Wars, more than peace, are written always in bold letters. The accounts of wars are contained in volumes that are massive and monumental. This discourse negates the small stories. History in the traditional sense of the discipline takes over memories, and transforms the horizon into the widest area so large it could only accommodate heroes made bigger than life.
But wars are also part of memories, those bits and pieces of daily occurrences. The stories of a grandmother who did not go to the warfront but, nevertheless, remembers the days before the arrival of the Japanese can sometimes correct one’s impression about the darkness of those years. The young men and women seeing their classmates for the last time will never make it to the account of a historian. Too personal to describe a grand event like the Second World War.
Where are the ordinary citizens in the wartime reports? They are either evacuating, dead or hiding somewhere. If seen, they are not talked about, with history hiding them behind more dramatic turn of events.
When one thus stumbles upon a book that is about a young man’s remembrance of the days before and after the Second World War, and the stories are not about greatness of some individuals, then one sits down, sets aside precious hours for this precious document.
It was one afternoon in the UP Press when, with Kristian Sendon Cordero, owner of the new cultural hub/independent bookstore “Savage Mind,” in Naga City, showed me the book Snows of Yesteryear. The author is Elmer A. Ordoñez, a multi-awarded academic, literary critic and writer. Ordoñez is a retired professor of English and Comparative Literature from the University of the Philippines. He is also my “Tito Elmer,” kin on the side of the Alindogan of Sorsogon, Masbate and Iloilo.
The title puzzled me first, Snows of Yesteryear. But under that title was another title, A Family in War and a Sentimental Education. That more or less prepared me for what the book might say. I started reading the book and I could not put it down. It was written simply but simplicity is deceiving. The sentences moved on and on, the phrases fluid and fluent. The drama, if ever there was, depended now on the memories of the reader refracted mostly by the mind of the writer.
The memory begins with a chapter that announces “The End of an Era.” And yet, the morning was just beginning for young Elias. I could see the young man, waking up to a quotidian morning but finding out, even before the day had ended, that the war has already begun.
In the meantime, there was Elias’s mother cooking breakfast and the martial music playing along the street in Pasay. There was also the cool December morn and the feastday of the Inmaculada Concepcion, announced by his mother.
The memory continued: In the garage, his father was checking the car. In the mind of Elias the route to school for each day did not come back but was there. As places and names were mentioned, we started to think of them also: the Philippine Normal along Ayala, the NU High in Intramuros, the UP High in Isaac Peral, the YMCA in Arroceros and its pool. Then came the moviehouses: Savoy in Echague, Ideal, State and Avenue in Avenida, Rizal, Capitol or Lyric in Escolta. They are gone now but in this book, they were all there before they were destroyed by the war.
These are lessons in geography and hard courses in remembering.
The war came suddenly even as the politicians talked about them, even as the newsreels in moviehouses warned about their coming. That morning was the usual morning. It is with this kind of laidback narration that, when the war did come, Elias and his family were not prepared. We, too, the reader, were not prepared as to what kind of war these young men and women had to go through.
The speeches made by statesmen, and recorded by historians and war correspondents reeked grandly of lofty scents and even more aggressive pronouncements. These accounts were made for states, the governments and fighters. Nothing of this sort appeared in the book of Ordoñez. What the writer was describing was an ordinary day and about young men who were so eager to join the war and fight the enemies. They were no braver than those contained in epic retelling of the war; that was simply the mood of the times.
Christmas came and, with the season, the enemies. Then Jimmy had to leave for the battlefield. Then it was time to surrender.
Even without any attempt to be so, poignant was the drab description of the troops: “The retreating regular troops wore khaki uniforms, canvas leggings and steel helmets while Jimmy’s unit had maong uniforms, no leggings, civilian leather or rubber shoes, and coir helmets painted green.”
Jimmy’s troop marched toward Mayon. More places are mentioned as the family moved from one place to another: Sisa in Sampaloc, Libertad in Pasay.… When did this war happen? The places that are in the book are still here with us, changed of course, altered from the day the bombs started to be dropped over Manila, the Open City.
It took a few more days before the Japanese were finally seen by Elias. By this time, many families started to go back to their abandoned homes. But life in the city was difficult. There was no explicit mention of how severe the situation then but two brothers opted to work in a homestead. From the comfort of home and school, the two brothers had to climb hills, ford streams and rivers, to reach a place where they could earn a living. What was compelling in this part of the book was not the arduous conditions the two brothers had to face but how it came easy for them to decide and to agree to the invitation to travel through terrains where trails where hidden, and labor in a place they had not seen and been before.
Marvel at how the boys survived the forest and the isolation caused by the change of the climate: “Amid the typhoon, a typhoon blew in from the Pacific and almost tore the roof away. For days they could not leave Catmon. They huddled most of the time inside the hut; by daytime around the fire, by night they snuggled together and told each other stories. Jimmy and Elias liked to whistle tunes they’d heard from the radio…. They would whistle themselves to sleep while a storm raged outside….”
Wartime came with songs and the declaration of the Philippine Republic. Elias narrated how, after the parade, leaflets containing lyrics of Filipino and Japanese songs were distributed. On his way home, he met a Japanese guard who, ignoring his deepest bow, still slapped him. The young boy avoided sentries and soon reached home.
Elmer Ordoñez guided us with his memories not of war but into the streets where cruelties and pain ceased. He, thus, continued the narrative: “He slipped quietly into the darkened room.… He entered his parents’ room and saw his mother with his two elder brothers sitting in the veranda in the moonlight. Jimmy had come home.”
A brother was home but the war raged on.
Snows of Yesteryear: A Family in War and a Sentimental Education was published in 2014 by the University of the Philippines Press.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com.