Same street, different corner
Passing by San Juan Bridge on the way to F. Manalo Street and onward to Makati recently reminded me of the way history shifts and changes as new evidence and perspectives come along. In 2003, the National Historical Institute (NHI) revised history by moving the site of the First Shot in the Philippine-American War on Feb. 4, 1899, from San Juan Bridge to the corner of Sociego and Silencio Streets in Sta. Mesa. I did not realize then that the job of the NHI chair could be more political than historical. Moving the site from San Juan Bridge to Sociego Street moved history from one city to another. San Juan lost a footnote in Philippine history, Manila gained another. Some people did not take this lightly and suggested declaring me persona non grata in San Juan. Others were more aggressive and recommended charging me with theft for the removal of the 1941 bronze historical marker from San Juan Bridge without the consent of the local government. But the NHI was merely taking its marker and moving it elsewhere, based on current historical evidence.
In 2009, when Sen. JV Ejercito was mayor of San Juan, a new marker was installed on the bridge that declared:
“On this bridge, on Jan. 29, 1899, Col. Luciano San Miguel, Filipino Commander of the area, and Col. John Stotsenberg, Commander of the First Nebraska Volunteers, US Army, met to discuss their respective areas of jurisdiction and control. After the outbreak of the Philippine-American War, that began at the corner of Sociego and Silencio, Sta. Mesa, on Feb. 4, 1899, the two forces engaged in battle on this bridge on Feb. 5, 1899.”
One would think that this is a closed case, but the findings of 2003, based on the research of the late Dr. Benito J. Legarda Jr., are being challenged. New and compelling evidence presented online by Ronnie Miravite Casalmir reasserts the position that the First Shot did not happen on San Juan Bridge. Casalmir wants to officially move the location from Sociego corner Silencio Streets to another on Sociego corner Arguelles, a block away from the present site. Same street but different corner. It would have been a completely different story if the site had moved yet again to Quezon City!
While I understand Casalmir’s enthusiasm, I do not appreciate the intemperate language implying that the 2003 move was based on “flawed” or “wrong” work by Legarda. No serious historian will propagate what is false or untrue. Historians work with the primary sources at hand; it is not Legarda’s fault that, years later, a younger researcher like Casalmir comes up with new evidence, even new technology like Google Maps, not utilized by Legarda. I know of a constipated “feeling historian” literally whispering conspiratorially against Legarda behind his back, telling me that he had prewar photographs and old publications that could lead to the return of the site of the first shot to San Juan Bridge. When I dared him to present this evidence to Legarda’s face, as he was a few paces away, the coward stood up and hid in the crowd.
On June 6, 1934, William Grayson wrote the United States Veterans Administration, declaring: “I fired the First Shot that opened the Philippine Insurrection, February 4, 1899.” It is not well-known that Grayson was born in England in 1876. An English immigrant to the US, he enlisted with the First Nebraska Volunteers to fight overseas in the Spanish-American War. He arrived in the Philippines from San Francisco and Hawaii on July 17, 1898. He saw little action, missed the Battle for Manila Bay and the US Navy’s victory over the Spanish on May 1, 1898, and then Spanish Manila surrendered to the US on Aug. 13, 1898. After duty in Manila, his regiment was assigned to Sta. Mesa, and it was here that he made history.
Grayson narrated that around 8 p.m. on Feb. 4, 1899, he was on duty at Outpost 2, about a hundred yards from Block House 7:
“… [Orville] Miller and I—there were two of us—were cautiously pacing our district. We came to a fence and were trying to see what the Filipinos were up to … In a moment, something rose slowly up, not twenty feet in front of us. It was a Filipino. They were evidently moving dangerously near.
“I yelled ‘Halt!’ and I made it pretty loud, for I was accustomed to challenging the officer of the guard in approved military style. The man moved. I challenged him with another loud ‘Halt!’ Then he impudently shouted ‘Halto!’ at me. Well, I thought the best thing to do was to shoot him. He dropped. If I didn’t kill him, I guess he died of fright. Then two Filipinos sprang out of the gateway about fifteen feet from us. I called ‘Halt!’ and Miller fired and dropped one. I saw that another was left. Well, I think I got my second Filipino that time. We retreated to where our six other fellows were, and I said: ‘Line up, fellows, the ‘niggers’ are in here all through these yards.’”
Grayson makes no mention of a bridge, and in a later photographed reenactment, Grayson is nowhere on or near a bridge. The site is definitely in Sta. Mesa, on what is now Sociego Street.
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Comments are welcome at ambeth.ocampo@inquirer.net
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