Filipino Veterans Get Recognition--at Last : Heroism: A Manila ceremony is part of a U.S. effort to repay POWs, others who fought in World War II.

Dionisio S. Ojeda still recalls hearing President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the radio during the darkest days of World War II: the bitter siege of Corregidor, the bloody battle of Bataan and the infamous “death march” to a malaria-ridden Japanese prison camp.

“We fought side by side with the Americans,” said the 79-year-old retired Philippine general. “And President Roosevelt promised us everything. That was half a century ago. But we are still waiting.”

The long wait began to end on a rainy Veterans Day here Monday. In a solemn ceremony, the first U.S. Defense Department prisoner-of-war medals were pinned on Ojeda and nine other aging Philippine war vets in a crowded veterans’ hospital auditorium. U.S. officials say 90,000 Filipinos may be eligible for the medal.

Far more important, President Bush will soon sign a new U.S. immigration bill that offers summary naturalization to Philippine war veterans, part of a sweeping congressional bill that also sharply raises U.S. immigration limits for Irish, Italian, Polish and other nationalities.

The law affects the Philippines the most, however, because an estimated 150,000 Philippine vets are believed to be eligible. Even if only half apply when the law takes effect next May, U.S. immigration officials expect to be inundated with 250,000 applicants for citizenship after spouses and unmarried children under 21 are included.

“No quota, no waiting,” said Bruce Beardsley, U.S. consul general in Manila. “That really opens the door.”

The door was hardly closed. Not including several hundred thousand illegal aliens, more than 2 million Filipino-Americans are already the largest Asian immigrant group in the United States. The Philippines is now America’s No. 1 source of immigrants. Indeed, the U.S. Consulate here issued 45,189 immigrant visas last year, more than any U.S. post ever.

All told, about 600,000 Filipinos--a whopping 1% of the island nation’s population--have applications on file to emigrate to America. Most will wait years. For those in the lowest priority group, the theoretical wait is more than a century. “They’re fighting the actuarial tables,” Beardsley said.

But at a time when Washington is confronting Manila in tense negotiations to retain six military facilities here, many Filipinos complain that the new U.S. immigration bill is only righting a historic wrong. For Filipinos with proud memories of fighting the Japanese, American action after the war has long represented a peacetime betrayal.

“This has been a very painful experience for all of us,” said Jose Tan Angeles, a 74-year-old retired colonel. “We fought under the U.S. flag. We took our oath before a U.S. officer. We suffered the same as Americans. Why the discrimination?”

With the Philippines still a U.S. colony when Japan attacked in December, 1941, its entire army was put under the command of U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur and inducted into his U.S. Armed Forces Far East Command. By 1945, the United States counted 472,000 Philippine soldiers and guerrillas under its command.

“You had no other case where the entire armed forces were brought into the U.S. forces,” said W. David Smith, head of the U.S. Veterans Administration here. “They served side by side. Had the same commanders. Fought the same battles. Marched the same Bataan death march.”

An estimated 10,000 men and women, the majority of them Filipinos, died during the 50-mile forced march. Another 29,000, mostly Filipinos, died after they arrived at the Camp O’Donnell prison in central Luzon.

But after the war, “their service was not considered service in the U.S. Army but with the U.S. Army,” said retired Brig. Gen. Ernesto S. Gidaya, who heads the Philippine Veterans’ Agency. “That is the problem.”

It became a legal battle for citizenship and equitable benefits after a wartime naturalization program expired in 1946. President Harry S. Truman signed a law the same year that declared Philippine veterans ineligible for most benefits and cut their medical and death benefits to half those of U.S. vets.

In July, 1989, a federal judge in Washington ruled unconstitutional the 1946 act that had cut the benefits. The U.S. Veterans Administration, which now pays $125 million a year in benefits in the Philippines, has appealed.

The Philippines has asked the officials who are negotiating over the American bases to help resolve the longstanding grudge. But American officials estimate that paying full pension, health, education and other benefits to Philippine vets today would cost at least $1.5 billion a year--three times what the Pentagon pays for its bases here.

Emmanuel V. De Ocampo, president of the Veterans Federation of the Philippines, says it is “inconceivable to conclude the bases talks” without resolving the benefits question. “It is a moral issue involving a blatant discrimination in the treatment of Filipinos,” he charged.

The naturalization bill doesn’t affect the right to benefits. And with at least 10,000 World War II veterans dying each year, many Filipinos view the new immigration bill with bittersweet emotions.

“This is going to solve some hard feelings from the past,” said Pedro Los Banos, who helps run a veteran officers’ center called the Last Watering Hole at Camp Aguinaldo. “Our service and sacrifices are finally being recognized.”

“It’s been a long, long time,” agreed Manuel B. Syquio, 73, a retired colonel who heads the club. “We’re grateful. But they should have done this way back.”

A dozen elderly men and women spent a lazy afternoon at the veterans’ center recently, drinking beer, sharing memories and taking turns at a microphone to croon pop tunes. Most said they plan to apply for U.S. citizenship, if only for their families.

“I will apply, not for me but for my two kids,” said Domingo G. Gabidan, 73, a retired colonel who fought at Corregidor and Bataan. “I’m too old.”

Gabidan complained that the U.S. Congress has agreed to pay $20,000 to Japanese-Americans who were interned during the war. Moments later, he displayed a faded, tattered diploma from the Japanese Imperial Army, which commissioned him as a police constable after he was released from Camp O’Donnell in 1942.

“This is my proof of being a Japanese collaborator,” he joked. “But we had no choice.”

U.S. officials predict that young women may take advantage of aging or infirm veterans now that they can provide U.S. passports. Others will “adopt” grandchildren, or nieces and nephews, as children. Con men are already a problem.

“The scalawags are out there with fake forms,” said one official. “We’re already getting horror stories--bogus consultants, flimflam lawyers, sale of free applications forms.”

But for some vets none of this matters, since they are simply too old or too poor to move now.

“There’s a lot of frustration on our part,” said a graying Pedro C. Bersola, 73. “It’s too late for many of us. We’re a dying breed.”