Celebrating Rizal on my Birthday!

Alaska (><) Philippines Connection 6

Philippines is a colorful place.

Having a birthday on July 2 has always meant a big celebration as it is two days before American Independence Day (July 4). That meant I was always dubbed a FIRECRACKER! But this year is different because July 4 is no longer celebrated as Philippine Independence Day, as the American Overlords had declared it to be in 1946 after WWII.

My Birthday at the Birthplace of

Philippine National Hero, Jose Rizal

This statute of Jose Rizal is in a park dedicated to the National Hero and moral leader of Philippines at his birthplace in Calamba, Laguna, Philippines.

Kuya Nap works the fruit picker from a ladder leaned against an avocado tree. The picker has a comb of metal teeth to separate the fruit from the vine with a tug. The collected avocados were offerings to friends in Laguna Province later in the day.

Kuya Nap doesn’t speak English very well but he is very openly kind and accommodating to me. He planted this tree many years ago and now avocados were hanging like green goose eggs overhead. I brought a sturdy bag to put them in and Nap brought the ladder and a picking net. Together we filled the bag to be used for trading stock in Calamba, where I wanted to visit the birthplace of Jose Rizal.

[1]My previous story: Jose Rizal: PH National Hero for Independence

This is what I wanted to do for my birthday and it was a glorious day!

Philippines Taste of Independence

July 4, 1946: In ceremonies held in the temporary Independence Grandstand (built in front of the Rizal Monument in Manila), the Philippine flag is raised while the U.S. flag is lowered. The flagpole in front of the Rizal Monument is thus known as the Independence Flagpole, commemorating the culmination of the quest for national independence.

1946 was also an interesting year for Alaska as the Legislature there voted to place the issue of USA Statehood on the ballot. A majority of Alaskans wanted Uncle Sam to take care of them with more federal spending. Alaskans in the Territory of Alaska voted 9,630 to 6,822 in favor of statehood but the US Congress would fail to agree for some years to come.

We were a Poor State with with Mostly Native Population

[2]100 Years of Alaska’s Legislature, 1945-1946

From one of my favorite books about Philippines:

The United States relinquished its titular and tutelary hold on the country choosing the same date of its own independence to do so. The Stars and Stripes was lowered, and the Philippine flag, with its golden-rayed sun, raised in its place The population of a still bleeding nation stood at 18 million. With Manuel L. Roxas and Elpidio Quirino as its president and vice president respectively, the Republic of the Philippines was finally independent of the United States, its colonial master the past half-century.

National flag of the Philippines

Many Filipinos asked: Was this truly independence?

Since Roxas and Quirino presided over transference of sovereignty from the USA to the newly formed republic they were thus the last president/vice president of the commonwealth, and the first president/vice president under the postcolonial Republic of Philippines.

[3]History of the Philippines

How USA got Alaska

Russian explorer Vitus Bering is credited with discovering Alaska and mapping it during the Great Northern Expedition lasting roughly from 1733 to 1743 under commission by Emperor Peter the Great. The Russia-American Company exploited Alaska furs until sea otters were almost extinct and then sold Alaska to USA for $7.2 million in 1867.