Too Young To Die

By Shem Herbolingo

It was a typical summer morning in Iligan City, Philippines. The year was 1985. When I arrived in the office, our secretary handed me a telegram. The message was brief but crystal clear: “NOY, COME IMMEDIATELY, LOLOY KILLED.” It was from my younger brother, Joey, who, together with his older brother Chito, was working as a radio broadcaster in Davao City. “Noy” is a contraction of “Manoy”---a title of respect usually accorded to the eldest brother in the family. I am the eldest in the family and all my eight siblings call me Manoy.  “Loloy” was the pet name of our youngest brother, Joseph. It took me some time before the whole message sank in. My brother, gone. He did not die…he was killed.

While on our way to Davao with my wife, I had the luxury of time to reminisce and to reflect on the events in the past that led to the current situation. While I was growing up and started to understand the harsh realities of life in the farm where we were born and raised, I promised to myself to help my parents put my siblings in school once I finished college. After my graduation in 1978, I was hired by the university for a full-time teaching position and soon I was extending financial help to my brothers, Chito and Joey, who were attending high school in Cabadbaran City.

After my first year of teaching, Joseph finished elementary---at the top of their class. I asked my parents to send Joseph to stay with me in the university campus because I wanted him to study at the best high school in the region---the University Science High School--- where the students are selected from among the top and the brightest. Admission was competitive and tough but Joseph passed the admission test quite easily.

Our youngest brother Joseph.

Unfortunately, Joseph was unhappy with his stint in the Science High School. In the middle of that year, he approached me and told me that he wanted to go home. When I asked “why?” He said he could not excel in the science high because all students are smart and he was just an average student. “If I study in our hometown,” he explained, “I will be the smartest guy in our class. I want to graduate as valedictorian just like you.” “It sounds unconvincing to me,” I told him. “You see, I prefer that you’ll be the least among the brightest rather than the smartest among the mediocre and the dull-witted.” But he was so steadfast in his desire to go home so I informed my father about the decision and sent him home to our farm in Bayugan.

That was the last time that I saw Joseph alive. Assured that he was happy and safe in our home, I did not even miss his departure. Life in the university is pretty hectic with so many activities. In a couple of years, the university sent me on a scholarship grant to pursue master’s degree at a university in Manila.

Communication then was not as easy as now. No cellphone, no Internet or Facebook or Viber. Communicating with my parents was through handwritten letters once or twice a year. Telegram is reserved for emergency. I did not even know that Joseph stopped schooling, joined my two brothers in Davao City and worked in a charcoal factory.

While I was studying in Manila, my colleagues in the university formed a computer consulting company in Iligan City and upon my return, they invited me to join them as a consultant, in addition to my teaching responsibilities in the university. It was there in my consultancy office that I received that fateful telegram that shook our family to the very core.

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As we entered the city, (this was my first time to come to Davao), what first caught my attention were the wide and spacious avenues and streets. Buildings were sparse and there were so much vacant spaces. Of course, what do you expect on a city that has the biggest land area in the world!

But in the mid 80’s, Davao was a city in turmoil. The entire city became the battleground in a typical urban guerrilla warfare that you see on TV in other parts of the world. There was a semblance of normalcy during the day. By sunset, commercial establishments were already closed. At night, under the cover of darkness, armed communist forces roam the streets ready to eliminate any perceived enemies. The government forces returned in kind. Dozens of killings perpetrated by both sides happened during the night while some occurred even in broad daylight.

When we reached the place where my brother’s wake was held, my parents and all my siblings were already there waiting for us. I have not seen my family for a couple of years since the time I left for Manila and it was a sort of a family reunion for us but what a reunion that was. I went closer to the casket where Joseph was lain and I almost could not recognize him anymore. He was just a scrawny boy when I last saw him. The man in the casket, wearing a polo barong was already a full-grown man. I hastily made some mental calculation, in a few days that month, he would have celebrated his 20^th birthday. I continued observing his physique. His muscles both in the abs and the arms are discernible. His neck was strong but it bore a wound so long it almost encircled the whole neck although it was meticulously and neatly sutured by the funeral staff.

“That bayonet wound,” Chito whispered to me, “almost decapitated him. He has more wounds in his back and on the torso. It must be a long, agonizing death between early Saturday evening up to early dawn of last Sunday.”

I did not learn the whole story until late that evening when Chito had already the time to share it with me. Both Chito and Joey worked as radio broadcasters of Station DXMF otherwise known as Radyo Bombo. Joey was some kind of an anchorman and a news commentator while Chito was in Radyo Patrol, a team of field reporters roving around the city day in and day out reporting news on the spot  as they encounter them.

The entire team was named Apollo Patrol with each radioman given a number. Chito was Apollo Uno (Apollo One), the others followed in increasing order as Apollo Dos, Apollo Tres, and so on. The busiest part of their patrol was on the early morning when the happenings of the previous night got to be reported.

On the early morning of that Sunday, Chito received a tip from a funeral parlor directing him to go to a certain place where they heard something happened the night before. When he reached the place, Chito’s world crushed because he immediately recognized the first victim that he saw laying lifeless on the cornfield. It was Joseph’s buddy---his co-worker. To make the matter worse, Chito identified that the bloody fabric that was used to tie the hands, was Joseph’s shirt.

Then his driver who roamed on the other side of the cornfield, called Chito saying that he saw two more bodies in his location. Chito ran and immediately recognized that one of the dead lying there was Joseph. Trying to maintain his composure, Chito calmly reported over the radio, that they have found three dead bodies and that one of them was his own brother. 

Photo shows Chito and our mother during the wake. Chito blamed himself of what happened to Joseph. It was our father who consoled him that it was not his fault. The circumstances were beyond our control.

That Saturday, I attended church in Adams Center. After the religious service, a friend of mine introduced me to a certain Atty. Zerna who was regularly attending church there. Atty. Zerna was the chief of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) office in Davao. Upon knowing that I am a brother of Chito and Joey, he shook  my hand and he started briefing me on the status of their investigation. The main suspect was a Barangay Captain (Village chief) with some of his henchmen who also worked as paramilitary. It was a case of mistaken identity that our brother was a communist. It was a clear case of extra-judicial killing--- a summary execution. We, Filipinos, have a term for that---“liquidation.” My brother was liquidated on a mere suspicion of being a communist.

During our family’s days of mourning in Davao, we were not left alone. My brothers and sisters in faith, members of Adams Center Seventh Day Adventist Church were very supportive visiting us every night holding a religious service there. On the day of the burial,  a live chick was  placed inside the coffin and buried together with our brother. It was their belief, that the chick would exact vengeance to whoever perpetrated that heinous crime. A few months later, I heard that the village chief and his cohorts,  one by one, suffered the same fate as our brother. 

Bidding farewell. Our family gathered around Joseph’s casket before it was to be interred into the crypt. From left: Chito (in dark shirt), our father, this writer, our mother and Joey.

Looking back, I will never forget that bleak chapter of our family’s existence. Nineteen eighty-five was the darkest year in the annals of Davao City’s history. April 14, 1985 was our family’s darkest day.    

 Epilogue

The following year, Lt. Col. Franco Calida, the feisty head of the military’s Metropolitan District Command (Metrodiscom), with the political backing of the newly designated Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, organized the Alsa Masa (literally, “People’s Uprising” against the communists”). My brothers Chito and Joey, together with Radiomen Jun Pala of DXOW and Leo Palo of DXRA were very much involved in this undertaking from the time of its inception.

While Calida was directing the military operations, the four radiomen were the mouthpiece of incessant psychological propaganda on the airwaves exposing the communists’ atrocities. Their involvement was not without peril.

On 17 January 1987, a 4-man team Sparrow Unit, the notorious hit squad of the communist New People’s Army barged into the announcer’s booth of Radyo Bombo looking for Chito. But Chito was having a break and it was Joey who was in there. They strafed the announcer’s booth with bullets and lobbed a fragmentation grenade before leaving the place. The grenade explosion was heard on the airwaves before the broadcast stopped. Joey was badly wounded but survived the attack. That incident will be a subject of another write-up.

Seven months later on August 27, the Sparrow Unit struck again, this time simultaneously on both DXRA and DXRD stations which led to the demise of Leo Palo and another radioman Al Hinoguin.  

It was a time of living dangerously. But their sacrifices bore fruit. Eventually, many people joined the Alsa Masa working  as eyes and ears of the military. It was Mao Zedong’s dictum that “The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.” But in Davao’s case, the sea dried up and the communist “sardines” had to retreat to some hospitable places outside of Davao.

My brother's killing was included in a news report by William Branigin to the Washington Post dated August 8, 1985 titled "Davao known as Philippines' Murder Capital.'"