Book Review: "My Road Back" by Erasto R. Batongmalaque

 My Road Back by Erasto R. Batongmalaque, with Jenny L. Batongmalaque, M. D. "An Epitaph for My Father" and "The Erasto R. Batongmalaque Foundation"

When I assisted Dr. Jenny Batongmalaque with an anniversary observance of the return of Gen. MacArthur to the Philippines, I became familiar with the book My Road Back which Dr. Jenny and her family arranged to have published as an activity of the Erasto R. Batongmalaque Foundation, which Dr. Jenny and her family set up many years ago to assist Filipino World War II vets--and there are still a few around.

Her father, who spent much of his life in the Filipino military, fought in World War II, survived the Bataan Death March and subsequent imprisonment, and immigrated to the United States after he retired from his last job--supervisor with a police force in the Philippines. He wrote his memoirs in 1964. He died in 1995 in Riverside, California, and was buried at Green Hills Memorial Park at Rancho Palos Verdes, California. 

After his death, his daughter, Jenny, a doctor, published his memoirs. It's unclear whether a brief narration from his pocket-sized diary that he kept at Camp O'Donnel as a prisoner of war, dated 1942, was included in the 1964 memoirs, or was inserted by his family prior to publication. 

When Dr. Jenny arranged for the first printing of My Road Back in March 2004, she added her own epitaph for her father, and a section about the Erasto R. Batongmalaque Foundation (doing business as the Filipino Veterans Foundation). The second printing of this book, which I assisted with, contained this material along with a section about her mother, some family photos, Dr. Jenny's account of her own visit to Bataan where her father surrendered to the invading Japanese, and some news reports (including one by me). Not having seen the earlier printing of this book, I can't say whether that earlier printing contained the section on her mother, or the Bataan visit, and I know some of the reprinted news accounts were recent enough that they couldn't have been part of the 2004 printing.

I wish I'd read this book earlier, for it greatly increased my understanding of the family and the foundation that I did some work for. A first-hand account of life in the Philippines during World War II, and the period immediately before and after, is rare here in the USA, and increases our understanding of both the country and the conflict. 

Dr. Jenny apparently also wrote a book back in 1996, which I haven't had the opportunity to ask her about. It was titled, A Few Precious Days: The Plight of Filipino American Veterans of WWII. According to Amazon, it is out of print. There is a page for it on the Goodreads site, but the page is a stub that contains no additional information.

You may contact the Erasto R. Batongmalaque Foundation (their website is listed below) to obtain a copy the most recent printing of My Road Back. It's recommended for anyone who has an interest in either the Philippines or World War II. 

Goodreads does not, as of this post, have a page for The Road Back. When I made a request for one, I was told to provide a scan of the barcode and the cover, so I may be able to get a page for The Road Back posted on Goodreads soon.

Web:

Erasto R. Batongmalaque Foundation:  https://www.erbfoundation.com/

Sales of My Road Back from Erasto R. Batongmalaque Foundation:  https://www.erbfoundation.com/my-road-back

Goodreads entry for Dr. Jenny's 1996 book, although it's a stub which needs additional information:  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/126883701-a-few-precious-days?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=zmWiFTCOnC&rank=1

Weird Guys: Weird Meeting

When I started thinking about some of the weird guys I've encountered, I remembered not just one weird guy--but one who was part of a meeting of weird people--a tiny part of a large and respected international group whose mission is to seek justice. I want to tell this story to caution anyone who's participating in efforts to hold this current president's administration accountable--for anything--to avoid holding meetings that turn into the kind of chaos I encountered.

Please understand that I do not mean my story to cast any negativity on the organization I name here, its mission, its policies, or the many people who carry out its actions wisely and well. This was strictly a story of how one weird guy, and one small group of weird people, can send a meeting off the rails.

In the mid-nineties I when I was suffering through some particularly debilitating symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, just trying to find activities my health would let me pursue, that's when my U2 fandom was at its height. The Irish rock group's uplifting healing emotional terrain helped me through some of the worst spells of the illness, and some of the other issues, too, during one of the worst stages of my personal life. 

As so many are aware, U2 are longtime supporters of Amnesty International, but I'd wager I supported Amnesty International before they did. 

I obtained some information that a local Amnesty International group was meeting in a nearby community. Of course I wanted to see what I could do to support the organization. At the same time--perhaps, maybe--I'd meet some fellow U2 fans.

I cautioned myself not to get carried away at the prospect of meeting any fellow U2 fans, though. I reminded myself to keep focused on the mission of the organization--but then, even if I met no U2 fans, there'd be someone who liked music, right? (How many people don't like music?) Maybe I'd meet a Bryan Adams fan or a Joan Baez fan or somebody who was into reggae, or classical music, but there'd be something to talk about, to break the ice, right?

So I drove to the address where the meeting was supposed to be, but for once I over-estimated my travel time. Traffic was light and I found the address and a place to park easily. I still had half an hour until the meeting started. 

I considered my options. Etiquette tends to dictate not to arrive more than 15 minutes early, but I didn't have anything to do for the 20 minutes or so until "the correct time" arrived. I didn't bring along anything to read, so I couldn't read while I was waiting. I didn't know the neighborhood. I didn't know of any store, or library, or park, or anything like that, where I could kill 15 minutes or so, and if I did leave and drive around, then the convenient parking space, that I'd been so lucky to find, might not be there when I got back. I might go from being super-early to being late.

I finally decided to just go and knock on the door of the apartment where the meeting was being held. I'd apologize for being so early and offer to come back later if I was being incovenient.

The woman that came to the door had the look of a schoolteacher who's about to hit you with a ruler.

"Hi, I'm here for the meeting--" I sang out cheerfully, and before I could say another word, the woman interrupted.

"You're early and I'm eating!" she bellowed in a tone that bordered on hysteria, "You'll have to come back later!" She had the look of someone who was about to slam the door in my face.

I guess she could tell by my expression that, in that case, I wasn't coming back at all. She relented and invited me in. I sat down, apologized for being so early, tried to explain why, tried to make small talk, tried to talk about Amnesty, but I could see that she wasn't all that interested in talking to me. She was quite the gracious hostess, LOL.

Other people started to arrive. One was a strange grey-haired man who would've made great casting for that grumpy old guy who yells at kids to get off his lawn. There was a young couple who had that "grad student" look, in their sweaters and slacks and loafers. There were two or three other people, but they were extras in this drama.

I asked the young couple if they liked U2. They looked at each other like, Do we, Dear? Then the woman said, "Well, uh, we like, uh, one or two of their things." They didn't seem interested in engaging in any further conversation, about U2 or anything else, so I didn't push.

I asked the group in general what the agenda was for the evening's meeting. I got blank stares, and glances back and forth, mumblings about they didn't have any agenda, like the mere question offended them en masse. I asked if they could tell me more about the group and its activities, about paying dues and whatever, and got more blank stares, more negativity. 

So I tried to explain I'd been involved in Amnesty International since the seventies, that I'd been a dues-paying member off and on for a while, that I'd read the newsletters and written letters and sent postcards on behalf of the prisoners whose cases were being worked on, that I'd been to the concert in Los Angeles in 1986--and the general reaction I got was, we aren't about concerts. The grumpy old man was particularly hostile. In a belligerent tone, he said something about, yeah, he was there, but that's not what we do (or something like that).

So, having shared my experience with Amnesty International, and the room remaining as icy as ever, I asked the others about their Amnesty International experience. How did they choose to get involved with Amnesty International?

Choose! The room erupted, but the weird grumpy old man and the not-so-gracious hostess were the quickest to vehemently argue. They both ranted at length about how they didn't choose to get involved with Amnesty International.

The not-so-gracious hostess launched into a tale of woe about how she had to write a letter asking for the release of a man who was against women's rights. She had to do it. From the way she complained, she made it sound like someone held a gun to her head.

Then I really blew it. I mentioned Leonard Peltier.

"We don't do Leonard Peltier!" exploded the grumpy old man. He led a chorus that amounted to, "We don't advocate violence!"

I knew Amnesty International "did" Leonard Peltier, if by "did" that meant studying his case and advocating for fair and equal treatment. Peltier's case was one that Amnesty International had been involved in. I knew that. Rather than get into some pointless argument about "advocate violence," I referred to how Peltier was one of the cases discussed in Amnesty International's annual report, or book, or publication, or whatever, back in '86 or so. What book was the general response. I was talking to a roomful of people who didn't appear to know their own organization very well.

The weird grumpy old man bellowed something like, "He admits he took a shot at the guy, he just doesn't think he hit him . . .And we don't do Nelson Mandela either!"

I was struck by how the weird old man displayed something of a stereotypical "fighting Irish" spirit. I wondered if what he may have been thinking was, "Everybody's so damn worried about the damn black South Africans and the damn Indians, and nobody gives a damn about the Irish Catholics!"

One woman I told about this experience said, "Sounds like they're for amnesty for everyone except who attends Amnesty International meetings."

I left, and I don't need to say that I never went back. I remain committed to Amnesty International to this day, and in Amnesty's defense, I've met a number of worthy people committed to the work of the organization. I'd like to think the weird grumpy old guy and everything else about this particular meeting were atypical, except I also know of other cases where peace-and-justice meetings went off the rails.

I know a man who had an experience similar to mine, but with an anti-nuke group. He had a radio show at the time, and invited some of the members to be guests on his show, and got a reaction somewhere between indifference and hostility. Rumor later got back to him that the group assumed he must be some kind of cop or spy. They just couldn't conceive of him being actually interested in the work of the anti-nuclear movement.

I also know a woman who attended a peace group's meeting, only to be told there was nothing for her to do--nothing. Everything the group was working on, someone else was "doing that." 

I offer these examples as a cautionary tale during this time of "No Kings," of anti-ICE actions, of people being urged to "show up," to contribute in anyway they can to a fairer world. Beware of weird guys, at weird meetings, that resent strangers "showing up." 

I was no Kamala Fangirl, Maybe Neither Was America

When I see election results of these past few months, the double-digit swings in Democrats’ favor, I wonder where were all these double-digit swings when we really needed them in November 2024?

My intention isn’t to bash voters, Democrats, or Kamala Harris--the Democrats' nominee for president in '24--I’m asking because we must know, or the party risks losing those votes again. Why didn’t the 80 million voters who enabled Joe Biden to knock out Donald Trump in 2020 come back and help Harris knock him out in ‘24?

Only about 75 million voters came out for Harris, while Trump got 77 million. That's 5 million voters who, for whatever reason, couldn't be bothered to vote for her. Since her defeat, I’ve wondered if my lack of enthusiasm about her mirrored America’s lack of enthusiasm about her. Yes, I voted for her, but unenthusiastically. 

I will not address the party’s decision to change horses in mid-stream, to suddenly dump a sitting president—who’d proven he could beat Trump—and replace him with the only other person who could continue what had been the Biden-Harris campaign. When the change was made, the polls were in Harris’ favor. It’s sad to conclude that, perhaps, the more that voters learned about her, the less they liked her.

I’ve been familiar with Harris since she was a controversial district attorney running to be Attorney General of California, and to me her campaign style has long demonstrated a sense of entitlement, as opposed to inclusiveness. Her resume has the look of an individual who’s always looking for a promotion.

We admit Harris, as a candidate, faced two built-in challenges:  a person of color, and a she. A sad but simple fact is, a substantial number of voters will not vote for a woman or a person of color. How many votes Harris lost for the simple reason she wasn’t an old white dude like Biden, we’ll never know. Her loss cannot be completely blamed on her sex and race, but we must acknowledge the reality.

Obama was able to overcome the racial bias that motivates a certain stream of American culture—partly because blacks supported him in numbers not seen since, and partly because many progressives, many blacks, and many whites, were excited to vote for the first black president. It may be DEI but it was good DEI. Harris didn't generate that level of interest.

Perhaps one potential explanation concerns her approach to racial identity. She’s of mixed parentage, but insists she’s black. Obama has mixed parentage, too, but a large portion of America apparently accepts him as a black man with a white mother. Harris’ ancestry is more complicated, harder for race-obsessed conservatives to get their heads around.

Harris is black—by the old one-drop rule--but she's more than half-Caucasian—her Indian-American mother is identified as “Caucasian” on Harris’ birth certificate. Her father is identified as "Jamaican" (technically not a race)--and he’s of mixed racial ancestry.

When Harris addresses race, she often adopts what strikes me as a tone of entitlement, as opposed to inclusiveness. She started school about the time her mother moved to Berkeley around 1970, when that liberal community was voluntarily desegregating its schools through a controversial busing project. Yet Harris often brags about being in the second class of students bussed to integrate Berkeley's schools like it makes her one of the Little Rock Nine.

She also demonstrated a potential lack of perspective about American identity politics during a radio appearance with Charlemagne tha God in 2019. She tittered about how she used to "inhale" marijuana and supported legalization because, "I'm Jamaican.”

You’re not Jamaican, Lady, you’re American.

Her own father responded, "My deceased parents must be turning in their graves right now to see their family's name, reputation, and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not, with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics."

To say nothing of how she surely turned off voters who oppose marijuana decriminalization.

A similar sense of entitlement may describe her debate style. When Democratic candidates for president debated on TV, in late 2019, Harris was among several candidates who broke debate rules, as if her face time was the only thing. The debate quickly became a Spartan-style shouting match. She admonished the others, "America does not want to witness a food fight. They want to know how we're going to put food on their table."

Barely was that out of her mouth, though, when she began her own Spartan-style shouting match with Biden, relentlessly haranguing him about busing in the seventies—nothing to do with putting food on anybody’s table. Every time he tried to answer, she interrupted--which she’d just scolded others about.

What issue may have hurt Harris’ presidential campaign the most, though, was how she failed to counter Trump’s bluster about how she’d get us into war. True, she couldn’t exactly publicly disagree with the policies of the administration she served, and the handling of the Gaza situation wasn’t one of the Biden adminstration’s strong points. Except she could have said something like, “We must find a solution equitable to the interests of Israel and the human rights of the people of Gaza.” 

Instead her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention showed typical Washington-insider militarism, "As Commander-in-Chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world." Most lethal? Did she think we were in danger of not having the “strongest, most lethal” fighting force all of a sudden?

Harris chose to follow the Washington establishment’s framing of bipartisanship as well as its framing of war and peace. Such was demonstrated during a radio interview in which she was questioned closely and at length about whether she'd have a Republican in her cabinet.

She could've answered, "I will select my cabinet members by their qualifications, not their political affiliation.” She never did, but she and the interviewer treated the subject as a hot issue, belaboring how she would put a Republican on her cabinet, nothing about Gaza, or putting food on the table.

Then in the final critical days before the election, she did little but make appearances with Republicans, to the point where many Democrats may have wondered, “What party is this woman campaigning for, again?”

Alright, so she thought she had sufficient Democratic votes, so court Republicans, too. Except Harris being pals with the likes of Dick Cheney had to cost her more votes than she gained. Many, many Democrats who still smart from the Iraq-Afghanistan era will no sooner have anything to do with Dick Cheney, or anyone who has anything to do with Dick Cheney, than with Donald Trump.

On one hand, we could say, don’t belabor what happened in 2024, that’s water under the bridge. On the other hand, the anti-Trump vote won’t stick around on its own. It didn’t stick around in 2024 and we need it to stick around in 2026.

Book Review: Custer Died For Your Sins

Book Review:  Custer Died For Your Sins by Vine Deloria, Jr., (University of Oklahoma Press, 1988 ed. with new preface by the author)  

When Custer Died For Your Sins was published in 1969, it was one of those radical landmark books of the sixties, that era of free thinking and fighting the establishment. It was an example of how the civil rights struggle was affecting a wide range of minority groups, of various racial, ethnic and sexual identities--and those groups were beginning to ask, "What about our right to equality?"

Reading the book now, though, I find much of what Deloria says is just plain common sense, and of course, as someone who lived through the sixties, I do recognize that some specific issues he discusses  have become dated (his chapter on Indian leadership, for example). Still, though, I find much of his material does remain radical, continuing to challenge some widely held attitudes.

One example is how Deloria argues that what was called "civil rights" when the book was first published (and which is now often labelled "DEI") is not about seeking equality--it's about seeking respect. Nowadays that assertion could make for a heated discussion on social media.

What may be most relevant, though, to our contemporary political climate--not just when addressing Native American rights--is his description of America's political parties. He begins by asserting, "Republicans represent the best of the white economics. The Democrats represent all of the deviations." White economics? Deviations? I can already picture social-media influencers debating those assertions.

Here's Deloria's description of the Republican Party, "The Republican Party has ostensibly stood for less government as a political philosophical position. But when you listen carefully to the Republicans you do not really hear less government, you hear a strange religion of early Puritan mythology. The Republican Party is in reality the truest expression of America's religion of progress and white respectability. It stands for the white superman who never existed. The peddler's grandson who conquered the unknown by inheriting a department store--such is the basic American religion unmasked."

Explaining the Republicans as a religion rather than a political party perhaps explains why they don't care if the poor starve and the sick die (remember, "We're all going to die," that Republican woman said, defending her vote for cutting Medicaid), and why they constantly follow a leader they often literally view as a sort of Messiah. Any deviation from the party leader is utterly unthinkable. Now it's Trump, but a half-century ago it was Reagan, before him, Eisenhower, before him, Theodore Roosevelt, and back when the party was founded, Lincoln. 

Deloria further argues, "The measure of truth in the above assertion is the Republican willingness to lose elections rather than depart from cherished doctrines and myths. Only a religion can attract and hold such loyalty." 

Nowadays, of course, today's Republicans appear to have given up on winning--or losing--elections by clinging to their cherished doctrines and myths. They're now resorting to attempting to rig elections, "rather than depart from cherished doctrines and myths."

As for the Democrats, they won't appreciate what Deloria says about them either. He argues, "The other party is something else. Popular conceptions [maintain] that the Democrats are the party of the people. The old [Franklin] Roosevelt coalition of labor, minority and ethnic groups, and farmers fails to acknowledge one unpublicized member--the special interests." 

Those of us familiar with how people talk about politics know that "special interests" tends to be used derisively, as a label that's put on "big money," what supposedly "corrupts" politics--Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Tech, and so on. People tend to forget that any group of people who share a "special interest" for any reason are a "special interest group." In that way, labor is a special interest. Farmers are a special interest. Minority and ethnic groups represent a host of special interests, sometimes conflicting ones.

Roughly twenty years ago, the comedian Stephen Colbert graphically demonstrated this aspect of the Democratic party, when he brought TV cameras to a Democratic convention and gathered together a focus group--a black guy and an "Arab-tino," a labor rep and a "tree-hugger," a gay man and a lesbian, an American Indian and an Asian Indian, got them all arguing at once, and then announced how he was looking forward to the Republican convention, "where none of these voices will be heard."

Deloria makes roughly the same point in his own way, "More than the Republicans, the Democrats are the party of the special interests," he argues. "Who else piles special programs on top of special programs? Could the Republicans create the poor as a class in themselves? For, the Republicans know no poor because it is not within their religous comprehension." Once you understand that, you can understand how the Republicans could care less about anything other than helping the rich get richer.

Deloria was writing in the 1960's but we may project his observations into the decades that followed and on up to the present, "Until 1968 the Democrats won election after election by gathering the rejected into an amalgam of special interest for the sole purpose of splitting the pie which they would then attempt to create. The pie never exists; it is continually being created by the adjustment of the governmental machinery to include additional special interests, while eligible parties [those the Republicans deem eligible] participate in the American religion carefully being nurtured by the Republicans in their isolation." Maybe in the past few decades the Democrats have lost some of the coalition it takes to constantly envision and divide an imaginary pie, while the Republicans' cozying up to actual religions--the Christian right, but also the Jewish Zionists--allows them to more freely make no distinction between church and state.

Deloria's book was published shortly after Nixon was elected in 1968, and in it, Deloria states that Nixon's election was the last gasp of the Republicans' "quasi-religous nineteenth-century, Horatio Alger, WASP ethic."

Unfortunately, though, we know that wasn't the last gasp of it. We now know that when Reagan was elected, that was supposed to be the last gasp of it--then "the last gasp" was supposed to be the election of Bush I, then Bush II, then Trump the first time around, and now Trump the second time around. This ethic is getting a lot of last gasps. Maybe it's time to stop thinking of this "ethic" as a "last gasp" and start thinking of it as an ongoing stream of American thought that must be defeated every single election unless we want Republicanism to be both our one and only church and our one and only state.

Deloria's description of the political parties may remain controversial, but he also reminds us that voters, not parties, are responsible for electing our members of congress. His book was published shortly after the assassinations of MLK and RFK, and he made the following observation about the issue of gun control, "Congressman after Congressman came on TV and admitted that a vast majority of the American people wanted stricter gun control laws. But each stated he couldn't do anything about it because of the big bad NRA lobby. Anyone swallowing that type of statement deserves to live in the land of the sniper."

Links to "Life After Mother" in Senior Reporter, Sept. 2025-Jan. 2026

Below please find the links and PDF downloads for my "Life After Mother" column, examining probate and estate issues from personal experience, as featured in Senior Reporter, "Serving the Needs of Orange County and Long Beach," September 2025 to January 2026. 

September 2025:  "Wills and Websites" (p. 37)

Website Link:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/sep-2025-vol-51-no-9/  

PDF Download:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/issues/senior-reporter-kbates-sep-2025.pdf

October 2025:  "Survivor's "To Do" List" (p. 32)

Website Link:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/sep-2025-vol-51-no-9-2/

PDF Download:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/issues/senior-reporter-bjoel-oct-2025.pdf

November 2025:  "Drug Dealing, HMO Style" (p. 33-38)

Website Link:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/nov-2025-vol-51-no-11/

PDF Download:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/issues/senior-reporter-charo-nov-2025.pdf

December 2025:  "Christmas by the Crate" (p. 33)

Website Link:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/dec-2025-vol-51-no-12/

PDF Download:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/issues/senior-reporter-johnf-dec-2025.pdf

January 2026:  "She's Being Unusual" (p. 35)

Website Link:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/jan-2026-vol-52-no-1/

 

PDF Download:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/issues/senior-reporter-katew-dec-2025.pdf

Should these links be down, please visit:  www.seniorreporterofoc.com