Binding: Unknown Binding Label: DoubleDay Manufacturer: DoubleDay Number Of Pages: 383 Publication Date: 1961 Publisher: DoubleDay Studio: DoubleDay
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From: Philippine Daily Inquirer May 26, 2003 SECTION: 8
"LITTLE BROWN BROTHER" is the title of the book Leon Wolff wrote in 1961. It was an eye-opener not just for Filipinos but for Americans as well, most of whom had grown up believing the American seizure of the Philippines, along with Cuba and Puerto Rico, before the turn of the last century was done with the noblest of intentions and wrought through the most benign of intrusions. The original title of the book was "Little Brown Brother: The Forgotten American Bid For Empire Which Cost 250,000 Lives," which was eventually shortened. The subtitle pretty much sums up what the book is about. The 250,000 lives were of course the Filipinos', the American occupation force, as in Iraq more than a century later, suffering few casualties.
Wolff's book told not just of the way a good portion of the new colony's population was wiped out but of the way the entire population's memory was wiped out. The first claimed only 250,000 lives, the latter the souls of nearly every inhabitant of the island. Superimposed on the horrific reality was the general patronage movie version of the occupation, not unlike Fernando Poe's, which told of the making of the "little brown brother," the sidekick, with the face of Dencio Padilla, who would forever be at the hero's side. It was to become the cornerstone of "special relations," relations which have proven especially comfortable for the United States and especially excruciating to the Philippines. "
From The Washington Post, February 24, 1985:
The story of how, and why America liberated the Philippines from Spain and then took the islands back from their inhabitants two weeks later is a complicated one, already well told in one of the classics of American historiography, Leon Wolff's Little Brown Brother, published in 1960.
From BusinessWorld October 21, 1998:
"Little Brown Brother." The author is Leon Wolff, who also wrote the celebrated "In Flanders Field." The subhead on the front cover title and the introduction by the publishers provide an idea of the contents:
"America's Forgotten Bid for Empire Which Cost 250,000 Lives - At the end of the last century, when British imperialism was at its peak, the United States embarked on an acquisitive venture unique in that freedom-loving nation's story. The extra-ordinary circumstances of the annexation of the Philippine Islands and the bloody three-year war that followed the insurrection of its eight million inhabitants (a war in which a quarter of a million U.S. troops and Filipinos died) are today all but forgotten, even in America...
"It was after America's easy Caribbean victory in the war with Spain (1898) that the imperialist faction in American politics, whose leaders included President McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, provoked a political controversy of almost unparalleled bitterness. Meanwhile, ten thousand miles away in the western Pacific, Filipino patriots under Emilio Aguinaldo, who had helped the invading Americans drive out the hated Spaniards, found themselves betrayed by their liberators and saddled with a fresh domination - against which they promptly revolted."
Wolff presents a balanced narrative, depicting an America split between the anti-imperialists, typified by William Jennings Bryant and Mark Twain, and politicians like McKinley, with his delusions of his country's "manifest destiny," and Roosevelt (Theodore), the former Rough Rider, who lumped Filipinos along with the native Americans whom he had fought in the bloody Indian wars.
According to Wolff, in accepting his vice-presidential nomination, Roosevelt declared: "... the presence of (U.S.) troops in the Philippines during the Tagal (Tagalog) insurrection has no more to do with militarism or imperialism than had their presence in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wyoming during the many years which elapsed before the final outbreaks of the Sioux were definitely put down... (Self-government) under Aguinaldo would be like granting self-government to an Apache reservation under some local chief..."
This attitude was reflected in the way the Americans conducted the war. Two officers of a U.S. regiment leaked a particularly gory episode to the New York World, which wrote:
"... our soldiers here and there resort to horrible measures with the natives. Captains and lieutenants are sometimes judges, sheriffs and executioners... 'I don't want any more prisoners sent to Manila,' was the verbal order from the Governor-General three months ago... It is now the custom to avenge the death of an American soldier by burning to the ground all the houses, and killing right and left the natives who are only 'suspects.'"...
Liberation meant conquest
New York Times Review March 5, 1961
...Wolff also author of "In Flanders Field," condemns a few cruel men, but writes understandingly of the pressures and counter-pressures that led to inhuman conduct. The struggle became, for all the participants, a nightmare war fought in torrential tropical rains and ankle deep mud, involving incessant fatigue and hunger and a sudden horrible death along jungle trails...Wolff, drawing upon a mass of contemporary writing, published documents and the memoirs of Anguinaldo, has succeeded admirably in re-creating both sides of this nearly forgotten conflict. It is a shame that the American troops, fighting with courage and fortitude, were not enlisted in a better cause. At the time it appeared far more noble than it does today, but even then a British magazine commented, "There have never been more wicked wars than this...but never a more shabby war."
