THE HUKS (PART IV) Casto Alejandrino never received due recognition for the role he and his Huks played in WWII, fighting the Japanese occupiers. This is because they were known as communists. But the most effective resistance fighters in the Second World War were communists, whether French maquisards or Yugoslav Titoists. Even the Americans had to grudgingly admit, per their US Army reports, that the Huks were the most effective resistance fighters in Asia during WWII. At 31, Casto was chosen at the Cabiao meeting in March 1942 to be the top military commander. By March 1943, he had 10,000 well-trained and well-armed fighters which by the end of the war had swelled to 20,000 with 50,000 in reserve. In 1943 he had roughly the same number of troops as Gen. Jose Alejandrino did when at 29 he assumed command of the revolutionary forces in Central Luzón in 1899-1900 during the Phil-American War. By January 1945, before the Americans landed in Leyte, Casto and his Huks controlled most of Tarlac, Pampanga, and Nueva Ecija. They had established provisional governments in Pampanga and Nueva Ecija. Two Huk squadrons joined up with the US 11th Airborne División to rescue American prisoners in Japanese prison camps in Cabanatuan and Los Baños. The Huks also contributed to liberating parts of Southern Luzón. They had inflicted, according to American estimates, 25,000 casualties on the Japanese and their collaborators. They were the biggest and most coherent resistance fighting forcé in the Philippines, the other guerrilla groups numbering only a few hundred men each. If the Americans had not intervened in the time of Elpidio Quirino and pushed for Ramon Magsaysay as defense chief, there was little doubt, Casto told me, the Huks would have taken over the government. They were at the gates of Manila and had beaten nearly every government battalion sent after them.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Oct 2013 16:57:22 +0000
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