The MacArthur Memorial Presents: Philippine-American Heritage in Washington, D.C.

Norfolk, VA · · More Norfolk, VA meetings · More Virginia meetings

View original source →

Transcript

Download: Text · SRT ·
SOURCE TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is downloaded from the source you provided but we haven't reviewed it for accuracy. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record. You can also request an AI-transcription of the audio file with the button to the left.

[0:00] Welcome to this MacArthur Memorial Virtual program, and thank you for joining us. Our mission is to preserve and share the story of General Douglas MacArthur, the millions who served with him and the world they lived in through free exhibits, education, research, and programs like this one. We truly appreciate your interest and your support. General MacArthur spent significant parts of his career in the Philippines, and both he and his wife, Jean MacArthur, held deep affection and respect for the Filipino people. The lives of MacArthur's were shaped by the evolution of the Philippines from a territory to a commonwealth to independence. In 1946, an event they both attended and celebrated. The United States and the Philippines share a complex, rich history. This relationship mattered greatly to general MacArthur, and it remains incredibly important today, as the United States continues to mark 250 years as a nation, and as we recognize 80 years of formal diplomatic relations between the United States and the Philippines, we're pleased to highlight a topic that brings those commemorations together. Philippine History and Heritage in Washington, D.C. our presenter is Professor Erwin Tiongson, professor of the practice and director of the Global Human Development Program at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. He is also the author of Philippine American Heritage in Washington, D.C., and he leads an excellent walking tour of related historic sites in the city. If you're watching live, please feel free to add questions in the comments. We'll have time for Q&A after the presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, Professor Johnson.
[2:01] Thank you so much. Amanda, thank you for the opportunity to share my work. Thank you for the opportunity to share stories from the book. And thank you all for being here. Um, the reason this book exists is the same essential reason that we all happen to be together at this moment. I would say it is because somehow our lives are part of the intertwined histories of the Philippines and the United States that span over a century. Here is a one page slide of Philippine history. I'm not going to go into every detail. There are just three things I want to say about it for our purposes this evening. The first is that until 1898, the Philippines was a Spanish colony, and from 1898 until 1946, roughly. It was a US colony, except during the Second World War, and finally its independence was fully recognized by the United States in 1946. All of this to say that for nearly a half century, the Philippines was a US colony, which explains why there has been such a strong Philippine presence in Washington, D.C. that persists through today, and why there are so many stories worth telling and retelling. So let me share. Let me begin with one particular story.
[3:34] This is the Philippine Constabulary Band. There were about 84 musicians recruited from all over the Philippines through rigorous auditions. There were eight clarinet players, for example, chosen from about 300 who applied. There were two French horn player selected out of 28. They were very popular in the early 1900s. They toured the US and the reviews were reportedly ecstatic. The band was in a class all by itself, according to one newspaper, and cannot be compared with other bands at the 1915 San Francisco Fair. John Philip Sousa thought it was the best band in the world. He conducted them as they played his Stars and Stripes forever. He said when I closed my eyes, I thought it was the US Marine Band playing now. They were in Washington, D.C. in 1909 because President and Mrs. Taft invited them to perform at Taft's inauguration. President and Mrs. Taft, of course, knew them from their previous stay in the Philippines. Taft was the first civil Governor general of the Philippines, and the band was Colonel Henry Allen's idea. And. And Taft supported it. So they created it in 1902. Here on the right hand of this, on the right side of the screen, Mrs. Taft is wearing a traditional Philippine dress. Here is the inaugural program from March 1909. The schedule of concerts and you can see very clearly a couple of the several concerts that the Philippine Constabulary Band led. And here they are performing. This would have been on Pennsylvania Avenue, I think. Here they are performing at Taft's inaugural parade, March 1909, in the middle of a blizzard. So imagine 80 plus musicians from the tropics suddenly finding themselves in the middle of a blizzard. This image, by the way, is from the Library of Congress. Many of the images I use here, they're from the National Archives. They're from presidential libraries. Some of them from my own collection. Now, some of you might know they first played in the US during the 1904 Saint Louis Exposition. It was a, unfortunately, a racially charged atmosphere. Some Filipinos were human exhibits exhibited as savages. The band was led by an African American. So they were all Filipinos except for the conductor himself, uh, Colonel Walter loving. Um, they were at the 1904 Saint Louis Fair. They were playing the William Tell Overture. As some of you might know, that's the theme from The Lone Ranger. So in the middle of the performance, suddenly the lights went out. Some thought it was sabotage. The band kept playing anyway. They had memorized the entire score And the director conducted them in the dark using a white handkerchief. They placed second out of the 30 best bands in the world. As I mentioned, the band was led by Colonel Walter Loving, an African American conductor who was born in Virginia. Nelson County in 1872, the son of former slaves. He went to school on M Street in Washington, D.C., and was raised by relatives in a slum area that is now the football field of Gonzaga High School. The band stayed in D.C. for at least another month. So from March 1909 to April 1909, that was because Mrs. Taft wanted to inaugurate West Potomac Park. That's the place in Washington, D.C., where we now find the cherry blossoms. The cherry blossoms were, of course, a gift from Japan. But the park itself was inspired by a park in the Philippines, Luneta. This is the Luneta in the early 1900s. So I'm going to animate this picture in a second. You can clearly see the bandstand the Philippine Constabulary Band played here every evening, and Mrs. Taft wrote in her diary that Manila could lend anything to Washington may be a surprise to some persons, but the Luneta is an institution whose usefulness to society in the Philippine capital is not to be overestimated. And so on April 17th, 1909, Mrs. Taft created a new public space and a new concert series.
[8:34] With the Philippine Constabulary Band giving the inaugural performance. That's West Potomac Park that you see now on the screen. now. After all that, you might be wondering what they sounded like. And I have a clip. But before I play the clip, I want to show you. Um, this is an Edison cylinder. Before digital music, before CDs, before cassette tapes, vinyl records. There were these Edison cylinders. And a few years ago, UC Santa Barbara digitized many of them. Fortunately, one of them was a recording by the Philippine Constabulary Band from 1910. And I will now play a short excerpt. I hope you're able to hear the sound. Here we go.
[9:55] You were listening to a 1910 performance by the Philippine Constabulary Band. Some of you might have recognized the music that was Sampaguita. Um, now, a few words about the research project that later led to the book. Um, so this started out as a family project 14 years ago. So August 2012, my family and I had just moved back to Washington after spending a couple of years in the Philippines. And I looked at my children, Nicole and Rafael and their mother, and I asked ourselves, what could we teach them about our cultural heritage? And we thought instead of having them memorize names and dates right here in our adopted home, we thought that maybe we could visit places that are important places in Philippine American history. So that evening, when the Philippines and the Potomac project started, we were able to name 30 places. Places like the Woodrow Wilson House, where you can find a statue made in 1919 by a young man from the Philippines who was a waiter at a tea house in Rock Creek Park and who later became the first national artist for sculpture, Guillermo Tolentino. Or a place like the US Department of Interior, where a Philippine president had his presidential oath taking and inauguration in 1944, and so on. But we thought we could do better and maybe share our finds with other people one day, maybe even take them on a walking tour. So here we are. Our very first tour from around 2015. Those are my children telling the group about the apartment where Commonwealth President Manuel Quezon lived in 1909. And here is a map we produced a few years ago in collaboration with the Philippine Embassy. A map for a self-guided tour of the immediate neighborhood. A very recently, um, led by fellows and interns at the East West Center, um, Jackie Lee and her colleagues put together a story map based on the same project. I'm unable to share it with you yet because it hasn't been launched, but in due course, I hope to be able to share it. But looking back at what we had that evening in August 2012, we had a list of about 30 places. Fast forward to 2026. We now have a database of over 250 entries or 250 places now in the middle of the lockdown during Covid in 2020, I thought I would put everything together in a book, like a guide to places in DC, organized by neighborhood, and every place is accompanied by a photograph and a vignette. And then it took me three summers to finish, as I couldn't really do it during the regular academic year. And then thinking about that, that means around that time, what went into this book? Ten years of research, three summers of writing. And over this period, my almost daily conversation with my parents in the Philippines via FaceTime, sharing my finds with them. That's the math of the book in the book is dedicated to my parents. For the rest of this presentation, I thought I would give you a sense of what the book is like and what the tours are like. So for the rest of this presentation. Going back to our timeline, I would like to share stories set not too far from where I am at the moment and from where some of you are here in DC. And so it's worth remembering this particular period in Philippine American history. The Pacific War started in December 1941, and a few months later, May 1942, members of the Philippine Commonwealth Cabinet, together with General Douglas MacArthur, ended up here in Washington, and the Philippine Commonwealth Cabinet ended up as exiles for the next two and a half years, roughly led by President Manuel Quezon and his family. Here is Quezon being welcomed by Franklin Roosevelt at Union Station. So as part of this family project, I can't tell you how many weekends we spent matching old photographs to buildings like Union Station. This next photograph is a famous photograph of the Commonwealth government in exile that was taken at Hurley Mansion in Ashburn, Virginia, about 33 miles northwest via the GW Parkway, where I'm seated at the moment. Today, that place is better known as the Belmont Country Club. In this photograph was taken on June 23rd, 1942, the 16th birthday, if I am remembering correctly, of Manuel Quezon's son Nonong. In Quezon's writings and the writings of the Commonwealth staff members, they refer to this place as Leesburg, though in books I have found published during that period, they often wrote Belmont, near Leesburg or Belmont, along Leesburg Pike. In summer of 1942, Quezon's family lived here soon after escaping from the Japanese and just before moving to the Shoreham. A copy of the lease is at the Library of Congress. I can't tell you how many extraordinary individuals are in this photo. A few years ago, I worked with Manuel Cason's grandson, Manolo Cason, to try and name as many of these individuals as possible. So I will tell you stories about some of the individuals in this photograph. So let's start with Manuel Cason himself. He had spent the better part of his life as the leader of the Philippine independence movement. He had lived in Washington earlier in his life as resident commissioner, and later he became Senate president and then eventually Commonwealth President. In 1942, the Commonwealth Government in exile was led by Cason and he lived in the Shoreham Hotel, north of DuPont Circle. Today you'll find it close to the Woodley Park Metro stop. Now, by then 1942, he was. Gaston was already quite ill. He had spent months living in Malinta tunnel in Corregidor. He had tuberculosis and would not live to see his country become fully independent. In fact, part of the reason why he spent time away from D.C. was to breathe some fresh air, as he had great difficulty breathing. A couple of months ago, my friends and former students and I went looking for his old room at the Shoreham.
[17:12] Now look closely at. All those rooms are behind our group picture. The room is easy to find. Out of several hundred rooms at the Shoreham. Only one has a balcony enclosed in glass. That was because of Catherine's tuberculosis. Most of the photos of Manuel Quezon, taken during this period, 1942 to 1944, showed him in a hospital bed. He died during his exile and tragically never saw the Philippines become independent. That's his funeral mass at the Saint Matthew's Cathedral, and his remains were temporarily buried in Arlington. He was succeeded by Vice President Sergio Osmena. Now, I'm going to digress a bit and show you what I'm sure is a familiar photograph.
[18:21] This is, of course, a picture of a later landing led by General Douglas MacArthur, and there is Sergio Osmena serving alongside general MacArthur. If we had enough time, we could tell so many stories about the people in this photograph and their connections to DC. Here, for example, is Sergeant Francisco Salmeron, who was aide to General Douglas MacArthur. He later served in the US Air Force on Eisenhower's flight crew and later as steward to US President Truman. This we know from the pioneering work of my friend Rita Carcas. Now, before I show you Rita's book, I just wanted to say that the photograph you're looking at at the moment, it's from our private collection. It's from the original press release dated October 30th, 1944. I'm actually curious. Something I might ask Amanda and Jennifer later. Uh, are those, uh, personal effects among the, uh, memorial's collections? I understand that's general MacArthur's, uh, uh, cane and flying jacket and a few other items. Just curious if these items are still around. Anyway, we know a lot about Sergeant Sullivan. Thanks to, as I said, the pioneering work of my friend Rita, who wrote a book called Filipinos in Washington, D.C. a few years ago. And there is a particular page dedicated to Sergeant Sullivan. Now, um, back to our story. Uh, so I was talking about Sergio Osmena as vice president in exile. This was his office in downtown D.C. he had a small office on the third floor of this building, 1617 Massachusetts Avenue. It's now part of the Philippine Embassy. He lived a frugal life. He walked down 16th Street from his room at 2,416th Street Northwest, now known as the envoy. That's the picture on the left. He stopped by Saint Matthew's Cathedral on his way to work to hear mass. That was his life. Every day in exile. He was lonely, according to his biographer. And except for one daughter who was with him in Washington, he was away from the rest of his family and did not know whether the other family members had died during the Japanese occupation. He found great comfort in that daily mass at Saint Matthew's Cathedral, according to his biographer. Now, on August 1st, 1944, Carlos Romulo. He was then Colonel Romulo, Secretary of Information of the Commonwealth Government, in exile. Later he would become general and in the postwar period become an extraordinary global leader. And I'll say more about him later in this presentation. Romulo had an office on the second floor of the same building, and one morning, August 1st, 1944, he walked up to Vice President Osmena's office on the third and the third floor. He knocked on his door, Osmena opened it, and Carlos Romulo said, good morning, Mr. President. Osmena wept because he knew Castro had died and he had died at Saranac Lake, New York. Osmena immediately wanted to fly to Saranac Lake to be with Cason's family, but he was reminded that the Philippines did not have a president, so he took his oath of office at the Department of Interior. Back to our group photo. This is Aurora Quezon, the wife of Manuel Quezon and the first lady of the Philippine Commonwealth. She was a quieter, gentler presence compared to Quezon, who was said to be a gifted politician with an electrifying presence, though more low key. Aurora also had enduring contributions to Philippine life. Here she is in 1922, being welcomed by First Lady Harding at the South Lawn of the white House. These women were, until a few years ago, not identified in the catalog of the Library of Congress, but my family made an effort to identify the people in this photograph, and it turned out that many of them were leaders of the suffrage movement. In fact, three of them, three of them were present at the signing of the amended election law many years later. Among the leaders of the suffrage movement was Sophia de Vera, who was extraordinary. She received very little formal education, possibly no more than third or fourth grade education, but became one of the builders of a new nation. She was co-founder of the first nursing program in the Philippines, founder also of what might be might possibly be the oldest NGO in the world. She was author of numerous books and a civic leader in the US. She became something like a cultural ambassador, educating large audiences about the Philippines through her illustrated lectures, and was often quoted by leading newspapers of the period. Back to our group photo. Here's Arturo Rotor.
[24:20] He was secretary of the Commonwealth Cabinet in exile. He is also or he was, um, one of the most accomplished people of his generation. Okay. Just managing expectations. You have to keep track because he did so much. First he was a medical doctor. There's a bilirubin syndrome named after him based on his groundbreaking research. He did research at Johns Hopkins University.
[24:55] There's an orchid variety named after him because he was an orchid enthusiast. And just like his brother knew a lot about orchids. He was also a fiction writer and wrote two well-regarded anthologies. I think the first one was a prize winning collection. The third book is a volume of essays, and I don't have the I don't have the accompanying image. But he was also an accomplished musician, classically trained. He had a graduate degree in music. Very recently, I found a copy of a. A program featuring a performance by Doctor Rotter in the early 1930s. In the 1940s, he was in D.C. as a member of the Commonwealth Government in exile. In 1945, he led the delegation to the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Conference. There is a recording of that gathering and, um, the Office of War Information labeled it a recording from November 27th, PIN 43. And I will now play a short clip and I'll explain why after we listen to the clip. Here is Doctor Arturo Rotor from November 27th, 1943.
[26:24] My fellow countrymen, as you heard a few days ago, president appointed a delegation to represent the Philippines at the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Conference in Atlantic City. It was my great privilege and honor to be a member of that delegation. As Adviser on Health and Welfare, this conference brought together 33 United Nations and ten associated nations to discuss the problems of relief and rehabilitation that will confront us after the war.
[26:57] Okay, there is a reason why I played that short clip, that recording. While in exile, Commonwealth officials were helping establish the United Nations in the middle of the Second World War and uncertain of its own future. The Philippine Commonwealth Government, we could argue, helped lay the foundations of a new global order. Okay, so I told you about Arturo Rotor, a very accomplished person. I always thought of him as a Renaissance man. And now here is a major plot twist.
[27:34] For many years, we all thought that Arturo Rotor basically did all the most important things in that his wife, Emma, was mostly a quiet, supportive presence. But I spent the last few years conducting a research on Emma, and it turns out that she was equally extraordinary that she was a member of a team that helped create a top secret weapon during the Second World War. The weapon was said to have been second only to the atomic bomb in its importance. Science news published my piece a couple of years ago, and you can find a podcast on Scientific American's Lost Women of Science podcast. So that's Emma Rutter. And together with her relatives, um, her descendants, we recently identified her in that group photo. She worked at Van Ness, uh, in this complex, uh, at the corner of Van Ness and Connecticut Avenue. That's the office of the National Bureau of Standards. It's where you can now find the University of DC or UDC. She worked with people like William McClean, inventor of the Sidewinder missile. And so you could make an argument that together with her colleagues, she helped develop one of the first versions of the smart bomb. She also worked, by the way, I found this in the National Archives a few months ago. So this is, um, the roster of staff members of the National Bureau of Standards. There's William McLean, uh, inventor of the Sidewinder missile, and there's Emma Ritter. And as you can see, she also worked with Jacob Rabinow. Now imagine a top secret weapons research project right in Woodley Park, the heart of Washington, D.C. what was that like? I'm going to play an interview clip. Uh, a short excerpt from an interview with Jacob Rabinow.
[30:03] He took me to the northwest building. We entered a beehive of activity. A better way to describe it was we entered the madhouse. He introduced me to a young man and his words were, This is Jake. He has some mechanical aptitude and he walked out of the room. This was my formal introduction to the war effort. The man he introduced me to was Bill McLane, with whom I worked for many years and whom I admired greatly.
[30:32] I realized, I discovered that we were working on all sorts of things safety mechanisms for rockets. We were building rockets. We fired rockets in the back of the Bureau of Standards, and one of them got away from me once. It was going for the hot shop in Connecticut Avenue, and luckily hit a tree and never got there.
[30:54] I don't know if you caught that they were doing top secret weapons research, and one day a rocket nearly hit a fast food restaurant on Connecticut Avenue. Um, and earlier, I told you about how I wrote about, uh, Emma Rutter and was published by Science News in January 2024. And then, um, the, uh, Scientific American, through its podcast series Lost Women of Science, also featured, uh, Emma Rutter. All right, back to our group photo. Uh, just a couple more, uh, people, uh, to feature. That's Estefania Aldaba lim. She was the first female clinical psychologist in the Philippines and founder of the Philippine Children's Museum. While living in D.C. soon after graduating from the University of Michigan, she met and fell in love with Luis Lim, the son of General Vicente Lim, World War Two hero and the first Filipino graduate of West Point. Luis and Estefania were married at the Sacred Heart Shrine on 16th Avenue. Um. 16th Street, uh, in Washington, D.C.. And here she is in, uh. That's the Sacred Heart shrine. And this next photograph is a photograph taken at a banquet in honor of Filipinos in the US armed forces. And she performed a complicated Philippine folk dance called the, um. Uh, she was dancing with the a glass of water and a lighted candle. And then she was so nervous that, um, in the middle of her dance, the glass slipped. Amazingly, she caught the glass with her right hand. By the grace of God, she said confidently, placed it back on her head and finished her dance to loud applause. The Filipinos, of course, knew I had goofed, she later said. But Eleanor Roosevelt, who was in the audience, thought it was spectacular. Now, if you look closely at this group photo taken at the banquet, you can see Estefania right there. And they're mostly women, almost all women, except for one guy. And some of you might recognize him. Um, that's Villamor, world war two, flying ace. Um, world War two hero. Uh, after whom? The headquarters of the Philippine Air Force is named. And he lived in Washington for many years, briefly during the war. And then in the years after, until his death in 1971, right here at the Georgetown University Hospital. Um, here he is being awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his heroism, um, by General Douglas MacArthur himself. Now, in the pre-war period. He has served as one of US President Dwight Eisenhower's flying instructors. Eisenhower was serving with General Douglas MacArthur at that time and was military advisor to the Commonwealth government. So this was in the 1930s, mid to late 1930s, pre war period. Eisenhower's son, John, later wrote about his childhood in the Philippines, including his years studying in Baguio. While in the Philippines, Eisenhower put together the first Philippine Air Corps. That's Eisenhower in the middle. That's Jesus Villamor on the right. And Eisenhower also pursued his lifelong dream of becoming a pilot with Villamor as one of his flying instructors. Now, Villamor thought Eisenhower was a terrible pilot, but he was a good student. One day, Eisenhower nearly crashed the plane. So Wilmore starts yelling at him. What's your excuse for your bad flying? Colonel? He asked. No excuse, Eisenhower said. Later, Wilmore realized what happened and apologized to the Colonel. Now, though, Eisenhower was a terrible pilot. The Philippine government gave him a pilot's license anyway. This image I got directly from the Eisenhower Library, as you can see here, typewritten issued by the Commonwealth of the Philippines. Issued to Eisenhower, July 1939. Eisenhower and Villamor reconnected after the war. Now, one last story. I have been talking about extraordinary people who worked here. I would say Carlos Romulo was just a completely separate category.
[35:56] He was a journalist, editor of a major paper in the pre-war period. He was university professor and later became university president. He was a Pulitzer Prize winner for his reporting on pre-war Japan. Later, he became general and one of became one of the signatories of the United Nations Charter, a global leader. He was present at key moments of world history that shaped much of the world we know today. So, of course, he was also there at later landing alongside Osmena Francisco Soberon and General Douglas MacArthur. Of course, the beginning of the campaign to liberate the Philippines from Japanese occupation. It was a bloody and violent campaign which led to the loss of so many civilian lives in Manila. Three months later, Carlos Romulo himself would mark the end of the war in a quiet ceremony in Washington. So that's on the second floor of that same building we saw earlier, 1617 Massachusetts, now part of the Philippine Embassy. And I'm going to read an excerpt from the book. In August of 1945. So about 81 years. Uh, uh, 81 years ago, in a ceremony held on the second floor balcony of the building, Romulo, who had served alongside General Douglas MacArthur and President Osmena. The Battle of Leyte and was now resident commissioner of the Philippine Commonwealth, placed the Philippine flag on its peacetime position. Blue stripe above. Red stripe below. The flag was a personal item. It was a handmade gift from the mother and sister of Captain Harold Shumate, a US soldier from Houston, Texas, who served in the Philippines with the Coast Artillery Corps, became a prisoner of war after the fall of Corregidor and died in prison in August 1942. The flag was prominently displayed in Romulo's office. The large and beautiful Philippine flag on my wall. That was a gift from my friends, the Shumate family, he wrote in his book My Brother Americans. And this flag accompanied Romulo wherever he went. According to newspapers, throughout his public life, Romulo often spoke movingly of the quote, blood brotherhood and deep friendship between Filipinos and Americans. He held a poignant souvenir of that friendship that morning. August 1945. As a brutal war finally came to an end.
[39:00] I finally. I want to end with this.
[39:07] Image. This same group photo that we started with, and I wanted to end with this image of Belmont, because I think of this place and all the sites I have found over the years as sacred ground on the sacred ground. Extraordinary men and women came before us. Some of them built new lives here in their adopted city in Washington, D.C., in Maryland, in Virginia. Many of them helped build a nation, and many of them helped rebuild it in the years after the war. They lived and worked here in DC. They made new friends. They shared meals, and as exiles, they longed for their families. Here is where they also marked the end of a global war. And here, in the midst of so much heartbreak and hurt during their exile, away from their families in the most difficult days of the Second World War, they, as representatives of the newly formed United Nations, tried to help build a new and better world. I also wanted to end with this image an old photograph overlaid on a new photograph, because there was one more reason why I started this project in 2012 with my family, and why I wrote my book at that time. In 2012, my family and I had just moved back to Fairfax from the Philippines and I was missing my friends. I was missing my parents. I was missing home. In this research, this research project away from them has been in many ways, an effort to find traces of my older home while creating a new home in my adopted city. Thank you for listening and thank you for the opportunity to share my work.
[41:06] Well thank you Erwin. Thank you for taking the time to share all of your research with us. We do have a few questions from the audience and, um, one from me. Um, I was wondering, I was able to go on the walking tour with you a couple months ago, and it's an absolutely fantastic tour.
[41:38] If others are interested in that, um, is that something still available or how do you find out more information about that? S2:
[42:01] That's it. Uh, and, um, we'll just find a time that's convenient for both of us. Uh, I have requests at the moment, for example, to take people on a tour this Saturday, and then I think a couple of Saturdays from now. So we'll just find a time that's convenient for both of us. Usually it's a Friday afternoon or a weekend. Um, uh, Saturday or Sunday, we'll figure it out.
[42:26] Okay, great. And I think one of my favorite parts of the tour was, well, two things first, I mean, if you go to DC a lot, you recognize a lot of parts of the city and a lot of landmarks. Your tour gave kind of an insider view of of some of those, but I also like that you brought artifacts with you. Um, and I thought that that made it a really kind of special experience too. So again, I highly recommend if you want to know about the, um, kind of Philippine history and heritage in DC. It's a, it's a good tour to take. Um, let's see. Next question.
[43:15] Um, do you know what Filipinos generally thought of DC? Did they write home about the experience and about their reception? S2:
[45:51] Right. And I think earlier you asked a question, you had the picture, um, that had the cane in it and some of General MacArthur's. Um. Yes, yes. Um and so yes, we do think we have that cane. Oh that's a collection um perhaps on display. Yep. There's the picture. Okay. Um so it'd be interesting to see what else he's carrying in that photograph because, um if it survived Corregidor and he has it in 43, 44, 45, it's there's a good chance that we might have some of that, but I do think we have that, that cane. So, um, very cool artifact connection. Yeah. Like I said, I like it when you do that, when you when you bring the artifacts in. So glad we had one this time.
[46:41] Yes I will. So I'll scan this and I'll send you a picture. And it's really exciting when you find it just makes it come alive when you're touching something from that particular moment.
[46:51] Yes.
[46:52] So. All right. Not touching.
[46:56] I mean, I'm sure it's fragile, right? S1: