RED SKY IS PUBLISHED!
“Visually, the Philippines were a tropical paradise, at least when viewed from afar. The up close and tactile experience however, was another matter. In Manila, men could be seen openly urinating in the streets … knife fights and gunplay were so commonplace that every restaurant, bar, or nightclub displayed signs admonishing patrons before entering to, ‘Check Your Guns Here’ …I was in the Orient, but it was more like the Wild Wild West…”
November 1, 2009
Redondo Beach
Since returning home from the Philippines late in 1947, I’ve had an ambition to publish a book telling of my experiences. I am happy to report, that dream is finally realized. When I first arrived in Manila, just ten days after my 21st birthday, it didn’t take long for me to see that when society breaks down, the primitive nature of man triumphs over any civilized behaviors of well-ordered society.
Red Sky in the morning
There was more going on than just the needs of survival, which a free spirited ‘California boy’ might have expected, but the combined forces of avarice and lethargy had produced a kind of societal depravity I could scarcely have imagined considering my life and moral upbringing from early childhood.
Visually, the Philippines were a tropical paradise, at least when viewed from afar. The up close and tactile experience however, was another matter. In Manila, men could be seen openly urinating in the streets, young boys soliciting their sisters for prostitution. Knife fights and gunplay were so commonplace that every restaurant, bar, or nightclub, displayed signs admonishing patrons before entering to, “Check Your Guns Here” …I was in the Orient, but it was more like the Wild Wild West.
Later I learned that everyone was “on the take,” including government officials who openly solicited payoffs before granting whatever one needed. To make matters worse, Americans who were there to “rebuild” the nation were too often, taking part in the institutional debauchery. Our homeward bound GI’s who had fought and won the war, were being replaced by young hastily trained soldiers who also seemed to slip into the overall depravity of the times.
With too much time on their hands, and the comparative wealth of GI pay in their pockets, our boys were committing every kind of mischief imaginable, and raising great enmity from among the natives. America’s fighting forces are the most dedicated, and the best in the world at doing their job. Their job is winning wars, and when the war is over, they should never be expected to become civilian police or babysitters to profiteering politicians seeking to make names for themselves parading in and out of the affairs and lands of the people of former war zones.
In the Philippines after WWII, we would have been better off, and I believe, better liked today if we had left without spending a cent on foreign aid. Everything we did after Japan’s surrender only diminished the goodwill we had established fighting side by side as brothers and allies of Filipinos. This is the message I have worked so long and hard to deliver, and I think Sterling and Peggy Seagrave have delivered well with Red Sky. Let us know what you think.
Best regards to all,
Phil Mehan
