Da.bao-kuo and the Winning of Mindanao

Abstract

This paper argues that the early Japanese presence in Davao had enormous impact on the "winning of Mindanao" as a defining politics in the construction of the Philippine stat.e. Under the American colonial administration (1900·1935), Japanese settlers start.ed coming to Davao, on southern Mindanao as early as 1903. Thousands more followed lat.er to open up lands to grow abaca, then a major Philippine export next to sugar. By the 1930s, some 25,000 Japanese inhabited that region. Their visible presence gave birth to the monicker, Dabao·kou, meaning "Little Tokyo." Regarded as menacing, the Japanese "colonization" of Davao stirred Filipino nationalism that, in turn, helped shape Philippine t.erritory and hast.ened the birth of a modem stat.e. During the Commonwealth era, Mindanao became a highly
contentious issue in Philippine politics. President Manuel L. Quezon found the Japanese, together with the Moros (Muslims), as convenient scapegoats to rationalize the plan to claim Mindanao as integral to the Philippine t.erritory. Mindanao represents one of the country's three stars symbolized in its flag. Thus, Quezon authorized deployment to this frontier thousands of Christian settlers from Luzon and the Visayas until 1940. Indentured migration resumed more vigorously after World War II, reaching its peak in the 1960s. Consequently, this government project hemmed in the Japanese settlers in Davao according to the plan. At the same time, it also diluted the Mor~population in Mindanao who lived in the adjacent provinces of Cotabato and Lanao. As the politics of Mindanao waxed and waned, _t?e ~'third st~r" symbolic of this southern region perfected the Philippine temtory. While the Philippines succeeded in resolving the "Japanese menace" it was saddled