Collaboration

Serving an occupying power in an official capacity. In Philippine usage it names what officials of the Japanese-sponsored Philippine Executive Commission and of the Second Philippine Republic did between 1942 and 1945, and it was the charge the People’s Court was created after the war to try.

The word describes a position, not a verdict. It covered running a ministry, running a rice procurement authority, and every degree in between, and refusal was possible: Chief Justice José Abad Santos declined to serve the occupation and was executed for it. What makes the term load-bearing in this course is that almost no case reached a verdict, because a general amnesty closed them first.

Source: The standard scholarly account is David Joel Steinberg, Philippine Collaboration in World War II, Solidaridad Publishing House, Manila, 1967, from his doctoral dissertation. It documents the Vargas and Laurel governments and analyses the People’s Court proceedings, and it records American officials, MacArthur and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes among them, intervening in the collaboration question in ways that muddled it rather than letting it resolve on Philippine terms. Library only. This course has not read it in full and attributes no analytical claim to it beyond that description. Record: Filipiniana Heritage Library, https://fhl.omeka.net/items/show/445 .

First used in: 1.5 · Ruin, and the pardon nobody voted for