Copyright Quisumbing Family 2008. All rights reserved.
Birth of Their Three Children during the War
Pop and Mom were greeted by a welcome party hosted by Pop’s family at San Andres, Manila. Guests looked for the young bride but she was not to be found. She was at the top of a santol tree picking fruits with Tito Toting (Ricardo), her youngest brother-in-law and playmate. This incident clearly illustrated the childlike characteristics of my mother!
Pop and Mom left Manila for Baguio City to enjoy their honeymoon at the Zigzag Hotel overlooking Burnham Park. They visited Mother Edmunde at the Sisters’ residence. Then they returned back to Manila to start their married life together.
Mom was several months pregnant with her first child when Pearl Harbor was bombed by Japanese planes in December 1941. With this terrible news appearing in the newspaper, they immediately withdrew money from the bank to purchase what the baby would need in Escolta in case the war extended to the Philippines.
Daily life in Manila was still normal since the couple could take long walks every day from San Andres to the boulevard near the sea to feel the fresh breeze and to hasten the birth of their first baby who was long overdue. The Japanese occupation of the city had, however, brought about scarcity in food and other supplies becoming scarce to the local residents, aside from the insecurity and the uncertainty of what would happen next.
I was born after almost ten months of waiting on April 21, 1942. A healthy baby of eight and one half pounds, I was named Jose Maria (Pepito) after St. Joseph (since I was expected to be born close to his feast day. Interestingly enough Pop was sometimes referred to as St. Joseph by the STC Sisters. Mom, being the only child, had to learn infant care from direct personal experience. Maria Visitacion (Vising), named after our maternal grandmother, was born on July 6, 1943, four days after Lolo Visitacion’s birthday.
Pop had just completed the erection of electric transmission towers from Manila to Caliraya, Quezon (formerly Tayabas) and Pagsanjan, Laguna. During the Japanese occupation in Manila, he decided to do home gardening which provided vegetables for food and additional money from their surplus, aside from Mom’s land rental received from Cebu. They had to barter some of their wedding gifts for food. He, the chosen neighborhood leader, was responsible for the distribution and sale of food quota and other household needs.
After receiving a message from Cebu regarding the grave illness of Father Mercado, her granduncle, and that if she wanted to see him alive, she had to come soon, Mom decided to take a trip to Cebu by sea. She had to leave her one month baby, Vising, to Pop and Tecla, her first cousin, before departing Manila for Cebu. Mom had the courage to take the risk of traveling alone on Mihara Maru, a Japanese ship filled with Japanese soldiers and civilians, because two nuns, Mothers Hermine and Francisca, the first the former head of St. Catherine’s School and the second, her Spanish teacher in Carcar, Cebu, were boarded on this ship. In fact they needed to protect her from a Japanese officer in particular who wanted to bring Nena to Japan after the war. The ship delayed its trip to Cebu due to sighting of an American submarine. When it left the port, it traveled at night without lights and plied along island shores to reach its destination after almost one week. Mom’s granduncle was overjoyed to see her after knowing the risks she took to see him. She wrote in her autobiography that she would not have been able to forgive herself if she had not done this.
The Americans who surrendered the country to the Japanese after the fall of Bataan and Corregidor in April 1942 returned back at Palo Beach, Leyte in October 1944 to fulfill Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s promise “I shall return.” Another American landing followed in Lingayen, Pangasinan to spearhead their military might towards the liberation of Manila. Manila residents hoped it would not take too long before the American liberation of Manila would take place.
Carlos, Jr. was born on November 4, 1944. He was nicknamed Blue Boy by Eduardo (Lolo Dando) Quisumbing, Pop’s paternal uncle, because all his clothes were blue, made of flannel cloth bought as part of the neighborhood supplies quota,. Our parents had to make use of everything to secure food and medicines for their first two children, Pepito and Vising, and for the baby. They stayed at the Philippine General Hospital along Taft Avenue for safety. Pop had to go back to San Andres everyday to get their food supply.
The Americans moved by land, air, and sea towards Manila, their war planes dropping bombs everyday on the Japanese controlled city. People were cautioned to take shelter or lie flat on the ground during these air raids. Pop in particular was caught in the streets during these raids on his way to the hospital to bring food to us. Thus, he had to lie down on the ground for his own safety, worrying at the same time about delaying the delivering of food to Mom, Vising, Blue Boy, and me who would be hungry.
When we returned to San Andres, Pop and his two younger brothers, Tito Emilito and Tito Toting (Emilio, Jr. and Ricardo), improvised an underground air raid shelter under the house reinforcing the walls with sand bags. Food and other necessities, including cans of Klim powdered milk which had been sent from Father Mercado from Cebu were stored in this shelter.
Lolo Emilio and Lola Maria as well as Tita Pat (Pop’s sister) were safe in Taylo Street, Pasay, in the residence of Lolo Dando, younger brother of Lolo Emilio. Lolo Dando later persuaded and convinced Pop (his nephew) and Mom to get out of the San Andres house. The noise of Japanese anti-aircraft guns in their garden could impair the Blue Boy’s hearing. Lolo Dando convinced Pop and Mom to transfer to his home in Pasay for safety reasons. Mom and the three of us children rode in a tricycle while Pop, Tito Emilito and Tito Toting pushed the caromata loaded with their things towards their Uncle Eduardo’s house.
That transfer was providential because a few days later the Americans stormed Manila by land, air and sea. The Japanese and Americans fought in a man-to-man combat in the San Andres district where they lived. Pop’s brothers, Tito Emilito and Tito Toting who stayed behind to watch over the house, were killed by the Japanese.
Tito Bertito (Alberto) who was in Sorsogon wrote his mother (Lola Maring) asking for a mosquito net and a prayer book. She was able to send them to him. Her world collapsed after receiving an official notice on his death by a Japanese sniper’s bullet during his last tour of duty.
With peace restored in the country by 1945, Pop worked with the Americans in the repair of Quezon Bridge previously supervised by him before the war. Mom suggested that they settle in Cebu City where she had inherited real estate properties from
her mother, Lola Visitacion. After the completion of the repairs, Mom, the three of us children, together with Tita Chaleng (Carolina) Baladad, Mom’s first cousin, and her two children, Ralphy and Susie, left ahead for Cebu City by boat. Pop joined us later.
Birth of the Other Children in Mango Avenue
Pop and Mom built a bahay kubo made of nipa, bamboo, and wood to replace the burnt house that was previously rented during the war in Mango Avenue. It was in this house where Emilio III (Sonny), named after Lolo Emilio and Tito Emilito, was born on April 26, 1946.
Sometime in 1946, Lolo Emilio and Lola Maring left Manila and arrived in Mambajao, Camiguin to settle the estates of Lola Maring’s parents (Carlos Corrales y Garcia and Filomena Zamora y Quisumbing de Corrales). This is where Lola Maring started her shell collection to assuage the loss of her three sons during the war. Lolo and Lola stayed in the ancestral house of her parents for more than one year before settling in Cebu City. They lived temporarily with us in Mango Avenue until their own house was built in 1951.
Lolo Emilio taught hydraulic engineering subjects at Cebu Institute of Technology then located at F. Ramos Street during the evenings. Pop worked as a partner
of Architect Gregorio G. Segura whose office, the Segura Construction, was at the corner of España and Ibarra Streets with telephone no. 87. Both partners handled the construction and completion of former President Sergio Osmena’s residence along Jones Avenue (Osmena Boulevard). Their partnership probably lasted a year or two when Pop formed his own construction crew with Titong Gallardo as his foreman.
