Retired Ilonggo navyman: Filipinos need America

"America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand."     -- Harry S. Truman

By Alex P. Vidal

GROTON, Connecticut -- America can afford to lose us, but we can't afford to lose America.
This was the assertion made by an 82-year-old Filipino-American retired US navy officer, who sharply reacted to reports that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has severed the country's ties with the United States to side with China and Russia.
Reynaldo Adrias Amuan, born and raised in Divinagracia, La Paz, Iloilo City, Philippines, insisted that only the United States can protect the Filipinos in the event of a world nuclear war.

AMUAN younger in the frame and at 82 today.

"No country in the world today can match the military force of the United States," he disclosed. "Even if China and Russia will combine their forces, they can't match the army, naval and air power of America." 
Aside from economic benefits, Filipinos can always rely on the United States in terms of security and protection from bullies like China in the Asia Pacific, he said.
"The Philippines can't afford to lose the United States. Millions of Filipinos are currently enjoying good life because of the United States, something that no other countries around the world can provide," said Amuan, who was assigned in six submarines that carried nuclear missiles stationed in the Asia Pacific, Scotland, Haiti, Korea, Japan, Taipei, and Spain from 1957 to 1976.

DREAM

Amuan said if not for the US, he and many other Filipino immigrants would not have attained their so-called "American Dream" or the ideal that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.
While studying radio operator at Central Radio Electronic School (CRES) in 1953, Amuan worked as casual employee at Iloilo city hall under Mayor Rodolfo T. Ganzon. 
After his graduation in 1956, he applied and passed the examination for the US Navy held at the Naval Station Sangley Point in Cavite, Philippines.
"If I did not make it here, I would be driving a trisikad today in the Philippines. I would not have enjoyed my retirement and would be living as isang kahig isang tuka," added Amuan, who is married to Aida Castro-Amuan, 80, of Ajuy, Iloilo.
They have two children and six grandchildren all born and raised in the US: Pearl Boivin, 55, married to an executive of a multi-national firm in Massachusetts, and Sean, 53, a pilot at American Airlines.
Pearl is an engineer while Sean graduated in the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs in 1985.
Amuan, who can still drive a car and maintains a Facebook account, thanked America for "my medical benefits that I could not have enjoyed if I did not become a navy man."

BENEFITS

Aside from his retirement benefits in the US Navy, Amuan also receives additional pension in the US Social Security, among other monthly benefits. "Life is good to me. I am now enjoying my retirement because of Uncle Sam," he stressed.
His parents, Jose Amuan and Conchita Adrias, were natives of Divinagracia, La Paz district in Iloilo City. Of the three Amuan sons, only Reynaldo and younger brother Rodolfo, 80, are alive. The youngest, Reynaldo, 78, died in Guam two years ago.
The Filipino American community is the second largest Asian American group in the US at four million.
Filipinos started to arrive in the US in 1898 as laborers, mostly in agriculture and domestic service, and as students. 
The Filipino American population numbered 45,026 by 1930. Since 1970, the Filipino population has grown nearly seven times, from 336,731 to 2,364,815, making up almost one percent of the national population. 
This includes hapas of part-Filipino ancestry, who make up 22 percent of the Filipino American population--the third-highest rate among major APA groups (behind Native Hawaiians and Japanese), according to the Asian American History, Demographics and Issues. 

INTEGRATION

It is believed that the integration of the Philippines by the U.S. into the world market as an export economy resulted in the loss of small family-owned farms. 
Amid promises of monetary success, young displaced male Filipinos with minimal educations and bleak economic futures readily chose to immigrate to the United States-- especially since their status as American nationals after the Spanish-American War made it easy to do so. 
The first wave of Filipinos to enter and remain in significant numbers immigrated to Hawaii from 1906 to 1935, working in sugar and pineapple plantations and later the farms of California as migrant laborers.
In his arrival speech after a recent state visit in China, Duterte, 72, clarified that he did not cut the Philippines' diplomatic relations with Uncle Sam saying "I can not do that."