Popular military histories seldom satisfy professional historians. Joseph L. Schott’s account of the American effort to “pacify” the Philippine island of Samar in 1901-1902 is no exception to the rule. This does not mean that the author failed to achieve his purpose. His book successfully recaptures the prelude, the horrors, and the aftermath of an obscure campaign. Part I recounts in grim detail the massacre of Company C, Ninth Infantry at Balangiga. Part II vividly describes the punitive tactics of United States troops seeking vengeance for that tragic affair. Part III retraces the ordeal of marine Major L. W. T. Waller before a military court in Manila. The treatment adds up to an able literary defense of a courageous field commander victimized by politics and public opinion.
But the careful reader emerges with more questions than answers. Is Schott discussing the “Ordeal of Samar,” or is he describing the agony and frustration of Americans in an alien world? One quotation, perhaps will illustrate the point. He refers to a small garrison of marines as “an embattled white island surrounded by a sea … of surly hostile natives” (p. 124). That culture-centered clause captures the tone of the book. In his rush to defend Waller, Schott misses the Filipinos. He bases his undocumented account on “court-martial records, campaign reports, and the memoirs of men who were there …” (p. 1). Filipinos and Philippine records, however, were not consulted.
Samar’s resistance to external pressures began long before Balangiga and continued long after Waller’s legal ordeal in Manila. Spain’s Guardia Civil and the Philippine Constabulary, first under American command and then under Filipino officers, struggled with only partial success to pacify the turbulent inhabitants of the island’s forbidding interior. Pulajanism or religious outlawry flourished in Samar until 1910 and cropped up periodically in small uprisings until World War II. Between 1942 and 1948, the interior was again controlled by alienated people whom urban Filipinos loosely labeled “fanatics.”
There was, in short, far more involved than simple antipathy to American domination. If Schott had examined the Reports of the Philippine Commission, and analyzed the results of recent scholarship on Leyte and Samar—particularly that of Father Richard Arens, he could have presented a more balanced account. As it stands, he offers a one-sided view of a manyfaceted problem.
