JoeBar does us a great service

IN MY column during the Independence Day week last June, I mentioned the generation and information gaps behind our weak sense of local history. The former stems from the fact that only around 2% of the city population as of 2000 had a clear recollection of World War II. The latter refers to our “skewed, if not lack of total, appreciation of what happened during those fateful years” -- arising from the absence of information magnified by a dumbing down of local history in the DepEd curriculum.

Historian Jose V. Barrameda, Jr., popularly known hereabouts as JoeBar, performed the city and Bikolanos in general a tremendous service with the recent publication, under a grant from the National Historical Institute, of his opus entitled In the crucible of an asymmetrical war in Camarines Sur 1942-1945 – The story of the Tancong Vaca Guerilla Unit. My friend and colleague Joe Perez of the Bicol Mail lent me his copy for two days and it proved to be a gripping well researched read.

Focusing on the exploits of the Tancong Vaca guerillas (named after a watershed in Libmanan and Pasacao, also known as Mt. Bernacci in U.S. maps) against the Japanese invaders, Barrameda -- whose father fought and died during the war -- debunks the conventional belief that Bicol had the least organized resistance movement against the invaders.

To the contrary, what stands out from the entire account is a tough, stubborn, durable and well organized force that refused to lay down their arms like other guerilla units in the aftermath of General Wainwright's surrender on May 6, 1942; survived the best shots unleashed by the Japanese Imperial Forces and their local cohorts; and outlasted them during the four-year period notwithstanding losses it sustained along the way.

Moreover, the guerillas -- led by the triumvirate of Juan Miranda, commanding officer, who would later become a congressman of the 2nd District after the war; Leon Aureus, executive officer, who would later become Naga's first postwar city mayor and Bicol Mail founder; and Elias Madrid, finance officer who actually founded the unit -- can lay claim to two key victories over the Japs.

One is the successful assault on Naga City in partnership with other guerilla units and Agta bowmen in Camarines Sur and Norte in May 1942, two months after the invaders arrived in Bicol. It led to the short-lived recapture of the provincial capital and the release of American prisoners, a feat emblazoned in the book cover itself.

The other is the ambush at Taguilid Pass in Pasacao, which is said to have netted a Japanese general and hero from the just concluded Bataan campaign that ultimately led to Wainwright's surrender.

Along the way, it also sheds light on a key controversy that hounds Nagueños up to this day: the brutal death of then Gov. Mariano Villafuerte and companions, who fled Naga in the aftermath of the May 1942 attack in the company of Japanese forces. Belying Aureus's account, which Barrameda dismissed as propaganda, he attributed the murder of Villafuerte, his wife and son and a Japanese officer to remnants of the Camarines Norte-based Traveling Vinzons Guerillas (TVG) headed by Francisco “Turko” Boayes.

The Boayes partisans were in Vito, Siruma during that fateful day arranging a sanctuary for their compatriots who have also launched a failed attack on Daet, Camarines Norte, which took place simultaneous with the one on Naga. The Notes to the main text, which could have been improved with better chaptering, actually reveal far more details about the tragic incident, which Barrameda categorized as a war crime given its context.

Boayes himself would later figure in many other sordid episodes, including a conflict with Miranda over the latter's bride Constancia Estrada that stretched from the camp of guerilla leader Teofilo Padua in Mt. Isarog -- Miranda was there for a unification talk, only to be wounded after a surprise Japanese attack -- to the coastal towns of Lagonoy and Parubcan (now Presentacion), where he withdrew to recuperate. It culminated with a potentially bloody confrontation between Miranda and Boayes in the shores of Catanduanes that was only averted by the former's quick hands, enabling him and his two other companions to disarm their opponents.

Heroism. Betrayal. Tragedy. Love. Self-sacrifice. JoeBar's Tancong Vaca account has it all -- elements of a movie, or even a TV series, that can surpass Cesar Montano's The Great Raid.