Philippines Independence Day

Colonized by the Spanish in the later part of the 16th century, opposition to Spanish rule first took hold among Filipino priests, who resisted Spain’s injection of the Roman Catholic Church into the archipelago of the Philippine Islands. By the late 19th century—after some 300 years of Spanish overrule—Filipino intellectuals and members of the middle class began a concerted push for independence, leading to the formation of a secret revolutionary society by 1892, known as the Katipunan.

Guerrilla-Style Warfare

After the Spanish caught wind of the growing rebellion in August of 1896, premature skirmishes broke out across Luzon, which propelled 28-year-old Emilio Aguinaldo into the leadership role of the ever-expanding ranks of the Katipunan revolution. Fighting a guerrilla style war from the hills southeast of Manila, when war broke out during the brief and badly lopsided Spanish-American War of 1898, Aguinaldo and his Katipunan rebels united with U.S. forces, proclaiming Philippine independence on June the 12th, 1898. Aguinaldo soon became the short-lived president of the new provincial government, until the U.S. annexed the Philippines as a U.S. territory on February 6th, 1899.

Another Foreign Invader

The Filipino-American War was to follow, from November of 1899 until Filipino resistance collapsed in the spring of 1902, only to lose their sovereignty yet again when the Japanese invaded the island nation on December 8th, 1941, just hours after Japan’s unprovoked attack on American naval assets as Pearl Harbor. After the Empire of Japan surrendered on August 15th, 1945, the following year on the Fourth of July, the United States at long last granted independence for the Philippines. Today, Philippine Independence Day is celebrated annually on June the 12th, with speeches and parades, not only in the Philippines, but in major cities around the world where expat Filipinos make their homes, including, among other places, 3.4 million in the U.S., a million in Saudi Arabia and 850,000 in Canada.