Duterte seems to have conveniently forgotten the cost in American lives during World War II IN THE PHILIPPINES.
The guy is nuts.
Period.
Hey what if we give the Philippines back to Japan? Spoils of war and all that....
Non sequitur.
When Corregidor fell there were 60,000 Filipino and 15,000 American soldiers there.
On the Bataan Death March an estimated 300-650 American soldiers were killed or died of other causes.
An estimated 2,500-10,000 Filipino soldiers were killed or died.
Many prisoners were able to slip away and joined guerrilla units later.
By wars end the guerrilla movement controlled 60% of the countryside.
The guerrilla units harassed the Japanese and provided valuable Intel to US military planners.
At one point guerrillas captured several ranking Japanese officers as well as documents that made it clear they were aware of the planned US landing at Mindanao as well as Japanese naval assets available.
The Japanese instituted a scorched earth policy chasing that guerrilla band. Razing villages and killing every Filipino they encountered.
The guerrillas were forced to hand over their captives to stop the bloodshed. The intel documents were smuggled aboard a US submarine allowing the landing to be changed to Letye.
By the end of the war there were 277 recognised guerrilla units with over 260,000 men who were supplied by the US by submarine or whatever they could capture from the Japanese.
The Filipino resistance joked that by wars end there wasn’t a curtain rod left in the Philippine Islands because they had been donated to be cut down and used to make bullets to fight the Japanese.
For decades after the war a Filipino soldier was chosen each month.
At morning roll call when the name Douglas MacArthur was called the chosen soldier would take one step forward, loudly announce Present In Spirit and step back into line.
Give them their bells back.
They earned it.
so the most was the bells from a hundred years ago? That makes no sense. Who gives a rats ass about the bells. Give em back.