Here and There
Brief reminiscences of the good old days
By Gerry Garcia
DECEMBER 8, Friday, Immaculate Virgin Mary feast day, also marked the day when the sudden unholy massive bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese planes took place in 1941… 56 years ago.
We were teeners then in high school at the Dagupan Institute, pioneer fore-runner of the University of Pangasinan when then school president Dr. Blas Rayos made the grave announcement of suspension of all classes because the invasion forces of Japan were about to land somewhere in Aparri.
Destination of our family’s evacuation were the mountains off Natividad town in what I vaguely remember was San Mateo. Elder brothers Ermin and Rafael were then in Manila- Ermin at Ateneo de Manila was due to graduate with Bachelor of Literature in Journalism and Rafael at the UST was aiming for MD (Doctor of Medicine).
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It was months later when we came home to Japanese-occupied Dagupan. Since our family residence was taken over by a Japanese army official, we were, I thought, dumped at the Home Economics building in West Central School which, during the war years, served to house some departments of the provincial government.
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It was a few months before Luzon’s liberation by the Americans when Ermin hardly out of his teens, began to publish and edit the Pioneer Herald, jointly with the late Porfirio V. Sison and wife Nancy Q. Sison. The PH, Luzon’s first post-liberation community paper, was precursor to the Sunday Punch, Ermin’s second baby, now under the equally competent editorship of his son, Ermin Jr. The Punch is now half a century old.
(For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/here-and-there/)
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