Let me digress from my topic and write something about Memorial Day. I am thinking about my not half-, but full-brother, Felix, who died in the Capas Concentration Camp in May 1942. He was born May 18, 1920. He was single.
When I went to Manila in 1993 to attend my son Tony's promotion to Commodore, I visited Elix's grave in Ft. Bonifacio. On the cross marking his grave was a name Benigno Aquino.
I guess I am the only one thinking of him today, although our step-mother, Anicia Sibayan, second wife of father, is receiving a pension as Elix's beneficiary since 1946 because we were both minors when father married her in 1933, one year after mother's death.
If Elix were alive, he would be 75 years old now. W would not know what career he could have taken, but like me, I know he would now be a PENSIONADO. That was our ambition when we were small kids. We were going together to the slaughterhouse to buy "lomolomo" for breakfast and I asked him what he would like to be. I gave examples as: lawyer, doctor, engineer, teacher, etc. We both agreed to become PENSIONADO. Why?
Because at the end of the month our neighbor Mr. Guesson would pass by and father would tell him: "Naimbag kapay giem ta agawawatika ti cuarta nga saan nga ag tartarbayo." (You are very fortunate my friend because you are receiving money without working.) I asked father why, and he said because he is a "pensionado."
We thought that "pensionado" was a profession! Hence we decided to become a PENSIONADO!
I helped him enter the service as a private before the war in the Ordnance Service. He died as a Corporal, a survivor of the Bataan Death March, as a POW.
We saw each other in Bataan twice, first when he came to my office in the G-2 Section Hq 29 Regular Division (PC) USAFFE near Bauto Pt., across Corregidor. There I gave him food to eat because he was very tired and hungry coming from the front lines.
He promised to come back with a springfield rifle to be our souvenier when we go back to Manila. When he came back with the rifle and it's bayonet, he was quite thin, buty with his spirits because of the news about a "one-mile convoy" headed for the Philippines from America to liberate us.
I fed him again with crackers and condensed milk, which he liked very much. I even gave him some dried carabao's meat and sugar to take back to the front lines. That was our last meeting.
After our surrender in April 9 1942, I met his boss, Col. Hugo Cunanan, near Corregidor Island and I asked for my brother. He said, "They are behind, following us." I delayed my trip to Monvieles trying to look for Elix. Col. Cunanan was with several officers then. He left his men behind. (I found out after the war that they boarded a boat to cross Manila Bay, but they were straffed by Japanese planes.)
I failed to see Elix in the Death March or when we were going down Little Baguio. I could have escaped by riding a banca on Hagonoy River to Bulacan if not for Elix's sake.
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