The Philippines in the Korean War: Johnny Villasanta, UN War Correspondent

PEFTOK

THE PHILIPPINE EXPEDITIONARY
FORCE TO KOREA (1950-1955)

Atty. JOHNNY F. VILLASANTA
(November 16, 1919 - December 14, 1997)
United Nations War Correspondent
Korean War

My father talked mostly about the Korean War only when asked to by his family, relatives or friends. That was his nature: a reserved and kind man whose job as a journalist was to listen and not talk.

When he did talk about Korea, he spoke mostly of the brave men he was proud to have served with. He knew that there were going to be many accounts of the war dealing with the great battles, the grand strategies, the victories and defeats. He wanted to write about the front line soldier, those men of special stuff that did the fighting, the suffering and the dying. And like any journalist worth his salt, my father knew that the only way for him to write about the men in the foxholes was for him to be there with him. His book, Dateline: Korea, is mainly about the lives of the ordinary Filipino front line trooper. He dedicated his book to the Filipino soldier “whom the Good Lord has made a valiant fighter for freedom.”

My father covered the war from the only place he wanted to be—the front line. He rode with the men of the 10th Battalion Combat Team (BCT) when its advanced units crossed the 38th Parallel. He shivered in foxholes when arctic winds from Manchuria ripped across Korea’s mountains. He went out on patrols. He saw his countrymen fight, suffer and die. On one occasion, a Chinese sniper put a bullet through the portable typewriter he was holding. A few inches to the left and my father would have been just another statistic in the Korean War’s horrible butcher’s bill. He went on these many patrols unarmed.

My father was deeply honored by his receipt in 1954 of the Philippine Legion of Honor—the Philippines’ highest civilian award—for his news stories about the Korean War. He felt odd, however, that he should receive an award for doing a job he wanted to do. He first went to Korea in September 1950 as a correspondent for the Philippine News Service, a local wire service agency, arriving only a week after the 10th BCT. Among his competitors was a young reporter for the Manila Times named Benigno Aquino, Jr.

He left for home and returned in 1951 at the request of the 20th BCT, the second Philippine battalion in Korea. He took a leave of absence without pay from his newspaper, the Manila Evening News, and received accreditation from the United Nations Command in Korea as a War Correspondent for the Agence France Presse, a foreign wire service agency.

If anything, this conflict convinced this kind man that war was never the answer to any misunderstanding among nations. His passionate belief in democracy as man’s natural birthright led to his opposition to totalitarianism in whatever form. When he joined the Weekly Graphic and The Nation magazines in the 1960s, he wrote stories about defense and investigative pieces exposing corruption and wrongdoing. He was also very active in unionism and, being a lawyer, advised several labor unions.

His generation of journalists resurrected the country’s mass media after the terrible devastation of the Second World War. Their pay was low and they sometimes went unpaid when the payroll came late during those uncertain days. My father spoke of eating peanuts for breakfast; lunch and dinner because that was all he could buy sometimes. But he continued to write and to engage in his other great passion—chess. He was there when the Philippine Chess Federation was founded five decades ago.

His contributions to national defense led to another Legion of Honor, with the rank of Legionnaire, in 1964. I recall standing being seated at the grandstand at Fort Bonifacio watching my father receive the award. My mother, the former Margarita Janda, was there as was my sister, Fides, and brothers, Eric and Gilbert; my late grandparents, Ramon and Carmen Villasanta, and my late aunt, Lilian.

After retiring from journalism, my father put his skills to work for the medical sector, becoming editor-in-chief of “Pulse Philippines,” the country’s first nationwide medical newspaper and published by the drug company, Winthrop-Stearns. The Philippine Medical Association (PMA) asked him to join them in the 1970s. He was a consultant of the PMA when he died on December 14, 1997 from complications caused by cancer. It was the darkest day of our lives.

I grew up on stories about the Korean War. As a young boy, I was inspired by the heroism of our fighting men. As a young man, however, that focus on heroism was tempered by the realization that war is the most terrible of all human-made tragedies. I now understand why my father followed many of those stories with a long, almost reverential silence and by a deep stare at some unseen object far off. The war had never left him and the stories brought back memories, both bitter and bittersweet, of old comrades far away.

All of us who love him miss him deeply. My father’s death was particularly hard on my sister, Fides, and my brother, Eric, who were abroad when the tragedy occurred and could not return for his funeral. Art and Edith; Fides; Eric and Malou; Gilbert and Ruth all miss him. Ten grandchildren are heirs to his memory. The oldest grandchild is 16; the youngest is two years old. My dad's grandchildren--Jose Gabriel, Mary Rose, Troy, Kimberly, James, Mike, Eugene, Errol, Dave and Neil--will never hear their “lolo” (grandfather) tell them about the Korean War. But they can read about what their lolo wrote during the war. And when they grow older, they’ll probably learn what their lolo learned in the barren and shell torn hills of Korea—that peace is always preferable to war.

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