Letter TO GENERAL ROMULO by Renata D. Tayag My dear General: HEN I was in Washington, D.C., last December, I went to your office at 1617 Massachusetts Avenue to pay my respects, as all Filipinos should who go visiting in Washington. Dr. Arturo B. Rotor offered to present me to you. Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for the Filipino people, you were busy attending some conference or session at Capitol Hill. I was somewhat disappointed, for I thus missed the chance of talking with the person who is the voice of the Filipin'o people in America. Yes, I wanted to talk with that voice, as well as listen to it. I've been told that there is no escaping it. When you speak, eighteen million Filipinos speak. The voice is you" but it is also the voice of the people whom you so ably represent. The voice is eloquent mainly because in the eyes of America your people's deeds have been eloquent. Americans told me that they have heard that voice f rom the platform, over the radio, and in the movies. lance had occasion to listen to that voice during my first week-end in Detroit. It was at the Telenews on Woodward Avenue. The main feature was HOrders From Tokyo," a pictorial ac· count of the brutalities the Japanese committed in Manila. You came on the screen to give the introduction. There was a hushed silence the moment you utter ed your first words. Hel'e was a Filipino, short and pug-nosed, every inch a foreill'ner, yet how eloquently he used the Enll'lish tonll'U"! When the movie
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was over and the lig hts were turned on, my companion Captain Angel Salcedo and I stood up to go out. All eyes seemed turned to us and I suddenly became selfLater I thought how that conscious. white audi.ence, having just been thrilled by the spectacle of an English-speaking Filipino general must have been delighted to see two of his countrymen right 111 their midst. Later that night I conceived the idea of calling on you at the American capital. Had we met I would not have been satisfied with merely listening to your voice. I would have talked with it. I would have prayed for your kind indulgence to listen to me on something which is of grave import to Philippine-American r elations. I felt sure then that you would not have had the heart to r efuse. I understand you won't have anything to do with collaborators. Well, I am not one. Except if we take into account that, having lived in a town, I and the rest of my family automatically became members of a neighborhood associat ion, and that I got marr ied and had a child during the Japanese occupation. I should add that I bowed before the Jap sentry whenever I had to, even as the boldest guerrillero did when he visited town. I was in the batHe of Bataan, but this happened 50 long ago that it is no longer accepted as a test of loyalty, it seems. I was in the Death March too and reached the Death Camp. All along the way our countrymen who saw how we
