Former congressional delegate from the Philippines Carlos P. Romulo, about 1946.
“People of the Philippines! This is the Voice of Freedom! I am speaking to you from the Tunnel of Corregidor, from the front lines of Bataan….” With those words, Major Carlos P. Romulo began another radio address to the Japanese-occupied Philippines.
Just before the war, in early December 1941, Romulo, a brilliant, articulate reporter, editor-in-chief, and part owner of the DMHM chain of newspapers, and a Columbia University graduate, was one of the leading citizens of Manila. He was an unfailing supporter of Philippine President Manuel Quezon and an outspoken champion of autonomy and freedom for the Philippines.
He had a deep hatred of imperialism, a hatred that grew when he toured the Far East just before the war. Yet he loved democracy and understood the telling differences between American imperialism and that brand practiced by the French, British, and Dutch. Romulo warned that the subject peoples of Southeast Asia (other than the Filipinos) would not only submit to the Japanese and not fight, they would welcome them.
War broke out in the Philippines on December 8. Romulo, a personal friend of General Douglas MacArthur, the principle American military leader in the Philippines, received a call on December 16 bringing him to active duty in his reserve rank as a major. Romulo had already written the articles that would win him a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting (articles that warned of the Japanese threat), and now MacArthur placed him in charge of press and radio. His task was to keep the citizens of the Philippines alert yet calm. The Americans wanted to prevent the dislocation and impediment to military maneuvers caused by panicked, displaced civilians.
MacArthur told Romulo, “Keep‘em warned, but don’t panic them. Always tell them the truth. People can stand the truth.” Romulo operated at first from Manila with its active press and numerous radio stations. He issued press releases and helped editors select headlines that would simultaneously soothe and inform. Hardly more than a week later, however, the Japanese drove the Americans and Romulo from the city to the fortress island of Corregidor. Cut off from normal communications, President Quezon needed to reach his people with words of hope and truth. So he called on Romulo to establish a radio station. MacArthur selected its name, “The Voice of Freedom.”
Romulo wrote radio programs designed to alert public opinion to the dangers facing the Philippines. His Corregidor station played comforting music and whatever good news that could be found: “Don’t listen to the Japanese, don’t believe their lies, the Japanese victory is temporary. Keep your faith in America. America will return and liberate the islands.” The fight was not for America, it was with America and for freedom.
Three times a day, Romulo spoke to the Filipinos and Americans fighting on Bataan and to the civilians under enemy occupation. He toured the Bataan battlefields to talk to the soldiers there. Romulo served MacArthur on Corregidor both as press coordinator and as an aide-decamp. He remained on the island when MacArthur was ordered out in March 1942. The Bataan army was collapsing in early April. MacArthur and Quezon agreed that Romulo must get out of the Philippines. He was a wanted man by the Japanese, a “traitor” with a price on his head. Romulo left Corregidor for Bataan late on April 8. After some wild driving through the rear areas of the defeated army, Romulo caught a ride in the last aircraft to fly out, a salvaged, patched, navy biplane. He was literally the last man out of Bataan.
MacArthur sent Romulo to the United States with orders to tell the Philippine story to the American people. Romulo reported to both President Quezon and to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Then he was off on a lecture tour that would cover every state in the Union. He met with relatives of the men trapped in the Philippines, he gave interviews, and he lectured at banquets. He spoke to factory workers, and he spoke to Congress. “Remember Bataan!” He brought the Philippine resistance alive to the people in America. He told them of the small bands of poorly-armed guerrillas, men who were keeping the faith. Because of Romulo’s efforts, the Philippines were no longer a distant country. Romulo was the embodiment of the country. He was its representative, its chronicler who told everyone about the fight on Bataan and Corregidor. He became a celebrity.
MacArthur called now-Brigadier General Romulo back to the Pacific in late 1944. Romulo and the new Philippine President, Sergio Osmeña (Quezon had died in the United States), joined MacArthur on October 20, 1944, in USS Nashville’s motor whaler as it carried them to Red Beach on Leyte, the Philippines. The party disembarked into knee-deep water and waded ashore. MacArthur addressed the Filipino people over a portable radio transmitter, Osmeña spoke to his countrymen, and Romulo closed by announcing restoration of his 1942 radio program.
“People of the Philippines, after two years of silence you are again hearing the Voice of Freedom. It was a voice that first cried out to you in the anguish of war. It speaks to you again in exhilaration. For this is liberation that brings us home.”
Romulo’s stay in the Philippines was short, however, for MacArthur ordered him back to Washington. Once again, Romulo addressed Congress. He told them of Mac Arthur’s return to Leyte and of the loyalty of the Filipinos. In an amazing feat of guerrilla organization, Romulo’s family, hiding for the past two years on Luzon, listened on a radio to Romulo address Congress.
Romulo returned to Luzon and joined the march on Manila. He was with MacArthur when the American flag was raised over Corregidor. Even now, his stay in his homeland was to be brief. President Osmeña sent Romulo to San Francisco in April 1945 as the chairman of the Philippine delegation to the newly organizing United Nations. It was an inspired choice. Romulo became an impassioned champion of the small nations of Asia.
Romulo returned to the Philippines to witness and record the celebrations marking Philippine independence on July 4, 1946. After the Japanese surrender, Romulo continued his fervent opposition to imperialism. He was instrumental in ensuring that the word “independence” rather than “self-governing” would apply in the United Nation’s charter in referring to that international body’s goal for former colonies and protectorates.
Romulo remained in the United States for seventeen years as Philippine ambassador and as fourth U.N. General Assembly president, the first Asian to hold that post. However, Romulo’s long stay in the United States did leave him open to the unfounded charge that he was merely a spokesman for that superpower, and he did seem a remote figure to the average poverty-stricken Filipino, to whom Romulo’s eighty-four honorary degrees (mostly from U.S. institutions) and almost one hundred special medals and citations meant little.
Romulo returned to his homeland to serve as president of the University of the Philippines and later as Philippine foreign minister. He died in December 1985.
FURTHER READING James, D. Clayton. The Years of MacArthur, 3 vols. (1970–1985). Romulo, Carlos P. I Saw the Fall of the Philippines (1942). Wells, Evelyn. Carlos P. Romulo: Voice of Freedom (1964).
