NOTE: This piece is my contribution to the 81st anniversary of the Liberation of Virac from the Japanese which happens on February 8, 2026.
There was presence of Japanese nationals in Catanduanes since as early as the first decade of the 20th century. The 1908 annual report of Lieutenant Governor Felipe O. Usero of the subprovince of Catanduanes made mention of two Japanese in Virac engaged in the sale of baraquillos. This bit of information got me excited because it indicated that Catandunganon children in the 1900s (who would become grandparents of my own generation) knew of the pleasures of baraquillos which during my own childhood in the 1960s was a favorite snack. Baraquillos are baked sweetened wafers fashion into tubes about the length of fingers.
But what was even more exciting about Usero’s revelation was the possibility that one of those two Japanese nationals was Arata-san, the Hapon who figured out as a most remarkable, almost legendary character during the Japanese occupation of Virac.
Who was Arata?
Miyoshi Arata (Hogi in other accounts) featured prominently in oral lore of Viracnons as they told stories of the war years. He was with two other compatriots, Matsuni and Suyi, who must have been in Virac at least a decade before the Japanese invasion in 1941. They were in retail trade of a variety of consumer goods but were known for the selling of candies they made themselves. My mother told me that as a child, she used to be transfixed watching Arata making candies. All indications were that these foreigners were able to blend well with the locals and got endeared with them, Arata especially. During the war, Arata gained particular regard as champion of the natives against the brutalities of Japanese soldiers who were his compatriots.
In 1996, I wrote a screenplay on the life of Arata, which won 3rd prize in the Palanca Awards for said category. It was titled “Dayo.” It was what is called historical fiction. I took many liberties to put together the plot line since I did not know much about Arata’s life, except from snippets I heard from old folk. As a character, I packaged Arata as an exile from his Japan homeland who ended up in Virac but came to love his host community so much, almost like his own. He learned to use Viracnon tongue like a native speaker and practiced their customs. He developed a liking for tuba and kabonbon. He participated in communal sinsoro fishing and attended fiestas. He even took a common-law wife. When his compatriots invaded the Philippines and occupied Catanduanes, it created in him such formidable dilemma: he was torn between loyalty to his own country and the love for his adoptive community. How he dealt with this contradiction was what carried the storyline.
For the sake of character build-up, I invented a back story for Arata. I made up an entire biography to serve as context of the actual action of the screenplay which took place within the four years of Japanese occupation, from the bombing of Virac in 1941 to its liberation in 1945. So I did research on the history of Japanese presence in the Philippines before the war. It turned out that Japanese nationals coming to the country picked up during the American regime. Arata and his companions would have been part of this migration influx. So the following is how I imagined how they ended up in Virac.
Growing up in a rural village in Nagasaki, Arata and his contemporaries were being lured by recruiters for overseas employment in the Philippines for various blue-collar jobs. While Arata was not tempted to apply, his childhood sweetheart enlisted partly to escape poverty but also to spurn him after a bitter lovers’ quarrel. Arata was not able to stop her from leaving. Eventually, he decided to come to the Philippines to look for her. His sojourn brought him in a round-about of places and jobs, first by working in Baguio for the building of Kennon Road, then to Davao as farm laborer in an abaca plantation. He failed to locate his girlfriend. Finally, he arrived in the capital city of Manila where he found her working as courtesan in the redlight district of Sampaloc, the “Gardenia.”
To collect himself from the heartbreak, he took employment in a small candy factory in Paco. After having learned enough of the trade, he thought of making it on his own. He invited two other Japanese to join him. They looked for a suitable place to start their enterprise and chose Virac. Why Virac? It reminded him of his seaside hometown back in rural Nagasaki. And try his luck he did quite well; in fact, he flourished and built up a life in Virac, until the war came in the way.
Arata: local hero or spy?
Back to the real-life Arata, there were persistent rumors that he was actually a spy planted by the Imperial Army, implying that the plan for eventual invasion had long been hatched decades earlier. In an interview, a retired military officer told me that as a child he saw Arata in Legaspi in full military uniform, apparently high-ranking, and that he took a ride with Arata from Legaspi to Tabaco. There were also claims that the Arata had befriended a local photographer and that the two went around taking photos of natural landscapes, at a time when outdoor photography was not quite an interest in the island. The implication was that Arata was gathering information that would help the eventual invasion of Virac.
Personally, I have reservations as regards the Arata-as-spy-narrative. The Jesuit historian Fr. Jose Arcilla, in an essay on the Japanese occupation, told of Arata at length and never hinted at him being a spy. The specter of the Japanese vendor or houseboy suddenly seen in an army officer’s uniform at the time of the occupation was all too familiar tale heard all over the Philippines, almost like folklore. On the other hand, it is unlikely that Catanduanes was of much strategic value for the imperial scheme of the Japanese to merit more than one spy.
Like I wrote in my screenplay, Arata and his companions most likely were civilians who came with the influx of Japanese migrants out to earn a living. During the American period, there were legitimate Japanese economic interests in the Philippines. When Japan eventually invaded the Philippines, Arata and others like him would have become useful to their country’s military campaign. Old folk told of how he facilitated the occupation by serving as interpreter and go-between. His representations would have been quite effective; it made for a relatively amicable relations between the conqueror and the conquered in Virac. Accounts by the folk who experienced the war indicated that the initial two years of Japanese occupation was practically benign. The tension and the brutality intensified only when guerilla resistance started to gain ground in 1944.
In order to establish himself in Virac, Arata had put up a variety store on the ground floor of a house fronting the plaza. He specialized in candies which he personally manufactured. He might have even engaged in the trading of abaca. But most remarkably, he endeared himself with the people of Virac with his affable manners. Lino Sorra, a USAFFE veteran, claimed that Arata was his good friend. He apparently developed a strong liking for his new adopted place; he became fluent with the local language and even took a Viraqueña common-law-wife with whom he bore a child, but who died in infancy according to some reports.
But more than just facilitating linguistic exchange between the occupation army and subjected people, Arata did much more. What the folk told most about him was how he interceded on behalf of the natives so as to cushion the adverse impact of military subjugation. It was said that he saved a good number of Viracnons from incarceration, torture or even death when the resistance intensified. One evidence of Arata’s favorable regard by the local folk was that he was spared when guerilla forces from the Bikol mainland hunted down and killed both of his compatriots, Matsuni and Suyi.
Towards the final period of the war, Arata appeared to have shifted over to the cause of the Catandunganons against his compatriots. In one account, it is said that just before the siege of Virac, he “defected” to the side of the guerillas. Lt Vicente Surtida and his men staged a dramatic “rescue” of Arata from the Japanese garrison. The locals could not allow it that he who they have come to love would be among the casualties of the planned siege. What else, he purportedly supplied crucial tactical information that aided guerilla operations. In the aftermath of the war, it was said that he was escorted to Leyte upon initiative of the guerilla leadership and became a prisoner-of-war who was eventually repatriated back to Japan. In the 1980’s, the husband of my mother’s first cousin, Tiyo Simeon Borja who worked as a seafarer, told me that he had an encounter with Arata in Nagasaki in the early 1950’s, apparently living the life of a regular Japanese at home.
Whatever the real score about Arata, he was a most curious and complicated case. He was an exiled Japanese national to the Philippines who seemed to have become a Viracnon at heart. He engaged in humane deeds in his adoptive community which would be considered high treason by his native culture that gives paramount value to loyalty to country. But he was rehabilitated back to the fold of his homeland. How did he manage to reconcile with how life turned out for him? That would be a most compelling material for another movie, a sequel to “Dayo” that I would love to write. The two movies together would be an epic saga on how a man can transit from native homeland to a new and strange one, and come back. It will raise the issue of the role of homeland in human existence. It will dig deep into a basic question of human nature: are we creatures of settlement or of exploration? Do we thrive in domestication or in journeying?
NOTE: my screenplay “Dayo” got the interest of the late Armida Siguion-Reyna as a material for his film director son Carlitos, but somehow did not push through final contracting. I re-wrote it into a new version ”Exiles” that won me an all-expenses paid trip to Hollywood and pitch it to producers there. At least two producers became interested but it did not go beyond initial stages of optioning.