The restoration of the Philippine Commonwealth government

On 27 February 1945, at Malacañang Palace in Manila, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur handed over civil authority in the liberated Philippines, on behalf of the United States, to President Sergio Osmeña. Osmeña, thanking the Americans, announced the restoration in the capital of the government of the Commonwealth of the Philippines – the same government that at the turn of 1941 and 1942 had been forced to leave Manila, and then the archipelago, and for more than two years had operated in exile in Washington. The ceremony took place while fighting for the last Japanese strongpoints was still going on in the southern part of the city.

Many chronologies of the war record under 28 February 1945 that “the government of the Philippines was established”. Two corrections are needed. According to the available studies, the ceremony at Malacañang took place a day earlier, on 27 February. Above all, no new government was created at the time: what was restored was the constitutional authority of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, which had existed without interruption since 1935.

The Commonwealth and the government-in-exile

The Commonwealth of the Philippines was established on 15 November 1935 under the American Tydings–McDuffie Act of 1934. It was an autonomous transitional period: the Filipinos had their own constitution, president and legislature, while the United States retained control of defence and foreign policy. Full independence was to follow after ten years – on 4 July 1946. The president was Manuel Quezon, and the vice-president his long-time partner and rival in the Nacionalista Party, Sergio Osmeña of Cebu.

The war disrupted this timetable. As the Japanese approached the capital, Quezon and Osmeña moved to the island of Corregidor, where on 30 December 1941 they were sworn in for a second term; on 2 January 1942 the Japanese occupied Manila. In February 1942 the president and vice-president left by submarine for the south, and from there for Australia and the United States – as did MacArthur, whom Roosevelt ordered out of the Philippines. After the surrender of Corregidor in May 1942 the Commonwealth government operated only in Washington, supporting the resistance and working to keep the Philippines in the minds of American policymakers.

In 1943 a constitutional dispute arose: Quezon’s term was to expire on 30 December, after which power should have passed to Osmeña. At Osmeña’s own request, the United States Congress in November 1943 suspended the succession provisions until the islands were liberated. Quezon, gravely ill with tuberculosis, nevertheless died on 1 August 1944 at Saranac Lake in New York State, and on the same day Osmeña was sworn in in Washington as President of the Commonwealth.

The return via Leyte

Osmeña was not a figure MacArthur held in particularly high regard – the general had long been a friend of Quezon. Even so, on 20 October 1944 the president went ashore with him during the landing on Leyte. His presence was meant to show that it was the lawful government returning to the islands, not a foreign administration. On 23 October, at Tacloban, MacArthur proclaimed the restoration of the Commonwealth authorities in the liberated territory, and the town became their temporary seat.

For the months that followed, however, Osmeña’s authority was largely symbolic. In the occupied areas the military governed in practice, and the civil administration was only beginning to be rebuilt. After the American landing in Lingayen Gulf on 9 January 1945, the capital became the main objective of the campaign.

A ceremony in a ruined capital

The Battle of Manila, which began on 3 February, turned the city into ruins. The Japanese naval units of Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, contrary to the intentions of General Tomoyuki Yamashita, defended themselves house by house, murdering thousands of civilians as they did so; American artillery destroyed one building after another in which they had barricaded themselves. According to commonly accepted estimates, some 100,000 civilians died in the fighting for the city. By 24 February the Americans had taken the historic Intramuros, but as late as 27 February the Japanese were still holding out in the Finance Building. The last resistance was broken on 3 March, bringing the Battle of Manila to an end.

Malacañang Palace, the presidential residence on the north bank of the Pasig River, had survived – troopers of the 1st Cavalry Division had taken it as early as 3 February. There MacArthur assembled members of the Commonwealth government, legislators and representatives of the Filipino elite. According to accounts, including his own memoirs, he spoke with great emotion. The best-known line of his speech is “My country has kept the faith”; he went on to say that the capital, though cruelly punished, had regained its rightful place as a citadel of democracy in the East. The general later recalled that the sight of the devastated city, where he had spent many years of his life, robbed him that day of any joy in victory, and that his emotion prevented him from finishing his speech with composure.

In reply, Osmeña thanked the United States and announced that the Commonwealth government was resuming its duties. In the following weeks he began to rebuild the administration: on 8 April 1945 a new cabinet was sworn in, the Supreme Court and the lower courts were restored, and as province after province was liberated the local authorities took over tasks from the military. In June the Commonwealth Congress convened and elected Manuel Roxas President of the Senate.

Laurel’s republic and the problem of collaboration

The restoration of the Commonwealth government meant the end – at least in the capital – of the Second Philippine Republic. The Japanese had proclaimed it in October 1943, with José P. Laurel as president. Formally independent, it was bound to Tokyo by a treaty of alliance and operated under the control of the Japanese military. In September 1944, under Japanese pressure, it declared a state of war with the United States and Britain.

Laurel and his ministers were evacuated by the Japanese from Manila to the mountains of northern Luzon, to Baguio. In the spring of 1945 Laurel, with his family and a few associates, flew from Tuguegarao via Taiwan to Japan. On 17 August 1945, after Japan’s surrender, he announced the dissolution of his government at Nara. Arrested on MacArthur’s orders, he returned to the Philippines in 1946 and stood trial on charges of treason.

The question of collaboration became one of the hardest problems facing the reborn state. Many pre-war politicians – including men from Quezon’s circle whom he had instructed in 1941 to stay in Manila – had held posts in the occupation administration. Some of them argued that they had shielded the population from the worst; others had genuinely collaborated out of conviction. Osmeña, who had himself spent the war abroad, was in an awkward position towards those who had stayed. Washington pressed for a reckoning; in September 1945 the Commonwealth Congress set up a People’s Court to try collaboration cases. Meanwhile, as early as April 1945, MacArthur had declared Manuel Roxas, who had been a minister in Laurel’s government but had also kept in touch with the guerrillas, to be “liberated” rather than detained.

Place in the war

The ceremony at Malacañang closed the political part of the Luzon campaign, although fighting on the island and in the south of the archipelago went on until the end of the war – on 28 February the Americans landed on Palawan. For the Philippines a difficult period of reconstruction began: the capital lay in ruins, the economy was shattered, and the left-wing Hukbalahap guerrillas in central Luzon had no intention of submitting to the old elites.

The restored government led the country towards the promised independence. At the beginning of 1946 Roxas, backed by MacArthur, broke with Osmeña and became leader of the new Liberal Party. In the election of 23 April 1946 he defeated the incumbent president. On 4 July 1946, in accordance with the timetable of 1934, the United States recognised the independence of the Republic of the Philippines, and Roxas became its first president. In January 1948 he proclaimed an amnesty for those accused of political collaboration, which also ended Laurel’s trial. Osmeña withdrew from politics and died in 1961.