Page 50 - WashingtonSyCip_Bio_Excerpt_2nd_Edition

Part One

Suiting up for boot camp

Wash was hardly alone in this sentiment. As Alex Fabros notes, “Thousands of Filipinos
had petitioned for the right to serve in the US military immediately after December
7, 1941. On January 2, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a law
revising the Selective Service Act. Filipinos in the United States could now join the
US Armed Forces and they were urged to volunteer for service. President Roosevelt
quickly authorized the founding of a Filipino unit, which would be organized for
service overseas. It estimated the number of available Filipino volunteers between
70,000 and 100,000.

“So many Filipino volunteers came from all over the United States that the 2 Filipino
nd
Infantry Regiment was formed at Fort Ord, California on November 22, 1942. In
st
January 1943, the 1 Regiment was reassigned to Camp Beale, near Sacramento, and
nd
the 2 Regiment to Camp Cooke, near Santa Barbara.”

It was here, in Camp Cooke, that Wash would report for training, after signing up
in New York and asking to be assigned to one of the two Filipino infantry regiments
he had heard were being organized specifically for the retaking of the islands. Camp
Cooke had just been set up in September 1941 by the US Army mainly for the
th
training of the 5 Armored Division; eventually over 400 units would pass through
this facility. (In 1956, Camp Cooke was turned over to the Air Force, under which it
became Vandenberg Air Force Base.)

Wash considered himself physically fit, enough to weather the arduous three-month
basic training course. “My waistline was 28,” he remembers. He and his fellow
trainees had to carry heavy packs and rifles and to march the whole evening, putting
one’s hand on the shoulder of the man ahead and trying to get some sleep in that
position, before switching roles. They were up again early in the morning. But Wash
never thought of quitting, fired up by the challenge of being part of the campaign
to drive the enemy from his homeland. “At that point, the announcement was that
the Japanese were moving ahead, and MacArthur promised that he was coming back.
That was a lie, but at the time, we believed that the US would actually at some point
rescue the Philippines. Of course much later we would find out that their priority
really was Europe.”

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