Between postoccupation and postcolonial : framing the recent past in the Philippine treason amnesty debate, 1948

Abstract

The most extensive public debate on the moral dilemmas of life in the Japanese-occupied Philippines (1941–1945) took place between the first elected legislators of an independent Philippine republic in 1948 over whether to approve a partial presidential amnesty for wartime collaborators. The eventual approval of the amnesty brought an end to a struggling People’s Court system of trying treason cases, abandoned prosecutions for all accused political and economic collaborators, and transferred other cases of military collaboration and informers to regular criminal courts. The chapter explores some of the objections to the amnesty on the grounds of class discrimination that ultimately failed to persuade the majority but argues that, on all sides, participants saw the Philippine experience as deeply integrated in a broader global process of confronting the legacies of brutal foreign occupations.