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COLONEL Narciso L. Manzano was the highest-ranking Filipino officer in the US Army under the command of General Douglas MacArthur.

During World War II, he led and was involved in multiple battles and intelligence operations, like the blowing up of the bridge in Calumpit, Bulacan, the defeat at the Battle of Bataan, and the resistance movement that sprang up against Japanese invaders. All this he did as a professional soldier who rose to field officer rank through merit, without having graduated from any military academy. Unfortunately, despite his numerous military achievements and strong reputation among MacArthur and his staff officers, his exploits have been seldom reported in detail outside of the US Army.

This is now being corrected through the publication of a book.

American author Craig Scharlin, who worked closely with Manzano as his secretary and personal assistant, has woven together the Colonel’s accounts of his life before and during the war for his new book, The Manzano Memoirs: The Life and Military Career of Colonel Narciso L. Manzano.

“This book is a compilation of three memoirs that I discovered many years after Colonel Manzano passed away. We didn’t know they existed for a long time,” Mr. Scharlin said during the book’s launch at the Ortigas Foundation Library on Feb. 6.

The book blends the three memoirs: one written by Colonel Manzano in 1948 which was initially handwritten on yellow lined pad paper; another that had been typed out in 1984 when he was already a retired colonel and real estate developer; and the last one by his son, Jaime Manzano, who had written about his family. At the book launch, Mr. Scharlin read a passage on Colonel Manzano’s childhood in Atimonan, Quezon, before he joined the army and became an integral part of the country’s defense campaign.

During the launch, Mr. Scharlin noted that the colonel often gave input that was not listened to by MacArthur’s officers, including about the Battle of Manila (whose 80^th anniversary falls this month).

“I know this is a controversial issue with the World War II experts, but Manzano had specific intelligence that the Japanese, if given the opportunity, would have retreated from that. Now, for the first time, people can read that Colonel Manzano said this,” he said.

“Filipinos suffered having to fight a war under the auspices of the Americans. They’re never given the opportunity to fight their own battles, and Colonel Manzano spent his whole war career fighting the war violently, gallantly, and heroically, but always under the shadow of the Americans. General MacArthur, General Willoughby, and General Whitney were always above him, keeping him from making the war probably more successful than it was,” Mr. Scharlin explained.

He added that he had met Mr.  Manzano in 1975, when the colonel was already retired and speaking out against the Marcos dictatorship, which he “took very personally.”

“Manzano fought throughout the entire war and put his life — and the lives of all the men and women who served under him — on the line, and many died. And so he took it as sort of a personal affront that Marcos again took away the freedom of Filipinos,” said Mr.  Scharlin.

Dr. Ricardo T. Jose, war historian and professor emeritus at the University of the Philippines, told BusinessWorld that this marks “the first time many details of the resistance movement are published” — especially with regard to the internal battle that Filipino officers like Mr. Manzano had to fight within the US army headquarters.

In his foreword, he details how Mr. Manzano was “a professional caught in between these different wars and between powerful and clashing individuals.”

“It is high time that the story of this Filipino hero is told, in his own words. It’s a story that we can all learn from,” said Mr. Jose.

The Manzano Memoirs: The Life and Military Career of Colonel Narciso L. Manzano is published by the Ateneo de Manila University Press. It is available at the Ateneo University Press Bookshop in Bellarmine Hall, and its official Lazada and Shopee stores, for P650 (paperback) and P1,850 (hardcover). — Brontë H. Lacsamana

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Proceeds go to art fellowships

AS PART of its commitment to nurturing Filipino artists, the Asian Cultural Council (ACC) will auction off major artworks on Feb. 22 at the Leon Gallery.

The ACC Philippine Fellowship Program will benefit from the auction, which is now on its 10^th year. For this edition, nine Filipino artist-fellows are set to embark on cultural exchange projects in the United States, India, and Japan.

Among this auction’s highlights is Fernando Zóbel’s Septiembre, a las siete de la tarde, en Tres Juncos, a key work from TIME magazine’s 1966 feature on Museo de Arte Abstracto Español in Cuenca, Spain. It is considered by experts to be among Mr. Zóbel’s most important works, said Leon Gallery director Jaime Ponce de Leon.

“This was [on] the cover of last year’s important Fundacion Juan March exhibition in Madrid,” said Mr. Ponce de Leon at a press conference on Feb. 10 in Makati. “Zóbel dedicated his work to the mayor of Cuenca who allowed him to accomplish his dreams to build a museum there.”

The public sale will also have two works by National Artist Vicente Manansala on the block: the Spanish colonial heritage tribute Dambana and the Cubist stained glass-inspired Sabungero, reflecting his depictions of the sacred and the ordinary.

These three works actually form an interesting connection to ACC’s ideals, said Leon Gallery curator Lisa Guerrero-Nakpil.

“In the 1950s, before ACC was ever invented, Mr. Zóbel was like the one-man ACC. He arranged for a scholarship for Manansala,” she said. “Some people think [the Sabungero work] would be an Ang Kiukok, but it isn’t — but Manansala did also take Ang Kiukok under his wing.

“You can see a relationship between all the artists and their tradition [in] what the ACC does today, in the sense that they’re spreading the word through sponsorships, not just affecting the life of one artist, but a whole community, up to several generations of artists.”

GRANTEES
Over 300 artists, scholars, and professionals across various art disciplines — including performing arts, visual arts, archaeology, and curatorship — have received ACC grants since 1963. Some of them have since become National Artists: Jose Joya (Art), Lamberto Avellana (Film), Kidlat Tahimik (Film), Ramon Santos (Music), and Alice Reyes (Dance), among others.

This year, 140 paintings, sculptures, and antiques will be up for grabs for the benefit of nine more grantees. Currently doing their fellowships in New York are dance artist Maria Patricia Bernas, who is pursuing dance movement therapy; visual artist Archie Oclos who is doing art research; dramaturg-educator Anril Tiatco, who is training on dramaturgy; and curator-critic John Alexis Balaguer, who is studying exhibition writing and art criticism. Theater artist Toni Go and playwright-director Joshua Lim So will be joining them in July, for theater-related fellowships.

Meanwhile, theater arts practitioner Aina Ramolete is taking on puppetry studies in Connecticut, while literary artist Padmapani Perez is conducting nature-centered research across India. Already back from his fellowship is conservation specialist Peter John Natividad, who studied techniques used in the mounting and seismic control systems of various museums in Japan.

AUCTION HIGHLIGHTS
Works by many important names in art will go on the block on the Feb. 22 auction. There will be Evening in Shanghai by José Joya, who was also the first-ever Filipino ACC grantee for visual arts.

Anita Magsaysay-Ho’s On the Beach, a masterpiece from her ink-blot series, and Mother and Child, a rare terracotta sculpture, are expected to fetch high prices. Also included are pivotal works by Philippine masters: Hernando R. Ocampo’s Terminal, painted at the start of his Visual Melody period; Ang Kiukok’s Android, from his groundbreaking 1966 Luz Gallery exhibit; and Elmer Borlongan’s Pahinga, exhibited at the Fukuoka and San Francisco art museums.

Two paintings from the collection of the Ford Foundation’s Philippine representative Arthur Hill and his wife Julie, will go under the block for the benefit of underprivileged provincial students who passed the University of the Philippines College Admission Test but do not have the means to afford the cost of living on campus. These are H.R. Ocampo’s A Song for Summer and Ang Kiukok’s Mother and Child.

“These are works of excellent provenance, published, and of such high quality,” said Leon Gallery’s Mr. Ponce de Leon. “Through them, the ACC underlines the importance of sponsorship and mentoring, for the spread and development of Philippine art.”

The works can be viewed at the Leon Gallery starting Feb. 18, 6 p.m. The auction will be held on Feb. 22, with open bidding commencing at 2 p.m. For details, visit leon-gallery.com. — Brontë H. Lacsamana