When you think of the Philippines in the context  of World War II, you might see American General  

Douglas MacArthur marching onto that beach on  Leyte with an avenging force of American and  

Filipino soldiers in tow. If we fix our scope  on this phase of the war, namely the 1944 to  

1945 Philippines campaign, we might surmise that  the Americans were fighting for the liberation  

of their Filipino brothers, whose islands had  been subjected to a sadistic Japanese occupation  

since mid-1942. Sure, a great many Americans  and Filipinos fought side by side against a  

common enemy during the Second World War, but that  didn't mean they were stalwart friends. In fact,  

the United States and the Philippines have, to  say the least, a rather turbulent history. In this  

video, we shed some light on Filipino–American  relations in the early years of the 20th century,  

focusing on American and Filipino atrocities  committed in the Philippine–American War.

From 1565 to 1898, the Philippines were under the  thumb of the Spanish Empire. From August 1896 to  

June 1898, Filipino revolutionaries fought against  Spanish in what was known as the Philippine  

Revolution or Tagalog War. Concurrently, the  Spanish Empire and the Americans were at each  

other's throats, so it was only natural that the  Americans involved themselves in the conflict  

taking place in the Philippines, providing support  to the revolutionaries. After the the Filipinos  

and Americans defeated the Spanish, the US  and Spain signed a treaty in Paris, ending  

the Spanish–American War. This treaty stipulated  that Spain had to give the Philippines to the US.  

To sweeten the deal, the US gave Spain  20 million bucks, essentially buying the  

Philippines from Spain. If the Filipinos thought  the Spanish sucked, they were in for a surprise.  

After the Spanish defeat, Filipino revolutionary  leader Emilio Aguinaldo established the First  

Philippine Republic, with himself as president,  but the Americans weren't having a bar of it;  

they'd already mailed the cheque. This  understandably caused a bit of tension,  

and by February 1899, a full-blown war had broken  out between the Filipinos and, in quotation marks,  

"the new proprietors of the Philippine  Islands." This was the Philippine–American War.

America's game plan with the Filipinos was one  of, quote, "benevolent assimilation" — because  

those two words clearly go hand in hand. According  to Andrew Clem's article The Filipino Genocide,  

published in the journal Historical Perspectives,  the occupying Americans were prejudiced against  

the Filipinos, dehumanising them with racial  slurs. In Clem's words, "The ideas about racial  

differences were ideally suited for the goal  of annexing the Philippines: the United States  

needed to either bring the Filipinos into the fold  or remove them from the islands." One of the more  

"benevolent" ways the Americans "brought  them into the fold" was through education,  

with white teachers, mostly women, coming to  the Philippines to educate the next generation  

in American ways. When the fighting started,  however, the US took off its gloves.

Funnily enough, it was General Douglas MacArthur's  daddy, Arthur MacArthur (lol) who first marched  

American troops against the forces of the  Philippine Republic. This was in the 1899  

Battle of Manila, waged on the 4th and 5th of  February between 19,000 US troops and as many as  

40,000 Filipino troops. The Americans won, and  it was raw brutality from that point forward,  

with Filipino bolo knives, spears, and bows,  going up against the fearsome US war machine.

The Philippine Republic learnt quite quickly,  however, that a conventional approach wouldn't  

work. Instead, they opted to fight a guerrilla  war. This bogged the conflict right down,  

as it was now harder for the US to distinguish  combatants from civilians. Soon, they stopped  

trying to distinguish them. American Brigadier  General Jacob H. Smith's instructions to one  

of his officers summarised America's new war  strategy: "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill  

and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it  will please me. I want all persons killed who are  

capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities  against the United States." And if you were  

wondering, the brigadier general deemed anyone  over the age of 10 "capable of bearing arms."  

More conservative estimates suggest  that between 200,000 and 250,000 died  

from violence, famine, and disease, while some  sources put that figure as high as a million.

Many of these people died in American  concentration camps encircled by free-fire  

zones, which were aptly nicknamed "suburbs of  hell." According to the aforementioned Clem,  

"The 'dead line' surrounding the camp kept all the  natives in check and prevented them from leaving  

on the threat of death." Outside of these  disease-ridden camps, American troops forced  

Filipinos to evacuate their homes or watch  them burn. In the words of one E. D. Furnam,  

of the Washington Regiment, "We burned hundreds  of houses and looted hundreds more." This was,  

apparently, an initiative to counter-guerrilla  warfare, as was torturing captured men for intel.

One method of torture was unsurpassed in its  infamy during the Philippine–American War. This  

was the dreaded water cure. A. F. Miller, of the  32nd Volunteer Infantry Regiment, explained this  

method of torture in a letter later published in  the Omaha World-Herald: "Lay them on their backs,  

a man standing on each hand and each foot,  then put a round stick in the mouth and pour  

a pail of [salt] water in the mouth and nose,  and if they don't give up [the information]  

pour in another pail. They swell up like  toads. I'll tell you it is a terrible torture."

Some American troops believed their  actions were justified, however—brutality  

in answer to brutality. According to a  letter written by an anonymous soldier  

from New York:"Last night one of our boys  was found shot and his stomach cut open.  

Immediately orders were received to burn  the town and kill every native in sight.  

About 1,000 men, women and children were reported  killed. I am probably growing hard-hearted,  

for I am in my glory when I can sight my  gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger."

The aforementioned Brigadier General Jacob H.  Smith supposedly gave his "I want no prisoners"  

order in retaliation to a Filipino atrocity,  as well. On the 28th of September 1901,  

in the town of Balangiga on Samar Island,  a force of Filipino civilians attacked and  

massacred 48 American troops who had been  stationed there, relatively peacefully,  

for over a month. According to Joseph L. Schott,  author of The Ordeal of Samar, "The native  

laborers suddenly turned on the soldiers and began  chopping at them with bolos, picks and shovels.  

The mess tents, filled with soldiers peacefully  at breakfast, had been one of the prime targets."

Dean C. Worcester, the Secretary of the Interior  of the Philippine Islands, depicted one especially  

gruesome atrocity committed by the Filipinos  in his book The Philippines Past and Present:  

"[One] American prisoner [...] had been buried  in the ground with only his head projecting.  

His mouth had been propped open with a stick,  a trail of sugar laid to it through the forest,  

and a handful thrown into it.  Millions of ants had done the rest."

With both sides committing atrocities such as  those few we discussed, among countless more,  

we can safely say that the Philippine–American  War, won by the US in July 1902, left a bad taste  

in everyone's mouths. It would ultimately take  a world war to push the Philippines' struggle  

for independence over the line, but that war,  namely World War II, was still some 37 years away.  

Those in-between years weren't a walk in the park,  and there's plenty of history in there to bring  

to light, such as the bloody Moro Rebellion,  which we may just cover in a future video.  

For now, a quote from one F.A. Blake, a  Californian Red Cross worker who found  

himself in the Philippines during the  Philippine–American War: "I never saw  

such execution in my life. The Filipinos did stand  their ground heroically, contesting every inch,  

but proved themselves unable to stand the deadly  fire of our well-trained and eager boys in blue."

So, did you know the Philippine–American  War—which the aforementioned Clem deemed a  

"twentieth century genocide"—was that bloody?  How do you think Filipino–American relations were  

between the end of the conflict and Philippine  independence in 1946? Can you think of any other  

atrocities committed by either side? Please feel  free to share your thoughts in the comments.