History of the Philippines (1898–1946)
The history of the Philippines from 1898 to 1946 is known as the American colonial period, and began with the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in April 1898, when the Philippines was still a colony of the Spanish East Indies, and concluded when the United States formally recognized the independence of the Republic of the Philippines on July 4, 1946.
With the signing of the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898, Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States.[1] The interim U.S. military government of the Philippine Islands experienced a period of great political turbulence, characterized by the Philippine–American War.
Beginning in 1906, the military government was replaced by a civilian government—the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands—with William Howard Taft serving as its first governor-general. A series of insurgent governments that lacked significant international and diplomatic recognition also existed between 1898 and 1904.[a]
Following the passage of the Philippine Independence Act in 1934, a Philippine presidential election was held in 1935. Manuel L. Quezon was elected and inaugurated as the second president of the Philippines on November 15, 1935. The Insular Government was dissolved and the Commonwealth of the Philippines, intended to be a transitional government in preparation for the country's full achievement of independence in 1946, was brought into existence.[2]
After the World War II Japanese invasion in 1941 and subsequent occupation of the Philippines, the United States and Philippine Commonwealth military completed the recapture of the Philippines after Japan's surrender and spent nearly a year dealing with Japanese troops who were not aware of the war's end,[3] leading up to U.S. recognition of Philippine independence on July 4, 1946.
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$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#0__call_to_action.textDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$World War II veteran benefits[edit]
During World War II, over 200,000 Filipinos fought in defense of the United States against the Japanese in the Pacific theater of military operations, where more than half died. As a commonwealth of the United States before and during the war, Filipinos were legally American nationals. With American nationality, Filipinos were promised all the benefits afforded to those serving in the armed forces of the United States.[141] In 1946, Congress passed the Rescission Act (38 U.S.C. § 107), which stripped Filipinos of the benefits that they had been promised.[141]
Since the passage of the Rescission Act, many Filipino veterans have traveled to the United States to lobby Congress for the benefits promised to them for their service and sacrifice. Over 30,000 of such veterans live in the United States today, with most being United States citizens. Sociologists introduced the phrase "Second Class Veterans" to describe the plight of these Filipino Americans. In 1993, numerous bills titled Filipino Veterans Fairness Act began to be introduced in Congress to return the benefits taken away from these veterans, but the bills only died in committee. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, signed into law on February 17, 2009, included provisions to pay benefits to the 15,000 remaining veterans.[142]
On January 6, 2011 Jackie Speier (D-CA), U.S. Representative for California's 12th congressional district, serving since 2008, introduced a bill seeking to make Filipino World War II veterans eligible for the same benefits available to U.S. veterans. In a news conference to outline the bill, Speier estimated that approximately 50,000 Filipino veterans were alive.[143][144]
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