To Remember While We Forget
Informant: Mr. Antonio Q. Collado, 89 years old “He is younger in person,” my mother says to me, as we look at the pictures hanged on the wall. My informant is surrounded by the other veterans, no doubt at a gathering of some sort. It is a bit daunting and surreal to see that they are all normal men on the outside, but they have seen – (The terror in a comrade’s eyes, or heard the scream of a man. They have seen guns blazing and war on fire; Japanese men fighting for themselves and Americans fighting for the world; Filipinos - that could have even been them - wondering, hearts beating furiously, if it was going to be their last and praying that it wasn’t.) – things that I never have. As a car parks by the entrance of the Capiz Chapter of the Philippine War Veterans Office, I step out of the building. A man in a Barong Tagalog steps out of the car, and I hastily apologize for the delay after greeting him. Antonio Collado smiles as he leads me and my mother into the office of