Dagupeño eyewitness: MacArthur landed here
IT’S true, Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed on Blue Beach in Dagupan City.
This was asserted by a 90-year old Dagupeño who claims having seen MacArthur riding a military jeep in Bonuan 72 years ago here with his convoy.
Alejandro Balolong of Paras St., Barangay Bonuan Gueset in Dagupan, is reportedly the last living witness to MacArthur’s sojourn here when he and the Allied Forces landed in the Lingayen Gulf to liberate the Philippines from Japanese invasion.
“January 9, 1945 at around 11 am to 12 noontime, I was standing along Bonuan Catacdang by the road when Gen. Douglas MacArthur passed by onboard a military jeep,” Balolong said.
“I saw him,” he said, adding that the US military general was in his khaki military uniform.
He said MacArthur was with other US troops also onboard separate military jeeps and he knew it was MacArthur because he had seen him in pictures.
“That’s why I believe that it was here where he landed in Bonuan Blue Beach, not other’s claim that it was in Lingayen or other places,” Balolong said.
Balolong said he was barely 17 years old but four months later, or exactly April 28, he joined the US Navy.
He said every time Dagupeños celebrate the landing of MacArthur here, he remembers what the US general said,” I shall return”.
“That feeling keeps coming back and it’s good that he returned here,” he said.
He said he sees to it that every year he attends the celebration of MacArthur landing here.
He said among his contemporaries, he believes it was only he who actually saw MacArthur, making him the only living witness in the city to MacArthur’s landing in Bonuan, then known as Blue Beach.
Retired Senior Police Officer 4 Dionisio Bolor, a past grand knight of Council 6303 of the Knights of Columbus (K of C) of Bonuan Gueset has been organizing the commemoration of MacArthur landing here since 2007.
Bolor, 70, said the area where the general’s monument was built, became a dumpsite due to negligence but with the help of K of C members, they fixed the area and gave it its deserved recognition through wreath laying every year commemorating MacArthur’s landing.
He said the K of C plans to have a re-enactment of MacArthur landing in 2020, the 75th anniversary of the Lingayen Gulf landing.
Bolor asked the young people to emulate the good example of MacArthur who returned to liberate Filipinos during World War II and to study history.
City Mayor Belen Fernandez, guest of honor and speaker in the city’s celebration, said Dagupenos will always remember Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
“He and his forces set foot here in Dagupan and as history and photographic evidence show, he motored to West Central Elementary School where he set up his war base,” Fernandez said. (Tita Roces)
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