When ’Lives Were as Cheap as Chickens’: Dark Histories of the Barrio during the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, 1942–1945

There are dark histories in every nation’s past, stories that for one reason or another are best left out of official narratives. World War II is full of such “uncomfortable” histories. The political context in Southeast Asia, however, was more complicated than in Europe, the only other major world region almost entirely under the control of an occupying power during the war. Here collaboration involved “defecting” from one colonial power to another. In the Philippines, there has been limited scholarship on the many individuals accused of “treason” during Japan’s occupation of that country between 1942 and 1945. Only the activities of the national and regional elites have received serious consideration, and scant attention has been given to what life was like in rural areas, to the people living in the thousands of villages or barrios across the archipelago. Their lost stories, however, can still be recovered from the previously inaccessible records of the Historical Data Papers, the village histories mandated by President Quirino in 1951. The more than forty thousand pages of this unique source offer a grassroots account of the Japanese occupation told from the viewpoint of the barrio residents that challenges the previous wartime historiography of the islands.