Which One to Trust on Marcos' Narratives: Social Media vs. Traditional Media
Is Former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. a War Hero and Was Awarded By the Americans for Fighting the Japanese During the World War II?
Senator Imee Marcos, herself, notably leads the Marcos supporters in spreading the misleading information claiming that his father was a decorated soldier and leader of a guerilla intelligence group called “Ang Mga Maharlika” back during World War II.
However, PDI says that it is not true that Marcos Sr. was the most decorated Filipino soldier in World War II. Marcos was reported to be not included in the database of people who received the US Congressional Medal of Honor, contrary to what the contents claim: that Marcos received the award from Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright. From the official websites for the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Service Cross, PDI also reported that Marcos was not a recipient of these two that the Marcoses claimed to be awarded by the former president from Gen. Douglas MacArthur. They also reported that even the US government never recognized the said guerilla unit because of grave doubts about its authenticity. Rappler also showed that various archival documents, the US Army, and the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) have all disproven the claims about Marcos being a guerilla leader. Rappler reported that a 2016 study by the NHCP found using official primary sources and documents that Marcos’ guerilla leadership was described as “questionable, non-existent, and even fraudulent.” NHCP study also debunked claims regarding Marcos’ war medals.
For the third time, now, other sources excluding social media platforms and the country’s traditional media platforms share the latter sets of arguments. VERA Files said that Marcos did serve as a major in the 14th Infantry Regiment during World War II, but both the US government and the NHCP debunked his claims about receiving three medals from the Americans. New York Times also reported that documents that had rested out of the public view in United States Government archives for 35 years show that repeated Army investigations found no foundation for Mr. Marcos’ claims that he led a guerrilla force in military operations against Japanese forces from 1942 to 1944. The same report affirmed that the United States Veterans’ Administration, helped by the Philippine Army found in 1950 that some people who had claimed membership in Maharlika had actually been committing “atrocities'' against Filipino civilians rather than fighting the Japanese and had engaged in what the is called “nefarious activity,” including selling contraband to the enemy. Moreover, according to the Washington Post, an 18-month effort to verify Marcos’ claims to high American decorations which included a search of US military archives, detailed examination of official military histories, personal memoirs and portions of Marcos’ personal file at the US military records center in St. Louis, and conversations with Philippine and American survivors of the war raises serious doubts. It was found then that his name does not appear on either of the two official lists of 120 Americans and Filipinos who were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross during the Bataan campaign. It does not also appear on the “List of Recipients of Awards and Decorations Issued Between December 7, 1941 through June 30, 1945,” compiled by the “machine records unit” of MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo soon after the war’s end.
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