Authorizing Illicit Intimacies: Filipina–gi Interracial

Relations in the Postwar Philippines

Stephanie Fajardo

Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, Volume 65,

Number 4, December 2017, pp. 485-513 (Article)

Published by Ateneo de Manila University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/phs.2017.0033

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/679424

Access provided by University of South Dakota (20 Aug 2018 17:35 GMT)
S tepha n ie F a j a r d o

Authorizing
Illicit Intimacies
Filipina–GI
Interracial Relations
in the Postwar
Philippines

Intimate relations between American servicemen (GIs) and Filipina women

increased visibly following the Second World War in the Philippines. As
interactions became routine, women who developed close interpersonal
relationships with GIs became associated with vice and loose morals. This
article analyzes the multiple forces that maintained such associations,
including the US military and local government’s interconnected forms of
intimate management and Philippine cultural productions’ contradictory
depictions of Filipino–American intimacies. It argues that the “bar system,”
which arose from businesses exploiting sexual labor, the legal system
combating prostitution, and health initiatives seeking to eradicate venereal
disease, effectively authorized illicit intimacies.

Keywords: US military • gender relations • race relations • sexual labor •

Philippine culture

Philippine Studies Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints 65, no. 4 (2017) 485–513
© Ateneo de Manila University
A
s the Second World War came to a close in the Philippines,
the sight of Filipinas riding in jeeps with American GIs caused
quite a stir.1 In a letter to the United States Army regarding
the issue of prostitution in Manila, a concerned civilian
named Teodoro K. Molo (1945) insisted that something be
done about “the female species” riding in jeeps.2 Molo (ibid.) believed that
Filipinas had found “loopholes” to “enjoy their dirty elicit business” by using
military vehicles and urged the US Army to ban the practice. During this
time, the “jeep girl” had become a controversial figure in local newspapers
and magazines as well.3 She was associated with the phrase “one kiss, one
canned good” (isang halik, isang de lata), a saying that invoked the life of a
destitute prostitute.4 Less reproachful observers perceived her as a liberated
woman who expertly took advantage of the opportunity to ride in a jeep.
More often than not, the image of “jeeps loaded with giggling feminine
cargoes” aroused suspicion (N.T.C. Polestar 1945a, 4). The presence of the
jeep girl, for both Philippine and US military officials, deepened existing
anxieties about interracial liaisons and the social and moral problems they
were believed to incite.
The “jeep girl” archetype emerged from a discourse of interracial
intimacies that, together with the actions of US military and local government
officials, managed the everyday lives of local women and American servicemen
in the postwar Philippines.5 This article analyzes this discourse, as well as the
efforts of officials in regulating venereal disease (VD), prostitution, and other
interpersonal interactions. I argue that US military and local actors were
allies in managing relations they considered socially problematic, doing so in
ways that narrowly defined diverse forms of interracial intimacies as sexually
illicit. The influx of American military personnel in the Philippines after the
Second World War allowed for the development of a variety of relationships
between US military personnel and locals, not only sexual and romantic, but
also relations based on friendship, business, and community. Yet, official and
unofficial policies and practices that attempted to regulate such relations
assumed that most interactions between local women and US servicemen
were morally questionable. As the “jeep girl” issue illustrates, US military
officials and Philippine actors on the ground began to see even platonic and
routine relations as potentially illicit, thus linking heterogeneous interracial
relations to the sexual.6
Two important social developments during the postwar period help to
contextualize the emergence of this discursive linkage. Firstly, the racial

486 Pshev  65, no. 4 (2017)

climate in the US as well as in the postwar Philippines affirmed the need to
protect the color line. US military policies of intimate management worked
to segregate local women from white servicemen in particular, a move that
reflected fears of an Asian invasion within US domestic space (cf. Shah 2001),
threats to white respectability, and the normalized sexualization of black
troops. In this way, US military officials figured all interracial relations that
might potentially involve a white serviceman as deviant. Secondly, through
the efforts of US military officials and their Philippine allies in controlling
VD and morality, the selling of sex paradoxically thrived in locally operated
bars and clubs that routinely regulated local women’s bodies. The outcome of
a variety of actions intended to manage interracial intimacies, these spaces of
sexual regulation and exploitation—which I call the “bar system”—grew in
the extended postwar era (1946–1960) and intensified in the late 1960s and
1970s with the increase in American military presence in the Philippines due
to Cold War conflicts in Asia (Moselina 1979; Miralao 1990; Sturdevant and
Stoltzfus 1992). The bar system gave sexual reputations to base towns such as
Olongapo City in Zambales and Angeles City in Pampanga, and its visibility
generated public discussions of morality and women’s sexual decency. Locally,
this discourse of morality figured intimacies between Filipinas and American
servicemen as inauthentic, diseased, and symbolic of national dependency
on the US, on the one hand, yet as economically valuable, on the other,
particularly if the serviceman was white.
Although it was not until the postwar transition that diverse mixed-race
intimacies had become so clearly associated with vice, intimate management
was not new to the postwar period.7 In fact, debates surrounding the
regulation of prostitution, concubinage, and the “querida” system resurfaced
several times during the Spanish and American colonial eras (Pivar 1981;
De Bevoise 1995; Abalahin 2003; Kramer 2006; Hau 2013). The issue of
prostitution during the Philippine Revolution and the Philippine–American
War, moments wherein foreign soldiers occupied military camps throughout
the Philippines, generated public concern over interracial sex and the
spread of VD (Kramer 2006). Moreover, US officials in the early colonial
period attempted to manage romantic relations between American soldiers
and Filipinas in ways they believed would benefit the colonial project
(Winkelmann 2017).8
While scholars have made important contributions to the history of
intimacies and empire in the Philippines, especially of the early twentieth

fajardo / filipina–gi Relations in the Postwar Philippines 487

century (Camagay 1995; Dery 2001; Abalahin 2003; Kramer 2006), historical
studies generally have focused on prostitution separately from other forms
of intimate management. Contributing to this literature, this article aims
to bridge histories of sexual labor with those of Filipina–GI relations more
broadly, given that these connections existed within the postwar discourse.
A broad conceptualization of the category of “intimacies” as interpersonal
relationships is therefore necessary to explore the ways in which certain
bodies had become tied to the sexually illicit despite their dissociation with
the sex industry.9 This approach also requires the study of sources beyond
the official records of the US military and the Philippine government. The
analysis of local culture through Tagalog literature and films in this article,
and especially the discussion of Philippine racial ideologies, contributes
another means to assess intimate management alongside an examination of
official policies.
The sections that follow explore the interconnected forces that
ultimately reinforced the notion of Filipina–GI relations as illicit affairs. The
next section begins by analyzing the racialization of Filipinas and African
American soldiers within the US Army and Navy’s campaigns against VD.
It provides the context necessary to interpret the subsequent discussion of
alliances between the US military and Philippine actors in their efforts to
enforce antiprostitution laws. The final section analyzes race relations within
Philippine literature and films and evaluates the context within which
stigmas of interracial intimacies were maintained in popular culture.

“Questionable Moral Character”:

Race and Sexuality in the Anti-VD Campaign
The postwar boom in the sex industry due to the large US military presence
in the Philippines led to heightened concern surrounding the spread of
VD.10 For US military officials, VD was not exclusively a moral problem but
one that affected the “efficiency” of the military institution and threatened
the army’s reputation (Witsell 1946). The infection of large numbers of
men weakened a unit’s ability to perform its expected duties and had the
potential to cause public scandal. As newspapers in the US sensationalized
the problem of diseased Filipinas, arousing public anxieties about “exotic”
sexual illnesses that could potentially infect American homes, US military
officials embarked on aggressive campaigns throughout the Philippines—
as well as US-occupied Asia—to eradicate VD and control prostitution

488 Pshev  65, no. 4 (2017)

(Atlanta Constitution 1945; Afro-American 1945; Los Angeles Times 1945;
Chicago Daily Tribune 1945; Washington Post 1945). These news reports
cited “promiscuous girls and women” (Washington Post 1945, 6) as the
main contaminants, while also associating the spread of sexual illnesses with
Filipino living conditions. As shown in this section, their efforts were rooted
in racial and sexual prejudices that assumed local women to be sources of disease
and figured black servicemen as oversexed and naturally prone to infection.
As US Army records indicate, US forces began to meticulously
document cases of VD and gather intelligence to direct their campaigns in
areas where there were large numbers of army and navy personnel such as
Manila, Angeles City, and Olongapo City. Although US officials requested
that enlisted men voluntarily provide lists of their sexual “contacts,” there
was no efficient way of locating women who were potentially VD infected.
Officials therefore relied on army statistics that indicated VD-infected
regions and then targeted women in those areas. Military police followed
orders that “suspicious” women or those with “questionable moral character”
should be blocked from communicating with American military personnel
(Fitch 1945; Frazier 1949). Filipinas were profiled as prostitutes based on
physical appearance and proximity to suspected areas of vice. As the writings
of US military officials demonstrate, the norm within the anti-VD campaign
racialized Filipinas in general as carriers of disease, leaving any Filipina on
the street subject to potential investigation by military police.
The general practice of the US Army was to require suspicious women,
as well as women who worked in establishments close to the army’s identified
problem areas, to undergo medical examinations and treatment (Pennington
1947). US Army and Bureau of Health medical records reveal that 53,903
Filipinas were examined for VD all over the archipelago in 1946 and that
over 100,000 were inspected the following year (Manuel 1955, 34–35). Local
women had little option but to comply with the US military’s invasive health
management approaches, particularly if they were stopped on the street or
required to comply by their employer. For US military officials, the urgency
of the VD problem in this postwar climate justified forced examinations. In
fact, even while military officials debated their approaches, their concerns
focused on the efficiency of anti-VD procedures, not on the ethical issues
surrounding VD management. Officials such as Army Chief Surgeon Guy
Denit (1945) argued that examinations of local women were a “worthless”
measure of VD incidence and a waste of military time and resources. He

fajardo / filipina–gi Relations in the Postwar Philippines 489

believed there was no point in attempting to treat a population that would
always be diseased.11
US Navy officials often debated how to resolve the public health issue,
with some suggesting that women simply be shipped away to another part of
the country. In a letter to the Pacific Fleet, Adm. Lynde McCormick (1946,
3, italics added) of the US Navy underlined this approach: “venereal disease
can be reduced only by continuous coordinated effort to remove from the
community all those who are known to practice prostitution.” McCormick
made it clear that he referred specifically to women who sold sex, rather
than to brokers or soldiers who engaged in the practice by purchasing.
McCormick’s suggestion echoed those of US Army and Navy officials before
him who, in the early twentieth century, embarked on anti-VD missions
that shipped local women to Davao and other far off, less inhabited areas
of the archipelago (cf. Terami-Wada 1986). While it is unclear in US
Navy correspondence if these extreme measures were actually carried out,
McCormick’s orders indicated that the question of whether or not Filipina
bodies were beyond treatment was up for debate.
The writings of US military officials illustrated the assumptions they
held about the source of VD, often leading to the unequal treatment of men
and women for their sexual behaviors. For instance, US military policies
prohibited forced medical examinations of enlisted men as well as any kind
of punishment such as pay deductions for time lost to VD recovery (Porter
1946; Cooley 1946). While VD was considered “in line of duty” or an illness
just like any other that a serviceman might contract while serving (Witsell
1946), military culture normalized prostitution and the contraction of VD.
As Laura Briggs (2002, 24) has noted, historically the contraction of VD has
enhanced a serviceman’s masculinity, allowing him to gain social status from
a well-established sexual practice in the military.
By the late 1940s, US military culture continued to normalize the
contraction of VD, which took on a negative racial connotation when
military officials felt the issue had gotten out of control. During this time VD
became associated with black servicemen in the Philippines, a correlation
US military officials claimed in their correspondence and documentation of
VD rates. As Stuart M. Alley (1947) wrote to the Commanding General of
the Ryukyus Command, “the increase in the Command is largely attributed
to the doubling of the rate among the colored personnel.” US military
studies for October 1947 showed that among 630 “negro” troops there were

490 Pshev  65, no. 4 (2017)

nine VD cases while among 3,501 “other” troops there were eight VD cases
(Hindle 1947). Earlier that year, the VD council at Camp Angeles had
noted the “high venereal rate . . . especially among Negro troops” (VDCC
1947, 3). Military officials were quick to cite records that highlighted
racial differences in terms of VD contraction, yet did not consider the
racial prejudices in reporting as well as other factors that generated such
distinctions. A racialized language colored the council’s analysis of VD,
despite evidence that the increase in VD rates coincided with the transfer
of “fresh troops” from Japan and other places in the Pacific (Connor 1948,
3). In spite of their knowledge of other factors contributing to the spread
of VD in the Philippines, military officials continued to view race as the
ultimate factor in determining the problem. The VD councils’ conclusion
in late 1947 was that black troops were more inclined to be infected
compared with those of other racial backgrounds.
In much the same way that the US military’s racialization of Filipinas
as diseased influenced their targeting of local women, their association of
black men with VD also affected their approaches to VD control, but with
a twist. Although black men were perceived as more sexually problematic
and less curable than white men, the efforts of US officials on reducing VD
rates focused particularly on white units. Visual materials such as posters and
films, for instance, which military personnel specifically made to affect troop
behavior, only featured white servicemen. The VD poster “Remember” (see
figure on p. 492), which circulated throughout US Army and Navy units in
Japan, Korea, and the Philippines after the war, reminded soldiers of three
simple things: the faithful, white girl waiting at home; the costs of the war;
and that sleeping with a local woman (and inevitably contracting VD) was
not worth the one night of pleasure. A white man’s true happiness awaited
him at home, and in order to protect that future and remain loyal to his
country he needed to either abstain or obtain a prophylactic kit.
VD posters such as “Remember” targeted specific servicemen, using
cultural cues to influence their behavior. The US Army’s VD Control
Council (VDCC) spent hours discussing and crafting their poster designs,
ensuring that their posters not only displayed relevant information but
also told a narrative about race and sexuality that enlisted men could
believe. Within this narrative, white women were constructed as innocent,
trustworthy, and normal in contrast to the VD-infected, cunning, and
exotic Asian woman.

fajardo / filipina–gi Relations in the Postwar Philippines 491

The anti-VD poster “Remember” racialized Asian women as diseased

Source: US NARA n.d.

492 Pshev  65, no. 4 (2017)

 As Maj. John F. Harris (1947), VD control officer of PHILRYCOM,
noted in his report on 7 July 1947, there were no posters that featured black
soldiers or black women in the Philippines. Harris (ibid.) argued that visual
materials “with a Negro soldier on it or in a group of other American soldiers”
would improve VD control measures. In his detailed report, Harris claimed
that the poster designs were racially exclusive, and that a poster featuring
African Americans was necessary in order to make them feel they were “a
part of the military organization” (ibid.). At this point US Army officials were
convinced that black servicemen were responsible for the rise of VD rates in
the Philippines, yet they did not attempt to remedy this situation by creating
more effective posters earlier. The lack of anti-VD posters appealing to black
servicemen was also not considered in VD control council discussions as a
possible explanation for what their records showed as the high rate of VD
among black units. Rather, US officials’ logic reflected the mainstream
American racial discourse of black males as unclean and sexually threatening
(cf. Muhammad 2010).
The emphasis on white women’s sexual innocence in the army’s anti-
VD films and posters—constructed against the hypersexuality of women
of color—further explains the absence of black men and women in anti-
VD visuals. Historically, constructions of white female purity in the US
context have aligned with the logic of rape—long defined as taking away
a woman’s “virtue”—to deny women of color protection against sexual
violence.12 Because women of color have been racialized as non-innocent
and promiscuous, white men have been able to seize feminized black and
brown bodies without malice or without having “raped” them (ibid.). The
absence of black men and women on US Army anti-VD posters and in anti-
VD films reflected this racial logic, wherein the need to protect black female
purity was irrelevant.
As the anti-VD campaign continued throughout the first decade
following the Second World War, bodies marked by race in these complex
ways became a primary means by which US military officials distinguished
between unclean and clean and attempted to combat threats to military
efficiency and order. These methods of intimate management supported the
popular notion both in US and Philippine culture that interracial affairs
were tied to sexual immorality.

fajardo / filipina–gi Relations in the Postwar Philippines 493

“Being Run” by the US Military:
Fragile Alliances in the Anti-VD Campaign
The notion of Filipinas as sexually aggressive fomented the US military’s
anti-VD strategy of targeting local women, from those who roamed the
streets to those who worked at local bars, restaurants, massage clinics, and
other establishments. Military officials sought to distance themselves from
appearing to “regulate” prostitution, but in fact they relied on alliances and
agreements with municipal officials and local agencies, even though they
did not always see eye to eye.13 On the ground, however, Filipino responses
to the anti-VD campaign greatly varied. Economic assistance in the postwar
moment at times necessitated acceptance of US military policies, yet it
also raised the question of Philippine sovereignty, thereby complicating
negotiations.
US military policies forced local communities to confront the ways in
which Filipina–GI intimacies affected their daily lives resulting in fragile
alliances. Even as US military officials threatened to mark entire spaces as
“unclean” to diminish the moral reputation and economic prosperity of local
business communities, Filipinos debated whether or not to defend people,
spaces, and even the nation—topics well beyond the private sphere.
Some alliances were more harmonious than others. Philippine health
conditions in the aftermath of the Second World War made acquiring
supplies and rehabilitative support a necessity, and alliances with the US
government to achieve these ends required participation in the US military’s
anti-VD campaign. On 17 July 1946, a joint cooperative agreement was
signed between the US Public Health Services and the Department of
Health and Public Welfare in the Philippines (Cruz 1950). According to
this agreement, US funds were to be transferred to the Philippine health
department, yet were to be earmarked for seven groups of public health
services, one of which specifically focused on the control of VD (Dayrit et al.
2002, 67).14 Intimate management in this way was subsumed within broader
plans to improve public health.
Within these agreements US military officials and healthcare
administrators on the municipal level exchanged material goods for
cooperation in anti-VD efforts. On 12 July 1945 Ray Thussel (1945), the
medical chief of the Manila health department’s VD division, agreed to
guide US Military Police (MP) into houses of prostitution in exchange for
vehicles. Thussel’s communication with the MPs detailed a procedure for

494 Pshev  65, no. 4 (2017)

a complex raid of three houses that was to occur that week. The women were
to be arrested and immediately taken to social hygiene clinics for examination
and confinement for health “education.” Raids were to “continue until the
approximately 600 houses of prostitution in the city [were] closed” (ibid.,
[4–5]).
A month later, José Locsin (1945), the Philippine secretary of health
and public welfare, corresponded with the commanding officer of the US
MP regarding their agreement to “cooperate” in a roundup of women. Their
understanding was that Locsin would provide contact information so that
the MPs could locate 200 “sick women” and have them housed within the
Correctional Institution for Women (ibid., 1). Locsin agreed to make these
arrangements, and received medical supplies for his hospital through this
alliance (ibid., [1–2]).
Locally coordinated raids and roundups continued alongside other
efforts that were more aggressive. US military officials decided that they
would focus on documenting and examining all women who worked in local
establishments near US military spaces (Cantrell 1947). These workplaces
included all types of businesses and organizations that catered to soldiers
such as restaurants, bars, hotels, movie theaters, beauty parlors, and so on
(Pennington 1947). Toward this goal, the Far East Command created an
official VD control council in 1947 made up of representatives from several
army and navy units. Appointed officers met several times a month to discuss
the progress of MP raids and rounds, the status of local cooperation, troop
VD statistics, and various other control strategies that would enforce the
policing of these spaces (VDCC 1947). The stakes had become so high that,
according to one military official, “every suspected woman and woman of
every bar in Manila” needed to be investigated (VDCC 1948a, 2).
The US military’s more invasive strategies made intimacies problematic
for local businesses that were unaffiliated with the sex industry, forcing
owners and their employees to consider the effects of intimate management
on their livelihood. This issue also impacted the broader community, as local
officials were compelled to position themselves within the debate and work
to alleviate the growing sexual reputation of base towns. On 31 January 1947
the VD control council noted: “we are not getting complete cooperation
from the Mayor and Chief of Police of the town of Angeles”; the council also
concluded that if businesses did not cooperate soon the entire city would be
“placed off-limits to military personnel” (VDCC 1947, 3). Establishments

fajardo / filipina–gi Relations in the Postwar Philippines 495

that were “off-limits” were not only affected financially due to the loss of
American customers, but were also marked publicly as morally questionable
due to their association with the image of sexual indecency. Meanwhile,
local officials continued to protest the US military’s policies and procedures
on the ground, leaving some local business owners in the insecure position
of having to choose between defending their places’ reputation and suffering
economic loss, or participating in a controversial anti-VD campaign.
By July 1948 the situation had improved slightly from the perspective of
military officials, as more and more businesses in Angeles cooperated with
MPs. VD council reports noted that those few businesses that resisted “were
mostly small panciterias which refused to have their waitresses checked at
the social hygiene clinic” because they felt they were “being run” by the US
military (VDCC 1948b).15 With pride, the report argued that greater local
cooperation came from a “change in attitude” due to American tutelage.
One official noted, “through education by the army and civil authorities, the
local populace now realize that [cooperation] is for their own good” (ibid.).
US military reports stated that, as a result of this cooperation, “an estimated
200 unemployed girls, the majority having previous venereal disease records,
[were] removed from Angeles” (ibid.). The reports did not explain how the
“200 unemployed girls” were confirmed to have had “previous venereal
disease records” or where outside of Angeles they were relocated.
As the anti-VD campaign continued throughout the 1950s, intimate
management on the ground forced locals to consider the issue of sovereignty
and what it meant to be an independent nation with a strong US military
presence. According to Angeles lawyer and author Renato Tayag (1956),
conflicts between Angeles police and American servicemen generated “hot
feelings” between local officials such as Mayor Manuel Abad Santos and
officers at Clark Air Base. At one point, a US airman assaulted an Angeles
police officer after the latter intervened in a dispute between the airman
and a “barmaid” (ibid.). The authorities at Clark sided with the airman, as
they often did in cases such as this, while Abad Santos defended the Angeles
police. In the end, the conflict triggered the issue of where the Philippine
government stood in relation to the US military. As this example shows, a
common dispute involving a serviceman and a local woman could easily
spark a broader discussion regarding the nation.
The fragile alliances that continued throughout the US military’s anti-
VD campaign provoked debates that were about much more than managing

496 Pshev  65, no. 4 (2017)

disease. As US military strategies of intimate management brought the wider
public to contemplate the effects on businesses, the moral reputation of local
places, and the extent of the nation’s power to intervene, interracial intimacies
brought greater social problems into focus. Yet, despite these controversies,
US military and local officials shared a vision that assumed sexual criminality
in local women based on their proximity and contact with US servicemen.
The resulting structures created to alleviate these public anxieties, including
surveillance and forced treatment methods, gave credence to the idea that
interracial sex in military spaces was indeed a social problem.

The Bar System: Managing Women’s

Bodies and the Sale of Sexual Labor
Paradoxically, the gendered and racialized practices of the US military and
local officials to restrict the movements of “suspicious” women supported
institutions that encouraged illicit interracial intimacies in militarized
spaces. Whether intentional or not, their efforts were part of a tripartite
operation—which I refer to as the bar system—in which the sale of sexual
labor could thrive in local bars, nightclubs, and other establishments. As this
section argues, the bar system emerged after the Second World War as the
unintentional product of three main institutional processes: (a) the operation
of local businesses that sought to exploit female employees for their sexual
labor, (b) the legal system that was meant to combat prostitution, and (c)
the creation of health institutions that resulted from US military and local
officials’ attempts to police morality and eradicate VD.16 As discussed below,
even in moments when concerned citizens attempted to organize against
vice and immorality, these local actors tended to reinforce aspects of this
tripartite system, effectively authorizing illicit intimacies and contributing to
the sexual reputation of base towns.17
In “bar fine prostitution,” which was prevalent throughout the 1970s
and perhaps earlier in the Philippines, local businesses that catered to
US military clients depended on the sales of “lady drinks” as well as “bar
fines” (CWR 1994, 2000). A “lady drink” was one in which a client paid
for a female employee to have a drink and sit with him while in the bar
or nightclub. “Bar fines” paid for a female employee’s “time” (long or
short) in order to take her outside of the establishment. The owner of the
establishment would hire women to work as waitresses, hostesses, or some
other euphemism and require her to entertain male customers in these two

fajardo / filipina–gi Relations in the Postwar Philippines 497

main ways. Because men paid for a woman’s “time” through lady drinks or
bar fines, owners could claim that any sexual relation that ensued occurred
legally between two mutually consenting adults even while sexual services
were an expectation of the job.
Although more research needs to be done to verify how bar fines were
organized in the immediate postwar era (within the decade following the
Second World War), we can imagine a similar type of process existed because
we do know that employers hired local women as “hostesses” to perform
sexual services in local establishments (Manuel 1955, 17; Nickerson 1954).
By legally hiring female employees to entertain male clients, owners were
able to control a woman’s sexual earnings. Female workers were mostly poor
girls recruited from the provinces who were subject to the working conditions
and expectations of their employers (Manuel 1955, 32). First-hand accounts
of women who worked in the bars in the 1940s and 1950s are lacking;
however, we can consider the experiences of those in similar social positions
in later time periods. Alma Bulawan (2003, 99), a former bargirl in the 1980s
and now the president of Buklod Babae, a local organization that supports
women in prostitution in Olongapo, explains the economic situation that
women like her faced: “In our experience and studies, it is impossible to
save. How can you? The bar fine is P3000, the girl only gets P1000. If you
complain you lose your job automatically . . . You strip, dance, and you earn
P200 for dancing for six hours.” In such situations local businesses profited
from women who were dependent on meager earnings to survive.
Laws that existed in the postwar Philippines worked in favor of local
businesses that exploited women’s sexual labor, adding to the structures
that fueled the bar system. Originally created in the US colonial period,
these laws were meant to eradicate prostitution, but instead they pushed the
selling of sex underground. Prostitution was a legal, regulated industry very
briefly under the Spanish reglamento (regulations) of 1897, but was quickly
banned following a series of public scandals in the US that aroused morality
campaigns and progressivist reforms (Abalahin 2003). In 1917 prostitution,
defined as a “willful act of a woman” selling sex to men for money, became
officially illegal in the Philippines following the establishment of the
administrative code, section 2242 (ibid.; Rivera 1956). All existing brothels
were effectively shut down in 1918 (Abalahin 2003, 350).18 Throughout the
1920s and 1930s, campaigns emerged advocating for the reestablishment of
the Spanish reglamento, although these were ultimately unsuccessful (ibid.).

498 Pshev  65, no. 4 (2017)

Instead, antiprostitution and vagrancy laws were upheld and enforced on the
municipal level in ways that targeted streetwalkers, thereby pushing women
who sold sexual labor into working at the bars and clubs.19
According to the administrative code, municipal councils were
required “to provide for the punishment and suppression of vagrancy and
the punishment of any person found within the town without legitimate
business or visible means of support” (Rivera 1956, 45). When local officials
collaborated with the US military, women who roamed the streets—and
especially those who rode in US jeeps—were primary targets to be stopped
by local or US military police. This practice empowered US servicemen
at times to become violent with the women they encountered. “Several
Filipinos said the Marines had clipped [the women’s] hair,” journalists
reported after interviewing civilians on recent incidents at Subic Bay (New
York Times 1946, 51). “Some said they had been slapped or hoisted off the
floor by their tied hands while being questioned on suspicion of such offenses
as vagrancy, loitering and prostitution” (ibid.). Women who sold sexual labor
might have had greater control over their work and earnings on the streets,
but local laws as well as official and unofficial enforcement methods greatly
reduced this option. Considering that streetwalkers drove away profits from
the bar system, employers greatly benefited from practices that allowed men
to subject local women to violent harassment on the streets.
To further enforce the administrative code’s antiprostitution and vagrancy
law, municipal codes after the Second World War established ordinances
that regulated female laborers within bars and clubs. According to Manila
Ordinance 2919, “no person shall engage in the occupation of waitress or
hostess in bars, hotels, restaurants and cafes without first securing a license
from the City treasurer” (Manuel 1955, 14). The only establishments that
were exempt were carinderias (local roadside food stalls) and cafeterias
(ibid.). In order to obtain a license to work, “women” were required to obtain
a health certificate after passing a VD check and paying a fee of P1 (ibid.,
16). This local practice of requiring women to register as “hostesses” ensured
that women who potentially sold sex were accounted for, reinforcing the
organization of a system wherein the selling of sex could thrive.
Moreover, the establishment of US health institutions following the
war provided structures that further ensured the smooth operation of the
bar system. The anti-VD campaigns that emerged, as previously discussed,
introduced the Division of Social Hygiene (DSH) and the Venereal Disease

fajardo / filipina–gi Relations in the Postwar Philippines 499

health clinic that were run jointly by the US and Philippine governments
(ibid., 69). The presence of social hygiene clinics and the requirement
that women who worked in bars and other establishments undergo routine
health checks provided regulatory mechanisms that could identify and keep
clean the bodies of women who sold sex in spaces that US military personnel
frequented. While providing the appearance of challenging prostitution,
these institutions resembled the structures established in the nineteenth-
century reglamento, the Spanish system of legalized prostitution.
Public concern over women’s sexuality and morality during the postwar
period supported the bar system as well. In the early 1950s the National
Federation of Women’s clubs aroused national concern over the issue of “white
slavery” by holding women’s rallies in Manila to promulgate local efforts to
combat sex crimes (Manila Bulletin 1952a, 1). In 1952 the public became
increasingly concerned about “white slavery” following sensationalized
reports in major Manila newspapers describing the abduction of teenage
girls, mainly from the provinces, who were forced to work in the sex trade
by foreign men (often described as Chinese) (cf. Manila Chronicle 1952a,
1952b; Manila Bulletin 1952a). As a response to the public, the Philippine
government authorized the creation of a central coordinating committee
to address this issue; several of the committee’s representatives gave public
speeches detailing their strategies (Manila Bulletin 1952b, 1). According to
Asunción Perez, the committee commissioner, the central issue at hand was
supply and demand. Conflating sex trafficking with sex work, the committee
promised to attack white slavery by focusing on upholding laws against
prostitution and vagrancy and creating local ordinances to “[punish] heavily
all violators of these laws” (ibid., 12). In addition to focusing on vagrancy,
which tightened surveillance of women on the street thus benefitting bar
owners, committee members unanimously felt that educating young women
was one of their major responsibilities (ibid.). In the committee’s mind,
women’s behavior was the primary cause of their fall from grace.
On the whole, Philippine laws, US military actions, as well as local
campaigns against sex crimes contributed, intentionally or unintentionally,
to the oppression of poor women on the streets and women who sold sex.
These local actions corresponded with US military concerns and policies
to improve military efficiency and order. Rooted in middle-class values of
respectability and a misogynist concern for morality that was characteristic
of this period, these various efforts were ultimately beneficial for bar owners

500 Pshev  65, no. 4 (2017)

who wanted to keep the selling of sex within their establishments. The
expansion of such a system, while based on the profiling of women in base
towns, further stigmatized relationships between Filipinas and American
servicemen.

“Hanggang Piyer Ka Lang”:

Filipina–GI Relations in Philippine Culture
In postwar Philippine literature and films, the Filipina–GI romance was
almost always a temporary affair that eventually ended in heartache. A
product of the sexism of the time, women who interacted with servicemen
were depicted as unfaithful, immoral, and ambitious, and the GIs
themselves as insincere but fun lovers. Yet even while interracial intimacies
were ridiculed in this way, the local discourse recognized that relations
with US soldiers potentially increased one’s social status. Often through the
misogynist metaphor of prostitution, popular literature and films explored
the practicality of Filipino desires. The hope of escaping a difficult economic
situation provided a reasonable explanation, if not a justification, for those
who pursued romantic relations with US servicemen. Moreover, there was
a clear racial hierarchy that favored white GIs, contradicting the efforts of
US military officials in discouraging white–Filipina liaisons.20 However
shameful, coupling with a GI—especially a white American—was also
considered socially permissible for those with little other opportunity.
The Tagalog phrase hanggang piyer, which appeared in postwar literature
and films, exemplifies the paradoxical lens of approval and disapproval
through which GI–Filipina relationships were predominately represented.
In Mateo Cruz Cornelio’s (1946, 49) novel, a respectable girl who seeks out
a romantic relationship with an American overhears her neighbors gossiping
about her.21 When one of the neighbors screams, “hanggang piyer lamang
kayo” (you’re only up to the pier), the situation escalates into hair-pulling
incidents in the streets. In the late 1940s, and even today, “hanggang pier”
was used to describe a local woman left behind by a sailor-lover or otherwise
devalued and not taken seriously in the relationship. The phrase implied
that her worth was tied to being accepted by the American. Evoking notions
of sexual immorality, women who were “left behind” were assumed to be bar
girls, prostitutes, or otherwise exploited to satisfy the physical needs of US
servicemen. At the same time, while used to shame women for being foolish
and worthless, the phrase also contained the assumption that if a woman

fajardo / filipina–gi Relations in the Postwar Philippines 501

were ever taken beyond the pier—outside of the Philippines and into a
better life—she would succeed in obtaining the social capital to mitigate
her shame. This single phrase, in other words, epitomized the way in which
GI–Filipina relations were, on the one hand, stigmatized yet, on the other
hand, recognized for their potential for social mobility.
A common motif within postwar films, novels, and short stories depicting
this “hanggang piyer” paradigm was the love triangle between a Filipina,
her Filipino boyfriend, and her new American soldier-lover. In the novel
Hanggang Pier (Cornelio 1946) the female protagonist, Leonor, begins to
date a white American who she had been flirting with, Capt. Robert Moore
Smith of the US Navy, shortly after finding out that her boyfriend, Delfín
Santos, died in battle. Leonor falls in love with Smith and is heartbroken the
day she finds out that he is to be shipped off to Tokyo. Alongside dozens of
other women left behind crying, she says her goodbye at the navy pier, and
Smith promises to return to visit her. Just as his ship begins to slowly sail
away, her Filipino boyfriend Delfín, miraculously alive and well, arrives on
the scene. As though no time had passed, Leonor falls into Delfín’s arms and
realizes that he was always her true love. Smith watches the whole exchange
from afar and eventually accepts that the feelings he felt could never compete
with the true love between Leonor and Delfin.
The novel Hanggang Pier—alongside other Filipino love-triangle
dramas of the era, such as Carlos Aleurizo’s (1945) short story “Sayang
na Sayang” and the movie Victory Joe! (1946)—tells a story in which
romances with Americans are never meant to be.22 The Filipina betrays
her Filipino boyfriend and falls in love too quickly with a white American,
only to find out that her new lover did not imagine a real future with
her. This typical, sexist narrative victimizes the Filipino—portrayed as a
strong patriot—and serves as a critique of young Filipinas with emotional
weakness and conditional love of country. Yet, as the Filipina is forgiven
in the end (Delfin takes Leonor back into his arms in Cornelio’s novel
and the female protagonist in Victory Joe! is also pardoned by her Filipino
boyfriend), these stories offer a means to sympathize with her situation.
In the wartime moment, when poverty and destruction were everywhere,
the white savior provided an easy solution to one’s problems. Drawing on
nationalist discourses, such love-triangle dramas perpetuated the notion
that relations with white Americans could be beneficial but also came at
a personal cost.

502 Pshev  65, no. 4 (2017)

 In contrast to the depictions of white servicemen, black servicemen
were represented not as saviors but as swindlers who made women crazy
for not repaying their debts. In the dramatic final scene of Cruz’s Hanggang
Pier (1946, 65), a black sailor emerges to provide comic relief. Five women
fight each other and chase a short black American (“maliit na Amerikanong
negro”) to the edge of the pier, mimicking the droves of women chasing
their white sailor-lovers. Yet these five women fought after him not because
they were in love with him, but because he owed them money: “limang
babae ang nag-aaway-away sa isang maliit na Amerikanong negro. Ang mga
babaing nagkakagulo sa kanya, ay mga labandera niya at siya’y sinisingil sa
kanyang malaking utang sa kanila” (Five women were fighting over a tiny
black American man. The women who were causing the disturbance were
his washerwomen, as they came to collect the large debt that he owed them).
“Shorty,” the black sailor, would find a new washerwoman (labandera)
each week and avoided paying each of them. Unlike Smith, Leonor’s well-
respected, wealthy white American love interest, Shorty is a scheming, poor
black man who is also characterized as physically unattractive.
Itsay, the one Filipina who did catch feelings for Shorty, clearly vocalizes
her disgust in falling for him once she finds out he is actually poor. “Walang
hiya kang negro ka!” (You shameless negro!), Itsay yells to Shorty after she
witnesses his exchange with the labanderas. Shorty responds in English, “But
I got no money, Itsy! When I coma [sic] back, I give you much dough!” (ibid.,
65). Itsay, in disbelief, expresses that she will settle for the nice native boy
(named Porong) who has been courting her, “Oh! Yeah . . . at namaywang
si Itsay.—Mabuti pang di hamak sa iyo si Porong. Ako’y babalik na sa kanya
ngayon din” (Oh! Yeah . . . and Itsay put her hands on her hips—good thing
Porong isn’t as vile as you. I’m going back to him now) (ibid.). Just like
Leonor, Itsay also chooses not to hold out hope for her American lover and
to return to a man at home. Even while both women in this narrative were
better off forgetting their sailor men, there was a clear hierarchy of choices.
The white soldier, Smith, was undoubtedly depicted as the most respectable
and acceptable option.
Representations of intimacies within local newspapers reflected these
same dynamics, particularly the shame that a relation with an American
aroused. The National Teachers’ College newspaper accused local women
who hung around GIs of straying from the ideal Maria Clara image.23
According to the article, such a woman had become “so much Americanized

fajardo / filipina–gi Relations in the Postwar Philippines 503

. . . that no longer does she think much of a kiss, not as before—and even
if it is a kiss flavored with gin” (N.T.C. Polestar 1945a, 4). An editorial in
the University of the Philippines’s student newspaper argued that the return
of the Americans corrupted the “simple dalaga” (young lady) who “found
it more lucrative to entertain the lonely GI than to go to office or attend
diligently to studies” (Lansang 1946, 11). GIs themselves were represented
as uncivilized, critiqued for their drinking and sexuality, and insulted for
the use of slang, which was considered “the speech of low educated society”
(N.T.C Polestar 1945b, 9).24
While newspapers blamed GIs in general for corrupting Philippine
society, black servicemen were represented as especially troubling. The
National Teachers’ College Newspaper cited specific examples of failed
relationships between black GIs and women in US military towns in
Australia. Those who married black men and moved to the US purportedly
did not feel accepted by their husband’s community. “I felt like I was an
outcast all the time I was in America,” stated Mrs. Betty Schultz, explaining
that the other women made military wives like her feel that they had
“pinched their men” (ibid.). In addition to anecdotes discouraging marriages
with black servicemen, mainstream newspapers such as the Manila Times
emphasized the race of black GIs who allegedly committed sexual crimes,
reinforcing the notion of black men as criminal and sexual threats.25
Public concerns about GI babies further implied that Filipina–GI romances
were social problems. Babies left behind by their American fathers had become
living proof of Filipinas’ “hanggang pier” status. Kerima Polotan (1948, 7), a
popular Filipina author in the postwar period, wrote an article describing the
plight of 6,000 abandoned GI babies, calling on the public to address the issue.
According to Polotan, the people should be responsible for ensuring the welfare of
these children 50 percent of whom were suffering from malnutrition and various
skin diseases due to their state of extreme poverty. The majority of the mothers,
according to Polotan, came from “menial” backgrounds, were uneducated, and
did not have the opportunities to provide for themselves, let alone their children.
Less than 1 percent of the 6,000 abandoned children were born “legitimate” or
of married parents. And of these 6,000 abandoned children, Polotan emphasizes
that 25 percent were born of a Filipina mother and a “colored GI” while the rest
of the fathers were white.
Even though a high percentage of women were left behind by white
servicemen, the Filipino social preference for white skin perpetuated the

504 Pshev  65, no. 4 (2017)

notion that white–Filipina mixtures were more valuable. The economic
opportunities afforded only to Amerasian children of white fathers later in
life, especially in the media industries, only reaffirmed this widespread belief.
Actresses such as Anita Linda and Hilda Koronel owe their widespread fame
in part to having been sought after and later discovered for their “mestiza”
looks (PDI 2005). The potential for social success to emerge from relations
generally considered shameful depended on this notion of white skin as
valuable and on the high status of “mestizos” in Philippine society (Rafael
2000, 165).
Few publications attempted to challenge the stereotypical image of
GI–Filipina relationships, and those that did defended relationships between
white servicemen and Filipinas (cf. Relova 1956). In opposition to those US
servicemen and local women whose personal feelings transcended social
norms, the dominant discourse drew on the metaphor of prostitution through
the simple phrase “hanggang pier” to taint all interracial relations. Indeed,
this pervasive phrase combined both shame and opportunity to mean that
those who sought out relations with American servicemen lacked morals but
also possessed the ambition to raise their social standing.

Conclusion
Throughout the postwar campaigns to manage VD, prostitution and military
spaces, interracial intimacies were often reduced to narrow categories.
Arousing suspicion, they were judged as immoral and temporary with only
few exceptions. Despite the variety of interpersonal relations that existed
between US servicemen and Filipinas, the policies, procedures, and culture
of the military associated interracial intimacies with the sexual, with the
threat of being used or fooled by a cunning Filipina, and of course with the
problem of VD. Similar ways of perceiving such intimacies emerged within
local cultural productions, with major distinctions between how black and
white soldiers were perceived.
These narrow categories continued to define how intimacies were
understood into the next era. By the late 1960s and 1970s, the height of
the US bases period, these same issues continued to be heavily debated. Yet
during this time the problems that GI–Filipina relations aroused became
a means to also critique the US and the military’s role in generating vice
around base towns. Philippine feminists and anti-base activists often drew
on discourses of intimacies to critique US imperialism, capitalism, as well

fajardo / filipina–gi Relations in the Postwar Philippines 505

as gender inequality (Enloe 1990; CWR 1994; Baker 2004; Roces 2009).
Meanwhile, the Philippine government’s US alliances grew stronger.
President Marcos, in favor of the US military presence in the Philippines,
even promoted sexual tourism by moving to officially recognize women
who worked in bars as “hostesses” nationwide, making prostitution appear
wholesome and clean to international audiences (Enloe 1990, 39; Chant and
McIlwaine 1995). In these ways, the discourse of intimacies often worked to
support political positions and agendas.
Whether deliberately or not, officials in the postwar era and beyond
authorized the affairs that they considered illicit. Their actions were
informed by the notion of protection, not of local women but of institutions,
reputations, efficiency, and order. For Filipino and Filipina feminists today
the question remains: how to overcome the historically fraught narratives
and social stigma that negatively impact the lives of Filipinas. Can we see
a Filipina dating a white man without wondering, “whore or wife”? Yet,
how can we balance this move to challenge stereotypes with the need to
address the realities of exploitation and violence that far too often confront
the most disempowered of women?26 Promoting laws that protect rather
than criminalize the most vulnerable in the context of sexual labor and
invalidating harmful representations of race, skin color, and intimacy in
Philippine media would play a powerful role in shifting the current discourse
away from historical patterns of violence.

List of Abbreviations
CWR Center for Women’s Resources, Quezon City
GI “Government Issue,” referring to US servicemen
RG Record Group
US NARA US National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD
VD venereal disease
VDCC Venereal Disease Control Council
WEDPRO Women’s Education, Development, Productivity and Research Organization,
Quezon City

Notes
I would like to thank those who read drafts of this article and gave me critical feedback—the
organizers of and presenters at the IPC Summer School 2015, participants in the Philippines
SEASSI 2014 writing group, my advisor Deirdre de la Cruz, professors Dena Goodman and Kevin

506 Pshev  65, no. 4 (2017)

Gaines, and the two anonymous reviewers of this article. Many thanks to Richard Mwakasege-
Minaya for helping me think through the “bar system” section in particular. For assisting me in
navigating their collections, I am also grateful to the librarians and archivists of the US NARA
in College Park and San Francisco; the Library of Congress in Washington, DC; the Lopez
Memorial Museum and Library in Pasig, Metro Manila; and the Ortigas Foundation Library
also in Pasig, Metro Manila. Research for this article was made possible by fellowships from the
Rackham Graduate School, the University of Michigan Department of History, and the Fulbright
program.

1 I use the terms “American” and “US” interchangeably to avoid repetition while acknowledging
that “American” refers to people and places beyond the United States in other contexts.

2 A lawyer, Teodoro Molo assisted in the US military’s antiprostitution efforts. He served as a

Philippine senator in the 1960s.

3 “Local” in this article refers to people and communities in the Philippines. It is not meant as a
racial or national term.

4 For references to the “jeep girl” see N.T.C. Polestar 1945a; Trinidad 1946; Ambrosio 1946; and
the 1946 LVN film Victory Joe!. In the film, the female protagonist Rosie is caught riding in a jeep
with a white American, Bob, and the neighbors gossip about her.

5 “Discourse” refers to a body of social knowledge created through official and unofficial
institutions. On the relationship between discourse and power in the history of sexuality, see
Foucault 1978.

6 This article focuses on heterosexual relations and acknowledges that more research needs to
be done on the US military’s policing of same-sex relations in the postwar Philippines. Recent
scholarship has made important contributions to the history of sexuality in the US (Canaday
2009) and sexuality and empire in the early twentieth century (Mendoza 2015).

7 Relations between US servicemen of Filipino heritage and Filipinas were not policed in the same
way. US military policies after the Second World War made it easier for US servicemen of Filipino
descent to marry Filipinas, allowing them to bypass the waiting period of six months to apply for
a marriage certificate (on this policy, see Miller 1955). Such relations are nearly invisible in local
cultural productions despite their prevalence.

8 The broader literature on empire and interracial intimacies is quite extensive. Ann Stoler’s
(2002) influential work argues that intimate management in the Dutch context was central to
producing and maintaining colonial categories such as colonizer and colonized, thus facilitating
imperial conquest. Cf. Wexler 2000; Levine 2003; Shah 2011.

9 Some scholars have argued for alternative ways of rethinking the connection between intimacies
and “empire.” Paul Kramer (2006) moves toward an analysis of “gender” so as not to conflate
categories of the domestic, the familial, and the sexual, while Lisa Lowe (2015) uses the category
of “intimacies” to illuminate the deep, global connections of geographies in seemingly unrelated
contexts.

10 Concern about the spread of VD existed in all places where US military personnel were stationed
after the Second World War, but was seen as especially problematic in places like the Philippines
where “over 800,000 American military personnel” were stationed in 1945, assisting in projects
of national security and development (Friedman 2001, 129).

fajardo / filipina–gi Relations in the Postwar Philippines 507

11 Notions of Philippine native bodies as diseased are part of a long history extending back to the
US colonial period (Anderson 2006).

12 The historiography on white supremacy, power, and violence against black women in the US
context is extensive. Cf., e.g., Davis 1983; Higginbotham 1989; Rosen 1991; Gilmore 1996;
McGuire 2010.

13 Although the question of regulating prostitution was debated in earlier periods (Kramer 2006;
Abalahin 2003; Dery 2001), antiregulation was already a standard to follow in the postwar
period. See Ulio 1945 for an official statement on this policy.

14 The other groups of public health services were general sanitation, maternal–child health,
nutrition, health education and public health training centers, public health laboratories, and
quarantine services (Dayrit et al. 2002, 67).

15 A panciteria is a place that sells pancit (noodles).

16 The selling of sex existed in a variety of forms. For an outline of the history of prostitution in the
Philippines, see CWR 2000.

17 Historical literature on sex work in the postwar Philippines is underdeveloped, as scholarship

has focused mainly on the early twentieth century. Feminist literature on the 1960s–1990s is
more abundant. Cf., e.g., Sturdevant and Stoltzfus 1992; Moselina 1979; Miralao 1990; Chant and
McIllwaine 1995; CWR 2000; Ralston and Keeble 2009.

18 According to Andrew Abalahin (2013), the context of prohibition in the US, including the Mann
Act of 1910 and the banning of liquor sales to US soldiers in uniform, led to increased attention
to moral issues during the colonial period and the need to address the issue of sexual labor in the
Philippines.

19 Few argued in favor of regulation. In his editorial published in the Liberator, Martiniano Vivo
(1945) expressed the unpopular view that prostitution in Manila needed to be regulated for the
health and safety of military personnel.

20 Representations of American GIs of Filipino or Latino descent were much less frequent in postwar
cultural productions, despite their presence in the Philippines during and after the Second World
War. See Gavilan (2012) on Filipinos in the US Navy and Reyes (1995) for a discussion of Filipina
war brides who married US servicemen of Filipino descent.

21 The phrase “hanggang pier,” which became a common way of referring to such intimacies, was
likely popularized by the Palaris film, Hanggang Pier, produced and shown throughout Manila
and neighboring places between 1946 and 1947.

22 Other films reflecting similar themes include G.I. Fever: Ay Kano! (1947) and Hanggang Pier
(1946). Movie posters of these films can be found at the Lopez Memorial Museum and Library’s
digital collection; the actual films, however, are not archived and have yet to be located by film
historians.

23 Maria Clara was a character in José Rizal’s (1887) Noli me tángere; by the 1930s Maria Clara
represented idealized Filipina femininity in Philippine society. Cf. Cruz 2012; Nakpil 1963.

24 This association between GI–Filipina relations and sexual immorality was prevalent in local
publications. Cf. Litonjua 1946; Molano 1952; David 1946, 19, 21.

508 Pshev  65, no. 4 (2017)

25 See related news reports of crime and sexual violence in Manila Times 1946a; Manila Times
1946b; Manila Chronicle 1946. The language in these articles, which drew connections between
race and criminality, is part of a long history of Philippine newspapers (Marasigan 2010, 485).
By the postwar period, these racial perceptions led the US military and Philippine government to
reduce the numbers of African American servicemen in the Philippines from 40 percent in 1946
to 10 percent in 1948, citing VD and crime statistics as the main justification (Friedman 2001,
130).

26 These are relevant questions that Filipina novelist Marivi Soliven (2013) provokes in her award-
winning fiction that explores contemporary women’s issues in the Philippines and the diaspora.

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Stephanie Fajardo is a doctoral student, Department of History, University of Michigan,

1029 Tisch Hall, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA. She specializes in Philippine history, the US in the world,
and the study of gender and sexuality. This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the
International Summer School for Doctoral Researchers on the Philippines organized by the Institute
of Philippine Culture (IPC), School of Social Sciences, Ateneo de Manila University, 26–29 July 2015.
<[email protected]>

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