NOW that the Dagupan City government led by Mayor Belen Fernandez, has established once and for all that General Douglas MacArthur first landed at the Blue Beach (Dagupan) when he launched the liberation of Luzon island by allied forces led by the Americans.

From this, the city government is also set to build a memorial park on the site where the general first made good on his iconic promise “I shall return”! And return he did by landing in Dagupan on January 9, 1945.

The MacArthur Memorial will certainly serve more than a depository of all memoirs, diaries and rare photographs and artifacts about General MacArthur during the war.

It will memorialize the efforts of the guerilla forces among the Dagupeños and residents who helped make the landing of American forces with the least resistance from the Japanese forces.  Little did the Dagupeños in Bonuan then know that it would be their legendary hero that would meet them at the shore.

Then what of the World War II Memorial at the Capitol grounds in Lingayen?

While it can no longer claim that General MacArthur set foot in Lingayen first, it rightfully memorializes the gallantry of Pangasinenses among the guerillas who fought alongside the allied forces, from the year the country was invaded until the country was fully liberated.

Let the two memorials serve as a last point in Philippine history that the liberation of the country was launched in Pangasinan, that it was not in Leyte where an iconic photo-op of MacArthur wading through the shores of Palo, Leyte  on October 20, 1944 was shown around the world, or nine months when MacArthur was certain the liberation was complete.

Let history show that MacArthur launched the liberation from the Lingayen Gulf and first set foot in Dagupan where he eventually established his first headquarters at the Economics Building of the West Central School.

The world must know and remember that Pangasinenses own this legacy of MacArthur in WWII –  that his promise to return was realized on January 9, 1944 in Pangasinan, more specifically in Dagupan.

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