Hukbalahap

Short for Hukbong Bayan Laban sa Hapon, the People’s Army Against the Japanese. A peasant-organised guerrilla force founded on 29 March 1942 at Sitio Bawit, at the junction of Tarlac, Pampanga and Nueva Ecija, led by Luis Taruc with Casto Alejandrino as vice commander, and grown out of prewar peasant organising by Juan Feleo and Pedro Abad Santos.

It fought an estimated 1,200 engagements against Japan, inflicting roughly 25,000 casualties, with no American officer corps and no supply line worth the name. After the war it was refused recognition as a legitimate combatant force, its squadrons were disarmed, and its members faced arrest for treason, sedition and subversion, which runs directly into the Huk Rebellion of the early 1950s.

End-of-war strength is disputed. One account gives about 20,000 full-time regulars plus roughly 50,000 reservists; another circulates 30,000 armed. These are the same order of magnitude and not a reconciled count, so the course states both and picks neither.

Source: Compiled record at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukbalahap , which carries the founding date, the leadership, the engagement and casualty estimates and the postwar treatment. The postwar denial sits alongside the Rescission Act exclusion applied to all Filipino USAFFE veterans, making the Huks the group denied twice.

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