The Malago River bridge was about two and one half miles west of Victorias on Hwy. # 1, heading towards Fabrica. The 1st platoon guarded this bridge and the bridge over the Imbang River. The Imbang River bridge was about eight miles beyond the Malago River bridge.  The Malisbog (Malato) River bridge was another eighteen miles further. Bacolod, Negros' major city, was about thirty-two miles south from Victorias. 

Silay was about twenty miles south from Victorias. All the steel bridges on Hwy. # 1 were intact except the one over the Himogaan River at Fabrica. The Japs had blown a span here, and until a replacement could be arranged, vehicles had to be ferried across the big river. 

Manila was called the "Pearl of the Orient"- and the port town of Dumaguette, Oriental Negros, was called the "Little Pearl of the Orient".  Victorias,  in turn, had been of the reputation as  the "Tiny Pearl of the Orient."

It had indeed been a tiny pearl, until the Japanese had set it to the torch.

 The population of Victorias in June 1945 was difficult to assess, but was probably in the range of between eight and ten thousand people. It is difficult to estimate the population of Philippine towns generally, as a great number of the poor live, or rather squat, in small nipa huts which are crowded into small irregular areas. Like other Philippine areas there were rich and there were poor with few middle class  in between, but Victorias seemed to have a higher proportion of the rich or well-to-do than elsewhere. 

There were efforts being made by the authorities, as tentative as a liberation authority could be at the time, to restart the agricultural industry on Negros, which had laid fallow during the years of the Japanese occupation. Sugar was not just an important Philippine staple, it was also a major export commodity, and Negros had been the major sugar producing region of the country.   It was thus not long before Capt. Bailey and I became acquainted with a Mr. Scott,  of the United States Department of Agriculture. Scott was an expert on Philippine agriculture , charged with getting the Sugar industry recommenced.

The Filipino sugar cane planters, favoured by years of privilege, power and protection,  were very wealthy indeed. With their large land holdings, and the lack of machinery, hundreds of people worked for them in an almost feudal-like environment.  The workers were hardly free agents, for their livelihood depended on the support of the owner of their property. The larger the land holding, the larger the main Hacienda around which the workers settled would become. The Haciendas were all named, and the workers thus would be of "Hacienda Rosario", "Hacienda Paz" and Hacienda Luisita, etc.

We found that many owners had more than one  plantation, and that families could acquire immense wealth through their several plantations.  Usually they built a large home on each plantation, and the workers lived nearby. These planters also had acquired homes in the main towns, and many times we heard of the owners also having residences overseas in Spain.

Victorias had a number of very fine town houses. The hub of the town was a large square, about two blocks in length running north-south and a block wide east-west. Just south of the square was a similar block containing the public school. Most of streets were paved with asphalt. Hwy. # 1 bordered the north side of the square.  Some businesses were located on the north side of this highway. Large homes, most of them two story, lined the streets on the east and west of the square and the school grounds. These houses continued on for a couple of blocks to the east. Also, east two blocks was the Catholic Church.  It must have been a beautiful building prior to the Japanese departure.

A large, two story yellow, stucco municipal building sat in the middle of the square. A masonry wall about five feet high surrounded the school grounds. The entrances through the openings were guarded by large wrought iron gates. Two blocks west of the square were the farmers' market and a number of other dry-goods businesses. The market was composed of corrugated steel roofed sheds built around a courtyard, about the size of a football field. The other outstanding structure was a tall cement tower which covered the cities' steel water tank.  

The  Japanese, for no military reason short of barbarity, had put much of the town to the torch when the 40th Division landed further west. The homes, the school, the businesses across the highway - all lay in ruins. Many shacks had been built in the ruins of the homes by using charred and damaged materials which had been salvaged.   The wooden parts and the furnishings in the church must have burned intensely, because the masonry walls had almost completely toppled. Only a few structures survived -  the municipal building was unharmed, as were the farmers market and the small businesses near it. The town water supply, a steel tank atop a water tower, had strafing holes in many places, though as we would soon establish, it was not damaged beyond redemption.    The torching of Victorias was a senseless act against innocent people, but we were getting used to the petty, vindictive and malevolent conduct of the Japanese.

 It was a if the Japanese had felt that if the Filipinos were not going to grow sugar for them, they should not be allowed to have a society that could grow it for anyone else.

 Early in the occupation the Japs had searched every house, even the nipa huts, and had cleaned them of everything of value, and much which was of no value to them at all. To the very poor, an old treadle operated Singer sewing machine, was their most prized possession.  The Japanese took them all, even though it was improbable they ever had the ability to do anything with them except to deny them to their poor owners. The looting of valuable furniture, fine clothing, jewellery and watches, we could understand.  We recalled Corregidor,  a collection point for the booty of Manila, so awash with booze and loot it was a wonder the island didn't sink. What we couldn't understand was the mean theft of personal items, down even to family snapshots,  kitchen and eating utensils - even the wooden items. The Japs took them all , as if they were intending to eliminate from Filipino Culture all individual and collective memory of things Western. 

The water pumps and other city equipment was gathered up, too.  All of this was hauled to Bacolod and placed in warehouses. The people were left with bare houses and little more than the clothes on their back. It was a wonder to us how cheerfully they welcomed us into their lives, and how eager they were to share what little they had left.  

As if the woes of the Japanese occupation had not been sufficient a plague upon the Negros landscape, there were the Filipino bandits.  Our grouping the guerrillas into regiments and calling them "Philippine Army" was a farce.   These bands of self-styled "guerrillas" were usually controlled by a self-appointed or franchised "colonel."  They ranged between "honest, brave and keen, but but untrained," to "criminal vermin."  It was difficult for us to realise that come what may, we would be leaving at some future point, and placing the population in their tender mercies.

 We soon found that many of the so called guerrillas had a talent for evading aggressive contact with the Japanese,  and instead spent their time levying 'taxes' on the general (ie unarmed) populace.  Many did not seem to even bother with the pretence - they simply brandished their guns and demanded goods and provisions, and anything (or anyone) else they fancied. To resist meant being branded as a collaborator and being shot on the spot.

 The morning after the company moved into Victorias, several of us walked over to the farmers' market. We saw an armed Filipino (guerrilla) knock an old farmer down and take several chickens the farmer was holding with their feet tied together. We yelled and the bandit ran. T/Sgt Wendell Wuertz had his TSMG and tried to get the Flip. He had to wait until the guy cleared the crowd, but by then the range was too great. The culprit escaped,  however, sans chickens.

Bailey issued an order that, with the exception of our intelligence agents,  all weapons brought into town were to be confiscated. The word evidently spread quickly.  Our "guerrilla allies" did not come to Victorias again, at least not armed. The people of Victorias quickly came to look upon us as their saviours, and Lt. Bailey was the "Great White Father".

This seemed to get us invited out to eat every night, and we had a chance to learn more of the area, and its heritage.  The native dialect of Negros was Western Visayan, but there was no language barrier. The Philippines was multi-lingual, (13  native language groups, and more than 170 languages, variations, and dialects) so English had become the common inter-island, inter-region language. Most everyone could speak, or at best understand it.   Since the commencement of institutionalised schooling in 1901, classes throughout the Philippine Islands had been conducted in English, for there had been no true multi-regional language in the country except Spanish, and that had been coveted by the wealthy influential and pretentious classes.  It was a matter of family pride if a six year old beginning the first  grade could speak good English.

 One of our early acquaintances was Antonio Joover, a local architect. The Filipinos had been left no photographs.  Instead, he drew a number of sketches showing what the town looked like before the Japanese plague had stripped the town of its fine or heritage value buildings.  The large, Spanish-type stucco covered homes, the school, the church, and the business section on the north side of the highway all had a beauty that made their loss all the more sad.

 We did help the locals get a water supply system back into operation. We got some welding equipment from the warehouses in Bacolod (on loan - to prevent free-for-all pilferage, this was now the property of the United States Government), and local welders patched the holes in the water tank. We also got needed pumps and an electric generator, and soon they had water.

 The 2d platoon reinforced by a light machine gun section from 2d Battalion Headquarters company, and a 60mm mortar squad from our mortar platoon was to patrol and keep the Japs out of the agricultural lands in the northwest corner of the island. The Japs had burned many of the haciendas and driven the people off, but there were still many who could not move from their only source of food and shelter.  Not every habitable building had been destroyed,  so the outlying areas still supported, in their own fashion,  a population that had remained at a safe distance from the Jap garrisons in the towns.

As long as the planters stayed the people living around the hacienda stayed. If they left, their  dependent workers did too. The powers that be wanted these people to stay put and to recommence planting as soon as possible.  

In some of the more remote haciendas, close to mountains and to the Japs,  we stationed three men to stay in a Hacienda to provide security. The men loved this duty. They were served the best and treated royally. The bridge guards loved their assignments, too. The local inhabitants, also treated them royally.

 Bill Bailey and I spent much time going our separate ways to visit the remote haciendas. It was hard duty. The planter-host always brought out his best alcoholic beverage which had been buried in some bamboo thicket. We did not want to be impolite, so we joined them. We learned quickly, in the interest of self-preservation, to limit ourselves as to how much we drank. Coming out of a cool house into an open jeep in the tropical sunshine and journeying to the next hacienda on the agenda did not mix with alcohol.