46 SPIRITUALITY
The Best Investment
By Bo Sanchez
IN THE WORLD When I was a kid, I learned that my mother lived during the war. With great excitement, I asked her, “Did you meet Magellan and Lapu-Lapu?” I was disappointed when she said, “No, I’m not 450 years old.” So I asked, “Did you meet Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio?” That’s when she explained to me that she didn’t live through World War I but World War II. She’s 84 years old today and I grew up with her war stories. I remember her stories about the Japanese Peso. “When the Japanese came, they printed their own money,” she said. “Eventually,
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we all got used to them. But after many months, the Japanese Peso began to lose its value. Soon, everyone called it Mickey Mouse money. It became play money.” “Why?” I asked. “Because of the rumors that the Americans were coming back. You won’t believe me, but when we heard over the radio that the American planes were coming, I remember how I had to bring a bayong of Japanese money to buy a bayong of food. One duck
egg cost Php75…” Two years after, they had to print 1,000 bills to cope up with inflation. My friend, Nanay Coring Ramos, founder of National Book Store, also lived during the war. She too was a young woman when the war broke out. But unlike my mother, she had business savvy. With her Japanese money, she bought goods that could be stored until the war