Wretchard brings us the story of Jose Abad Santos. Mr. Santos was Secretary of Justice and Acting Secretary of Finance, Agriculture and Commerce, having been named to those posts by the Phillipine governement prior to fleeing to Australia. Captured by the Japanese, tortured for nearly twenty days for operational intelligence, then sentenced to die . . .
At approximately 2 p.m. of May 7, 1942, the Japanese interpreter, Keiji Fukui, went to the Chief Justice to summon him to the Japanese Headquarters. After a few minutes, Jose Abad Santos returned and called for his son. Both went into a small hut nearby and there the father stoically informed his son: “I have been condemned to be executed.” Thereupon Jose, Jr. broke down and wept. But the father smilingly and affectionately reproved the son: “Don’t cry. What is the matter with you? Show these people that you are brave. It is a rare opportunity to die for one’s country and not everybody has that chance.” ...
Moderns will ask where lay this 'glory', a word in which we have largely ceased to believe. Did it lie in defending the fortress of his honor; in keeping faith with his friends? Did the memories of childhood in Pampanga and young manhood in America all run together at the end for Abad Santos? Or did it perhaps consist in that he believed there were things so important that they were worth dying to defend? In that he answered the question we are all asked in life in a way we would all like to? We know the collaborators lived long and prospered. Abad Santos has only our memory, on this the Fourth of July.
