| Summary: | Collaboration during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines was a thorny issue when World War II ended in 1945 and after the independence a year later. A People's Court was formed in 1945 to try the guilty parties which included Commonwealth government officials and civilians. The amnesty proclamation by President Manuel Roxas in 1948, however, ended the trials of these collaborators with the intention of "healing the nation" after the tragedy of war. But the stigma of being a collaborator remained for a time for these officials and civilians. Two of them were considered heroes during the fight for Philippine Independence from 1896 to 1898 -- Emilio Aguinaldo and Artemio Ricarte. this article narrates the circumstances that gave rise to the accusation of collaboration against these two men. It also attempts to show how history dealt with the stigma that as time went by, the memory of cooperating with the Japanese was eventually lost in the biographies of Aguinaldo, yet still remains with Ricarte.
|
|---|