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“When Lives Were as Cheap as Chickens’: Dark Histories of the Barrio during the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, 1942-1945”
September 26 @ 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
The UP Department of History is pleased to invite everyone to the lecture of Prof. Greg Bankoff, Ph.D. (Research Fellow, Ateneo de Manila University) titled “When ‘Lives Were as Cheap as Chickens’: Dark Histories of the Barrio during the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines, 1942-1945.”
The event will be held on 26 September 2024 (Thursday), 1:00-2:30 PM PST at Palma Hall 207, CSSP, UP Diliman. The event is free and open to the public. No registration is required. Walk-in participants are welcome.
ABSTRACT:
There are dark histories in every nation’s past, stories that for one reason or another are best left out of official narratives. World War II is full of such “uncomfortable” histories. The political context in Southeast Asia, however, was more complicated than in Europe, the only other major world region almost entirely under the control of an occupying power. Here collaboration involved “defecting” from one colonial power to another. In the Philippines, there has been limited scholarship on the many individuals accused of “treason” during Japan’s occupation of that country between 1942 and 1945.
Only the activities of the national and regional elites have received serious consideration, and only scant attention has been given to what life was like in rural areas, to the people living in the thousands of villages or barrios across the archipelago.
Their lost stories, however, can still be recovered from the previously inaccessible records of the Historical Data Papers, the village histories mandated by President Quirino in 1951. The 40,000+ pages of this unique source offer a grassroots account of the Japanese Occupation told from the viewpoint of the barrio residents that challenges the previous wartime historiography of the islands.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Greg Bankoff is a social and environmental historian who focuses on the way societies interrelate with their environments over time, especially the way people adapt to frequent crises and hazards in their lives. His research focuses primarily on Southeast Asia and the Pacific, seeking to understand how societies, both past and present, have learnt to normalize risk and the way in which communities deal with misfortune through an interdisciplinary approach that combines archival analysis with fieldwork.
He is a Research Fellow at Ateneo de Manila University.
Source: UP Departamento ng Kasaysayan Facebook page