How Vigan Was Saved From the Wrath of War

Narrow cobbled-stone streets. Thick brick walls and massive stone columns. Grand staircases and wooden floors and doorways. Ornately designed capiz ventanas and charming azoteas. The shades and shapes, the moods and movements of a distant past. These things fascinated us as we toured the Heritage City of Vigan on board a calesa. Beaming in delight, we could not imagine how such a wonder of arts and culture could be so preserved in a country ravaged by revolts and uprisings against colonists and the terror of Japanese invasion during the World War II, a global military conflict that in terms of lives and material destruction was the most devastating war in human history.

As if sensing the question lingering in our minds and amid the clang-clang of the calesa and the clackety-clack of the horseshoe down the cobbled-stone road, Manong Edgar dela Cruz, our tour guide, told us a story of how love saved Vigan from the wrath of war. Expecting him to narrate a gory battle or an unsung treaty with the enemy, we were moved with the story behind the city’s survival in a time of strife and much injustice.

It was at the height of the Japanese occupation, Manong Edgar narrated, and Capt. Fujiro Takahashi, the then Japanese military commander in Vigan, lived among the Bigueños, until he met and fell in love with Adela Tolentino of Magsingal, a neighboring town in Ilocos Sur. Having two children with Adela, Captain Takahashi took them into his care and had them protected by the Japanese Imperial Army.

However, the liberation period came to pass, and Japanese military units were attacked by Filipino and American forces across the country. As a last resort to flush out remaining Japanese troops, American forces planned to air-raid places with significant number of enemy troops—this included Vigan.

As the American forces and Filipino guerillas liberated town after town from the Japanese, Japanese troops, on the other hand, had their own contingency plans. As part of their military strategy toward the end of World War II, Japanese troops were ordered to burn and to destroy all occupied towns—presumably to incinerate vital information about the Japanese Imperial Army—before withdrawal because most of them knew that they would not come out of the battle alive.

As their military protocol, Gen Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya, who had quickly and decisively won the Malayan and Singapore campaigns in early 1942 and who assumed command of Japanese forces in the Philippines in 1944, ordered Captain Takahashi to leave Vigan and upon leaving, order his men to burn the city to the ground.

On January 9, 1945, more than six decades ago, while American forces landed in Lingayen, Pangasinan, the first major landing in Luzon, which began the liberation of the island, Captain Takahashi, however, could not bear to leave his family at the hands of the Bigueños after burning the city. Seeing that he had no choice but to leave Adela and their children behind, Captain Takahashi pleaded with Fr Joseph Kleikamp, German procurator of the Vigan Seminary, then located west of the Plaza Burgos, to protect his family upon his departure. However, upon seeing that drums of gasoline had already been strategically placed at the plaza and the surrounding of the city, Father Kleikamp granted Captain Takahashi’s request on the condition that he and his men would leave Vigan as it is and leave without burning the city to prevent the Bigueños from seeking revenge from his family. Captain Takahasi agreed and, with a heavy heart, left with his troops during the night.

Manong Edgar stopped for breath. The next morning, January 10, Bigueños were surprised to discover that Japanese troops had left the city peacefully. At that time, American aircrafts leveled Baguio despite guerilla reports that the Japanese had abandoned the city. Again, the next morning, January 11, upon learning that US air bombers were on their way to destroy the city, Bigueños hurriedly formed a large American flag out of rags at the Plaza Burgos to signal the city’s independence from the Japanese. It was in this manner that Vigan miraculously escaped the destruction of its cultural and historical treasures, a fate that befell other cities like Cebu, Iloilo, Cavite, Manila, and Zamboanga, particularly Intramuros.

When Manong Edgar finished narrating his story, we had lunch of adobado, binuribudan, dinakdakan, and adobo nga nateng. Our favorite was igado, an Ilocano cuisine cooked with guisantes, siling pula, and laman loob ng baboy—liver, heart, lungs, and kidney (Written With Don Michael Acelar De Leon).