MAYOR Belen Fernandez vowed to restore the Mac Arthur Park  in Bonuan Blue Beach where the towering monument of the American general stands to its stateliness when she led the commemoration of the 69th anniversary of the landing of the Allied Liberation Forces in the Lingayen Gulf on Jan. 9, 1945.

Noting that the state of disrepair of the Mac Arthur Park, located about 100 meters from the shoreline, Fernandez said she will organize a Mac Arthur Park Commission to refubish and improve the landscaping in the area.

She said once restored, the park could be another destination for tourists, and a leisure park for children and students, to help remind them of the role played by Dagupan City in the liberation of the Philippines from Japanese occupation.

The  commemoration of the 69th anniversary of the landing of the liberation forces was sponsored of the Knights of Columbus in cooperation with the Tondaligan Park Administration whose jurisdiction also includes the Mac Arthur Park.

The mayor said the planned Mac Arthur Commission will work in tandem with the City Historical Commission headed by Dr. Gonzalo Duque.

Meanwhile, the  mayor directed Assistant City Assessor Roland Soni, a geodetic engineer, to conduct a survey on the site to determine boundaries of the  park reportedly owned by the heirs of the late Maj. Moises Maramba.

It was the late Maramba, along with the Pangasinan Veterans Federation, who worked for the establishment of the park in the 1970s.

She said the city will ask the Maramba heirs to donate the park to enable the city to regularly maintain it fittingly “since the Mac Arthur Park is part of our rich history,”.

TESTIMONY

She said three war veterans, Dominic Ventenilla, 87, of Bonuan; Alejandro Balolong, 87, of Bonuan, both retired U.S. Navy men, and Venancio Jimenez, 88, once a private of the U.S. Army,  attended the 69th anniversary celebration confirmed to her that Mac Arthur waded thought the city’s beach on Jan. 9, 1945 to signal the success of the start of the liberation of Luzon.

Of the three, Ventenilla recalled seeing MacArthur’s landing in the vicinity where the Mac Arthur Park is located.

“Before Mac Arthur went to shore, some people probably guerillas met him some few kilometers from the shore waving the Philippine and American flags,” said Ventenilla, who lived in Hawaii after he retired in 1959 with the U.S. Navy.

He said he was with some friends taking cover in some sand dunes as there were massive bombardments around.

Balolong said he was by the road when the military jeep carrying Mac Arthur passed by on his way to downtown Dagupan to establish his first command post in Luzon.  That building is now the Home Economics Building of the West Central Elementary School.

“Although I was not on the beach, my cousin Pedro did,” said Balolong, showing an old photo of his cousin meeting the first American soldier that landed in Bonuan.

The same photo was published in magazines in the United States.

Three days later, Balolong and several other boys from Bonuan enlisted in the U.S. Navy.

Jimenez said before Mac Arthur came to Dagupan, Japanese General Tomoyaki Yamashita, known as the Tiger of Malaya, was in Dagupan and razed many parts of the city before he retreated to Baguio.

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