A Battle for Rights : Filipino Veterans of WWII Fight for Citizenship, Pensions Despite Missing Army Records

Nearly 50 years after fighting on behalf of the United States during World War II, Filipino native Estanislao Bargas Beloy, 72, thought he was finally about to win his long battle for American citizenship.

However, when the retired Manila dentist arrived in Los Angeles to take advantage of a 1990 immigration law extending citizenship rights to Filipino World War II veterans, he ran into a brick wall--namely, that the U.S. Army had no record on file of his service with a guerrilla artillery unit near Luzon.

Beloy, one of thousands of Filipino veterans whose military papers were apparently destroyed or lost during or after the Japanese occupation of what was then a U.S. colony, was among more than 300 Filipino World War II soldiers attending a prayer and protest vigil Friday outside the Federal Building in Westwood.

The elderly veterans, most of whom have become American citizens as a result of the 1990 law, were demanding pension and disability benefits equal to those granted American war veterans.

“We fought side by side with the Americans,” said Los Angeles resident David Sarbilla. “We want equal benefits too.”

Retired U.S. Army Col. Edwin Ramsey, who led World War II guerrilla forces in central Luzon, called the lack of benefits reprehensible.

“I wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for the loyalty and patriotic support of the Filipinos during World War II,” said Ramsey, a speaker at the rally. “The tragedy is that Americans don’t appreciate that before the war there were 18 million Filipinos and after the war there were 17 million. Most would not have died if they had accepted the Japanese and turned against the Americans.”

The morning protest coincided with the anniversary of a 1946 federal act that rescinded the rights of Filipinos who fought alongside American soldiers. In 1941, then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an order incorporating the Philippine armed forces into the U.S. military and pledging citizenship to Filipinos who took up arms against the Japanese.

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recently reported that fewer than half of the estimated 60,000 veterans who were expected to file for naturalization since passage of the 1990 law have actually applied. Pelosi has introduced federal legislation to allow Filipinos to use military service records authenticated by the Philippine government since many American records were lost or later destroyed in a fire at the U.S. processing center.

Although federal judges have ruled in favor of veterans with substitute papers in several court cases, federal Immigration and Naturalization Service officials, fearing the potential of fraud, have appealed.

“The INS is simply required by law to (only) accept certification by the U.S. Army,” said Joe Korvisky, a Department of Justice spokesman.

Filipino war veterans granted citizenship qualify for Social Security and health benefits and can also bring their families to the United States permanently.

A bill sponsored by Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) also would extend full U.S. military pension and disability benefits to all Filipino World War II veterans, a measure that analysts have said would result in a $1-billion-plus annual price tag.

At present, Filipinos are generally entitled to limited service-connected disability compensation, life insurance, burial plots and burial flags, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington. They do not qualify for pensions, non-service-connected hospitalization or outpatient treatment, or a headstone for their graves.

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That is just not fair to the nearly 700,000 people of Filipino origin in California, protesters contend. There are more Filipinos in the state than in any other area outside the Pacific Ocean archipelago.

“I fought in Bataan, I fought in Corregidor; we surrendered under Gen. (Jonathan) Wainwright,” said Ceferino Carino, 77, who traveled to the rally from San Diego, where his three sons serve in the U.S. Navy. “I’ve been interviewed for citizenship, I’ve done everything.”

But Carino, who holds a permanent immigrant visa, said he has yet to receive a ruling since his name is not on record at the Army’s records center in St. Louis.

Beloy, who hopes to bring his two children to Long Beach from Saudi Arabia where they work as dentists, has hired a lawyer to help prove his claim of military service by using Philippine Army records.

“I have never lost hope,” said the lanky, freckled septuagenarian, who was wearing a white-and-yellow baseball cap. “I just keep on waiting because I am hopeful.

“But if the INS says no, I will feel disgusted,” he added.