Word: samar
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Filipino guerrillas massacred a company of American soldiers, slicing open the corpses and filling them with molasses and jam to attract ants. In retaliation, one U.S. general ordered his men to turn the island of Samar into "a howling wilderness." Samar has never recovered. Forty-one years later, Filipinos were risking savage Japanese reprisals to feed American prisoners of war marching in the notorious Bataan Death March. At war's end, Filipinos hailed the Yanks with a band playing God Bless America...
...Tablas Strait, some 110 miles south of Manila. The people who crammed the decks on makeshift cots and slept three or four to a bed were scheduled to be in the capital by morning, and the air was filled with anticipation. Young women from the impoverished island of Samar talked excitedly about finding jobs as maids in Manila homes. Mothers and fathers tucked their children into bed and chatted about the relatives and the sights they would soon...
Western analysts estimate that the New People's Army (N.P.A.), a loose association of radical nationalists inspired by Mao, now has 7,000 to 10,000 armed members, supported by a base of 100,000 sympathizers. The movement's greatest strength is concentrated in northern Luzon, Samar, and in eastern Mindanao, where N.P.A. bands, sometimes numbering as many as 200 guerrillas, have attacked military outposts and where the organization claims to control 200 villages. The government has dealt harshly with the Communist insurgents, publishing lists of the most wanted leaders and offering rewards for their capture, and jailing...
...with the press and local politicians finished as alternative courts of appeal, Filipinos have turned increasingly to the Church, gratifying the activists and nudging the moderates towards the opposition. In places like Quiapo and Baclaran in Manila, in battle-ridden provinces like Samar and South Cotabato, Filipinos have always trudged to mass to pray for such amenities as rice and cooking oil. Now they ask the Church to help them find missing relatives or intercede with the military so they can return to their evacuated farms...