Under the Pouch of Judas

By Uriel R. and Carolyn J. Limjoco

Inspired by the character and teachings of Dr. Jose Rizal, the youthful and lovely Marissa struggled to lift the living conditions in rural Philippines with the help of a dedicated American military physician at a time when hate and political debauchery governed the country. Is it worth the ultimate sacrifice? Perhaps so. Only time will tell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886449631

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

About the Author

cover.jpg

Under the Pouch of Judas

Uriel R. and Carolyn J. Limjoco

ISBN 979-8-88644-962-4 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88644-964-8 (Hardcover)

ISBN 979-8-88644-963-1 (Digital)

Copyright © 2023 Uriel R. & Carolyn J. Limjoco

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

To the memory of Emilio and Clara Limjoco, the sweetest parents any two sons can ever receive from God. May they rest in peace.

To all Filipino immigrants who came to the United States, asking not what America can do for them but rather what they can do for America.

Chapter 1

When I was a boy growing up in the Philippines, I once attended Mass at a cathedral in Manila, which was noted for its priest who gave the best and clearest homilies ever of passages in the Bible mixed with good natured humor. In one of his homilies, he said in jest, I am not after your pockets, I am after your souls because if I get your souls, I'll get your pockets anyway. Humorous but true.

Throughout early history, Christianity was introduced to the New World by early Europeans principally to spread the Word of God, but many of the early friars used the native's newly acquired belief in God and fear of Satan in exploiting them for pleasurable and other reasons. Exploiting them for the new countries' natural resources such as spices, gold, silver, lumber, and other materials needed to fatten treasuries of old European countries in their efforts to support their own armies and navies. So effective was their brainwashing of the natives that even as a boy growing up in the Philippines during the late 1940s, I've noticed some of my elderly relatives' fear of excommunication, which, in their belief amounts to eternal damnation, worse than death itself. Pirates of the Caribbean attacked galleons sailing from the New World back to Europe for the treasure in their cargo holds. Never would they attack galleons on their way to the New World.

Many of the old European countries succeeded in accomplishing this purpose through colonization and the establishment of puppet monarchies in the different countries of the New World. It was not until the United States promulgated the Monroe Doctrine in December 1823 that colonization seemed to have reached its decline.

Spanish colonization of the Philippines started when Ferdinand Magellan landed on the island of Cebu on March 16, 1521, and planted the cross of Christ on its shore. Christianity was not formally introduced until the arrival of Miguel Lopez de Legaspi in 1565. But the Filipinos retained many of the pre-Hispanic beliefs in unnatural creatures.

The Philippines bears no difference from many countries in the world in culture, arts, science, and legends. On any clear starlit night, away from city lights, a Filipino may glance skyward and find a clump of stars, presumably the Crab Nebula, and sees it as the legendary Pouch of Judas.

Many Filipinos believe that after the Crucifixion, Judas's thirty pieces of silver that he threw at the priests who paid him, miraculously went back into the original pouch. The pouch itself with the silver in it flew upward and became the Pouch of Judas in the evening sky. These stars shine brightly, at times to warn the viewers of forthcoming danger or pestilence. Other Filipinos, specially the learned, do not believe in this or other legends.

The story you are about to read is fiction, but it is inspired by true events that took place in the Philippines between 1896 and 1925 and up to 1941 as related by an American who was emeritus professor of hygiene and sanitation at a prestigious medical school when Manila was bombed by the Japanese in December 1941. Much of our information is from stories I heard from my late parents and elderly aunts and uncles and retired and most likely now deceased professors at the University of the Philippines, College of Medicine, my alma mater, during the early to mid-1950s.

Occupying almost the entire second floor of a three-story structure located just a few yards west from the main basic science building of the medical school on Herran Avenue is the department of parasitology and epidemiology. Looking down from the west windows of the building, one can easily see the driveway to an all-girl high school managed by the sisters of Divine Mercy. Some mornings, before their laboratory sessions start, many male medical students would entertain themselves by looking down at the smartly dressed students as they are dropped off by chauffeured cars on their way to school. A few doors just inside of the entry to the department is the large office occupied by the former department head, now emeritus professor, Dennis McBride.

Bostonian sixty-nine-year-old Professor Dennis McBride graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1898 after completing undergraduate education at West Point Military Academy in 1894. He became a captain in the United States Army Medical Corps in 1901 and was assigned to an army post in Mindanao the same year.

After his military career, he was recruited by Dr. Frank Wilburn Dorchester of a fledgling medical school to start its department of parasitology and hygiene.

He was very well suited for the job having spent some time with Dr. Walter Reed in research, his experience as an army medical officer in Mindanao and going back to Boston and to England to acquire a postgraduate doctorate in tropical diseases.

As emeritus professor and pioneer in medicine, Dr. McBride had a comfortable office space provided by the medical school. In addition to books and pamphlets, microscopes and posters depicting the transmission of communicable diseases, Dennis McBride kept the porcelain bust of a beautiful woman on top of a pedestal in a prominent corner of his office. It was engraved with the name Marissa just below the bust.

Professor McBride has an ultra-large poster on one wall of his office showing the life cycle of a parasite he became familiar with during his time as United States Army medical officer in Mindanao in 1901, the liver fluke or schistosomiasis. The sight of naked, undernourished little children with large bellies prompted him to devote much time in studying the life cycle of the infective parasite, Schistosoma japonicum, in order to effectively break it.

The poster was meant to diagrammatically emphasize the need for sanitation and personal hygiene to prevent the parasitic infection. On the upper left of the poster is an affected child defecating on a pond. Parasitic larvae emerge from eggs that hatched from the stool. Arrows show larvae penetrating into freshwater snails. After a time inside the snail, the larvae develop into another stage that can penetrate skin of other children swimming in the pond or drinking the water from the pond.

Two books that seem to be out of place in his voluminous medical bookcase are the two novels written by Philippine hero, Dr. José P. Rizal. Noli Me Tángere and El Filibusterismo. Although he is American by birth, he had stayed most of his life in the Philippines and is an authority on Philippine history. When asked by students why he never married, his standard answer was I lost my heart in the jungles of Mindanao.

Professor McBride had another thing in his office no other teacher in the university possessed. He tended a fish tank and changed its water once a week using water from the Pasig River. There were no fish swimming in the tank, but he had fifty squirming, undulating black leeches. He fed them earthworms, one per leech every week. He kept the tank tightly covered to prevent the leeches from escaping. He always told stories about how leeches can bleed you dry if you swim in infected waters because they can each consume ten times their weight in blood and still keep on going. He also joked to the medical students that if you were not careful in Mindanao and swam in infected waters, the snail flukes would kill you if the leeches didn't bleed you dry first.

Regarding the bust of the beautiful lady in his office, Dr. McBride claimed that this lady should be the country's founder of sanitation and hygiene although her work was unrecognized and should be the subject for a detailed investigation and eventual recognition. There is truth in the statement he made to his students that he lost his heart in the jungles of Mindanao. Had destiny been different, either one of three things could have happened. He would have been a happily married professor with a big family in Manila, a happily married practicing physician somewhere in Mindanao, or a prominent physician with beautiful Eurasian children growing up somewhere in Wisconsin. Of the three options, the last was foremost in his consciousness…then. Many nights he dreamed of walking and kicking red and golden fallen maple leaves with Marissa and their children during the fall season, tobogganing and sledding on snow-packed Wisconsin hills or simply enjoying the vision of white apple orchard blossoms in the spring. Introducing Marissa to the American way of life would have been as delightful as the experience he had with Marissa introducing him to Filipino culture. But the other two options were just as delightful to him, as long as they were with his lovely Marissa.

Not unbeknownst to him, the Second World War had already erupted and may well be on its way to affect the lives of every Filipino. Pearl Harbor was bombed, and radio broadcasts had been tracing the advancing Japanese military throughout Asia with alarming rapidity. It would not be long before the Philippines would be under the brutal control of the Japanese Empire. Heard over recent radio broadcasts were the sinking of the British warship Hood and the German ship Bismarck. The American commander of the combined Filipino-American troops and military advisor to Philippine President Manuel Quezon, General Douglas MacArthur, had declared Manila to be an open city, but the Japanese bombed other open cities in Asia anyway.

Two of the major newspapers in Manila at that time were The Manila Times and Manila Bulletin. Both newspapers have shown photographs and published items of people in Europe, escaping from the invaded countries by the Germans to adjacent countries for safety. They carried their valuable items along with them.

Being surrounded by the Pacific Ocean, similar escape is quite impossible from the Philippines. The closest foreign country is Formosa (Taiwan), almost eight hundred miles away, and the Japanese were already there. Most Filipinos prepared for invasion by getting their obvious health needs corrected and burying their wealth underground. Dental offices were being overwhelmed with patients wanting cavities filled or simply teeth cleaned professionally. Others dug large holes in their backyards burying gold, silver, jewelry, and valuable antique items to keep them safe from the expected forthcoming looting by the Japanese.

*****

Located about one hundred kilometers south and west of the capital city of Manila, on the eastern coast of South China Sea, is the small town of Tabakan, within the province of Batangas. Its population of around twenty thousand, mostly rice and sugarcane farmers, prepares for a war, which they believe to be a short one, with mixed emotions. Most of the houses in Tabakan are made up of bamboo and cogon grass roofs, except for a few stronger and sturdier houses of wood and aluminum roofing. One of the sturdier homes was owned by the late grand lady of the town, Doña Pilár Hugo de Valencia, and her son, Bibiano.

Peace-loving and deeply religious in the Catholic faith that they have inherited from the Spaniards, they carry the conviction that a Japanese occupation could not be worse than the Spanish enslavement that their ancestors endured so many years ago. The current American occupation had so far given them the four major liberties, which were basically unknown under the Spaniards. They had even had the chance of browsing through the new Sears catalog and ordered a multitude of goods by mail not otherwise available to their ancestors.

One of the largest revolts against Spanish rule in the province of Batangas in 1896 started in Tabakan. Scars of that revolution could still be found in the ruins of its old church just outside of the town. There is one main asphalt road in the small town of Tabakan, which runs from south to north and ends in the village of Sawa. All crossing roads are mere dirt roads.

In one of the sturdier homes lives a sixty-four-year-old widow, Solita Riego dos Santos. Her first husband, Bibiano Hugo de Valencia, was killed by the Spaniards during the revolution. Years later, she married her late husband's second cousin, Saturnino Riego dos Santos. She never had any children with her first husband, but she did have three girls with Saturnino. Unfortunately, the babies all died during infancy. Struck with grief, Saturnino never took care of himself afterward and died of tuberculosis just a few years after Doña Pilár passed away.

Assisted by her two houseboys, Arturo and Restituto, she is burying a burlap wrapped English-made clock, which was a gift from the late Dr. Rizal to her former mother-in-law Doña Pilár Hugo de Valencia, who passed away at the ripe old age of ninety-seven.

Resty, dig the pit deep enough, she orders Restituto.

Señora, if we dig any deeper, we might find water here already.

Oh, okay. But be sure that you and Arturo secure the clock very tightly. Plant a papaya tree on top of the mound, okay?

Yes, ma'am, Señora Solita.

Educated in Manila at the Centro Escolar University, Solita taught biology at the local high school until she retired four years ago. She still remembers the time at the turn of the century when she and her late husband, Bibiano, teamed up with Marissa in their effort to establish sanitation and hygiene in the town of Tabakan.

Marissa was not from Tabakan. Marissa was from Palayera in Mindanao. A former secretary to Dr. Rizal, Marissa was in Manila when Rizal was executed by the Spaniards. This execution was also witnessed by Solita's late mother-in-law Doña Pilár, her late husband, and herself.

Solita never left Tabakan and her former mother-in-law Pilár, even after she married her former husband's second cousin, the late Saturnino Riego dos Santos. She devoted herself to the aid of her former mother-in-law, who was deformed and bound by arthritis to a wheelchair for almost thirty years before she passed away.

Her two houseboys live with her and are always with her when she walked the short distance to the new Catholic Church for daily Mass and Communion. Between the church and her house is the town plaza or square where a huge statue of the national hero José Rizal stands.

Not too far from the statue is the original artesian well that she, Marissa, and her late husband dug years ago before Marissa left the town for Mindanao. As the two boys complete their job of burying her treasure and replanting a four-foot papaya tree on the small mound, she sees a horse-drawn calesa pull up to the front of her house. She sees a familiar face come down from the calesa to meet her.

Good morning, Solita, did Resty and Arturo bury everything of value? Sofía Samaniego asks. Sofía is a first cousin of her late husband Bibiano, a few years older than she is.

Áte Sofía, they did bury the clock…

How about Tita's…Tita's kwán? She motions the act of eating with her fingers.

Silverware? Do you think we need to bury that too?

The town mayor told us that everything, including silverware…

Oh okay. I'll get them from the kitchen and have Arturo and Restituto bury them too.

Solita tells the two boys that the silverware in the kitchen need to be buried as well, close to where they are burying the clock.

As the two elderly ladies watch the boys do their burying job, Sofía remembers something and asks Solita.

Have you seen Mr. Yamakura lately? Yamakura is the Japanese owner of a variety store in town. He is always kindly to the townspeople, allowing them to buy merchandise on time from him without interest.

No, Áte Sofía. The last time I saw him in his store was two months ago when a young, bespectacled Japanese gentleman arrived. He very quickly closed the store, and the two of them just disappeared. Why?

The mayor told me and Father Conrado that Mr. Yamakura was really a Japanese spy in disguise.

I can hardly believe that. He was so kind to everybody.

Solita, it can be very dangerous here within the next few days, and you must pack up and come with us to Barrio Pandán. Take Arturo and Restituto with you.

But, Áte, I have not talked to Manong Gaspár or Manang Mariquita about going there…

But I have. And they are ready to welcome us to their house there. Over the years, they have been adding on to their original house, and now it is really big enough. My daughter Conchita and her children are there already.

"Oh, Áte, I hope this Japanese occupation will be brief as the newspapers and radio broadcasts have been telling us.

I really don't know, but I do hope that the Japanese will be as kindly to us as Mr. Yamakura was.

Áte, do they have electricity in Barrio Pandán now?

Yes, but only at night. Lights turn on at six o'clock in the evening and turn off at six o'clock in the morning. Conchita brought our Philco radio with her when she left two days ago.

Áte, will you excuse me then? Let me go into the house and tell Arturo and Resty what to pack for me. I don't intend to bring everything with me.

Do you want me to help you?

Oh please, Áte, if you don't mind.

The two ladies get into the house and prepare Solita's traveling bags. As they