of Japanese public relations experts, hatched the idea to raffle off the naming of 25 islands to (sic) Japanese tourists.
“Dubbed ‘An Island in Your Name,’ (sic) Philippine Tourism Secretary Joseph Durano hopes the effort will lure more young and adventurous Japanese tourists to visit the Philippines, a nation considered dangerous by some Japanese.
“The 25 Japanese raffle winners will not own the islands, Durano explained. Instead, the winners ‘will have the prestige of having these islands named after them for a period of one year.’
“The 25 islands are part of 124 islets that dot Lingayen Gulf in Alaminos, a city in Pangasinan Province about 254 km north of Manila.”
Oh, my. Naming our islands AFTER Japanese tourists who can pay for the privilege — what an idea. Now a Mr. Yamashita-san in Sapporo or Kumamoto can boast to his friends after a summer dive in our Hundred Islands: “Hey, you guys go too. My island is right next to Quezon Island. But please, no graffiti from you to add to the brass plaque with my name on it, ne?”
So what’ll they think of next? How about raffling off the street names in Alaminos? Or Lingayen, where the American forces landed over 60 years ago for the campaign to retake Luzon from Mr. Yamashita-san’s forbears? Why not name one bangus after any Japanese patron before it’s grilled for a new Guinness record in the Dagupan fiesta? That clever bit of nomenclature ought too be more fitting, since ephemeral. It won’t take a year to wash the taste off any nationalist’s mouth. Why stop at Pangasinan? Or limit the campaign to Japanese tourists? Each endangered pine tree in Baguio can bear monthly plaques with the names of Korean honeymooners or English-language students. The Chocolate Hills of Bohol can assume multiple, international identities — German, Swiss, Italian, French. Why, the names of such generous sponsors can even be yodeled back and forth across the hills at a special midsummer rite, perchance performed by the Loboc Children’s Choir, the better for European TV coverage. Puerto Galera’s islets and beaches can be up for grabs if the Zobels and Locsins allow it, as well the limestone cliffs of Palawan, so that a Chinese tourist can suggest that the bird’s nest soup a neighbor is slurping might have come from HIS cliff in old Ma-yi, er, the Philippines.
See, like your average Pinoy, I have nothing much against the Japanese in particular, even if their 1940s edition did conduct the unconscionable act of pillage north of the Pasig in February 1945, the month I was born, mercifully, south of the river.
Yet I could only nod in agreement last month while listening to Dr. Michael Tan’s talk at UP, following a lecture by Dr. Lourdes Arellano Carandang on the merits of truth-telling, when he said that a prime failing thus far has been our weakness at memory-keeping. “We forget too easily,” Dr. Tan stressed, citing the ironic quality of the current diasporic urge whereby our women surrender their eyeteeth, and much more, for a chance to work as entertainers in Japan.
“We must disturb, we must provoke,” said Dr. Carandang, when questioned further on our government’s liability re national truth-telling. “We must resist becoming purveyors of myth (lest we indulge simply in) fictive history. We must avoid engaging in dangerous complicity in lies. What is at stake here is the future of our children.”
Memory-keeping, Dr. Tan said in turn, is a partner of truth-telling.
“Powerful forces, including media,” he warned, are often involved “in the infrastructure of deception.” And that is why we now export 120,000 women to Japan, a big jump from last year’s 80,000 despite the supposedly more stringent conditions.
Now, far be it from me or anyone to lecture any of these women that it isn’t right or proper to seek wasabi-green pastures in sushi country, the same whose soldiers had turned many of our “lolas” into so much fresh sashimi as so-called comfort women. But a line has to be drawn somewhere — between pragmatism and patriotism, between PR campaign brainstorms and a sense of patrimony. It may be all right to allow shrines for the Japanese war dead to sprout
all over our islands, as that might even help preserve the memory banks ofboth or all nations. Yet only feeble protest greeted the recent unveiling of a statue in tribute to the Kamikaze pilot in a field in Mabalacat, Pampanga.
Sec. Ace Durano should be a little more circumspect in assessing “inspired ideas” to boost our tourism prospects. Methinks he’s going too far in raffling off and renting out our islands to Japanese tourists. The fact is, the truth is, our Hundred Islands off Alaminos is a national
park. Let’s keep it that way. We have enough of world-class dive sites and brothels for international pleasure-sharing. Our own truths and our own memories we should keep for ourselves.
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