Beyond the bullets, the tanks, the planes, the bombs, the Japanese also brought other weapons to bear against the Filipinos: Typewriters. Radio waves. Movie theaters.

Here is one story from the frontlines of shisōsen, or "the thought war."

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References:

Campoamor II, Gonzalo (2017). “Re-Examining Japanese Wartime Intellectuals: Kiyoshi Miki during the Japanese Occupation of the Philippines.” Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia, 53(1), pp. 1-38.

Terami-Wada, Motoe (1990). “The Japanese Propaganda Corps in the Philippines.” Philippine Studies, 38(3), pp. 279-300.

Lagmay, Alfred (1977). “Bahala Na!” In Pe-Pua, Rogelio (ed., 2018), Handbuk ng Sikolohiyang Pilipino, Bolyum I: Perspektibo at Metodolohiya, University of the Philippines Press.

Jose, Ricardo T. (1998). The Japanese Occupation. In Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People. Asia Publishing Company Limited.

Griggs, Alyson (2020). There Were Children on the Battleground: Japanese and Filipino Youth in the Second World War [masteral dissertation]. Utah State University.

From the Panlilios of Pampanga to future gangster Jack Riley, Tom’s Dixie Kitchen pops up in the biographies of some unexpected people. (Listen to S7E5 before listening to this one!)

Governors and gangsters, spies and socialites—it seemed that all of Manila dined out at the two-floor restaurant that rose above the bustle of Plaza Goiti. Inside, waiters handed you menus with more than three hundred dishes on offer, and, for special guests, directed you to special themed dining rooms upstairs. But there was enough entertainment on the first floor. There was a jazz band playing live music. There was a boxing promoter hamming it up at the next table. There was a steady stream of VIPs coming in through the front door.

This is the story of Tom’s Dixie Kitchen.

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References:

Manila Electric Co. (1932). “City of Manila and Suburbs [map].”

Mount, Guy Emerson (2018). “Soul Food, Stir Fry, and Citizenship.” In Mount, The Last Reconstruction: Slavery, Emancipation, and Empire in the Black Pacific [doctoral dissertation], The University of Chicago.

Mount, Guy Emerson (2018). “An Open Door: The Geopolitical Possibilities and Pitfalls of Black Colonization to the Pacific.” In Mount, The Last Reconstruction: Slavery, Emancipation, and Empire in the Black Pacific [doctoral dissertation], The University of Chicago.

Ngozi-Brown, Scot (1997). “African-American Soldiers and Filipinos: Racial Imperialism, Jim Crow and Social Relations.” The Journal of Negro History, 82(1), pp. 42-53.

Lee, Ira (17 March 2020). “How Racism Pushed This U.S. Soldier to Join Filipino Guerrillas.” Esquire Philippines. 

Department of Agricultural and Commerce (1934). Philippine Statistical Review. Bureau of Printing.

Pritchard vs. Republic, Case Digest (G.R. No. L-1715) (1948).

“Peste general.” “Pestilencial epidemia.” “Epidemia maligna.” In the Philippine archipelago, Spanish chroniclers wrote of deadly epidemics that struck their new possession. (Listen to S7E4 before this one.)

Smallpox was one of the deadliest diseases known to man—and not even the Philippines was immune to its virulent dangers! But how did the dreaded disease arrive on our shores? And what devastating effects did it have during the long centuries of our occupation?

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The thumbnail image, which dates from the 16th century, depicts Aztec victims of smallpox.

References:

Newson, Linda A. (2011). Conquest and Pestilence in the Early Spanish Philippines. Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Fenner, F.; Henderson, D.A.; Arita, I.; Jezek, Z.; Ladnyi, I.D. (1988). Smallpox and Its Eradication. World Health Organization.

“Termination of Smallpox Vaccination.” DOH Memorandum Circular, May 08, 1980.

Herzog, Richard (23 September 2020). “How Aztecs Reacted to Colonial Epidemics.” JSTOR Daily. https://daily.jstor.org/how-aztecs-reacted-to-colonial-epidemics/

Mursell, Ian. (7 April 2020) “IN THE NEWS: epidemic, self-isolation, dedication and the preservation of memory.” Mexicolore. https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/spanish-invasion/epidemic-self-isolation-dedication-and-the-preservation-of-memory

Thein, M.M.; Goh, L.G., Phua, K.H. (1988). “The Smallpox Story: From Variolation to Victory.” Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health, 2(3), pp. 203-210.

Wise, Edwin (2019). Manila, City of Islands. Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Crucial to the story of coffee in the Philippines is the industry’s boom years in Lipa during the late 1800s. What really happened then? (Listen to S7E3 before this one.)

Coffee. Tea. Cocoa. The three have a surprisingly rich, complex, and layered history in the Philippines. How did they arrive here, and what effect did they have in the archipelago’s colonial period?

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Thanks to Beach Reads Book Club (based in The Beach House cafe in Kapitolyo) for hosting the live premiere of this episode last July 5. 

References:

Acabado, Stephen (4 May 2025). “[Time Trowel] A drunk history of the Philippines.” Rappler. https://www.rappler.com/voices/thought-leaders/time-trowel-drunk-history-philippines/

Edgar, Blake (2010). “The Power of Chocolate.” Archaeology, 63(6), pp. 20-25. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41780626

Doeppers, Daniel (2016). Feeding Manila in Peace and War, 1850-1945. Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Topik, Steven (2003). The World Coffee Market in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, from Colonial to National Regimes. GEHN Conference, Bankside, London.

Sonnad, Nikhil (11 January 2018). “Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea.” Vox.

Chia, Lucille (2006). “The Butcher, the Baker, and the Carpenter: Chinese Sojourners in the Spanish Philippines and Their Impact on Southern Fujian (Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries).” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 49(4), pp. 509-534.

Lanzona, Claudine (2019). “The Search Party.” Grid. 

“Cocoa (cacao).” (n.d.) Plant Village. https://plantvillage.psu.edu/topics/cocoa-cacao/infos

Crawford, John (1852). “History of Coffee.” Journal of the Statistical Society of London, 15(1), pp. 50-58.

This faraway empire shows up in unexpected pages of our history. (Listen to S7E2 before this one.)

As the United States moves to take over Mindanao, both the Americans and the Moros invoke the name of the Ottoman Empire—seat of the Caliph—to support their campaigns. But in 1914, an actual Ottoman emissary arrives in Zamboanga. How will the American occupiers react to his visit?

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References:

Dwight, H.D. (1915). Constantinople: Old and New. Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Inanc, Yusuf Selman. “Abdulhamid II: An autocrat, reformer and the last stand of the Ottoman Empire.” Middle East Eye. https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/abdulhamid-ii-last-stand-ottoman-empire

Göksoy, Ismail Hakki (2024). “The Ottomans’ Shaykh Al-Islam of Philippines, Mehmet Vecih Efendi: His Life, Duties and Activities.” In Göksoy, Kadi (eds.), Studies on the Relations Between the Ottoman Empire and Southeast Asia, YTB Publications.

Charbonneau, Oliver (2021). Civilizational Imperatives: Americans, Moros, and the Colonial World. Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Amirell, Stefan Eklöf (25 August 2022). “‘An Extremely Mild Form of Slavery … of the Worst Sort’: American Perceptions of Slavery in the Sulu Sultanate, 1899–1904,” Slavery & Abolition, 43(3), pp. 517-532.

Vatin, Nicolas (19 December 2017). “The Death of Ottoman Sultans.” Politika. https://www.politika.io/en/notice/the-death-of-ottoman-sultans

In the last decades of Spanish rule in the Philippines, pianos—both foreign and local—provided the tinkling music of the colony’s rising middle class. (Listen to S7E1 before this one.)