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Don White, age 14, of Johnson City, Tenn., for his question:

DID THE UNITED STATES OWN THE PHILIPPINES?

Philippines is an island country in the southwest Pacific. Spain held control of the Philippines from the 1500s until 1898. That year, the United States took possession of the country under terms of a treaty that ended the Spanish American War.

Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States and the United States paid Spain $20 million in return. The Filipinos were upset since they claimed that the United States had promised to make the Philippines independent as soon as the war ended.

A Filipino leader named Emilio Aguinaldo declared the establishment of the Philippine Republic on January 23, 1899, and his troops started to fight the Americans. But the conflict didn't last long. Aguinaldo was captured in March, 1901, and he immediately signed an oath of allegiance to the United States.

Soon after the peace treaty with Spain had.been signed, the government of the United States adopted a resolution stating that the Philippines would eventually be made independent.

President William McKinley appointed William Howard Taft, a federal judge who later became president, the first American governor of the Philippines on July 4, 1901.

For the next 40 years, the Filipinos made progress toward self government.

They elected their first legislature in 1907.

The United States Congress passed the Jones Act in 1916 which replaced a ruling commission with an elected senate. Then the Tydings McDuffie

Act of 1934 provided for independence 10 years after a constitution was drawn and adopted.

The constitution was drawn and adopted in 1936 and independence was scheduled for 1946. It also provided for the Commonwealth of the Philippines that was established in 1935.

The United States granted the Philippines complete independence and the Republic of the Philippines was established on July 4, 1946.

Manuel Roxas was elected the first president.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, they follbwed the action by landing troops in the Philippines on December 10. American General Douglas MacArthur and his American and Filipino troops staged a heroic resistance but they gave up the fight in May, 1942.

When MacArthur left the Philippines, he gave the people his now famous promise: "I shall return." And he made good his promise on October 20, 1944, when American troops landed on Leyte and started the bloody struggle to free the Philippines.

The Americans recaptured Manila in February, 1945, and most of the organized Japanese resistance ended soon afterward. The Philippines became a charter member of the United Nations in 1945.

The Philippines has a total area that is just a bit larger than that of Wisconsin and Michigan combined. But the country has about three times as many people as those two states together.

About 90 percent of the people in the Philippines are Christians, making that country the only Christian country in Asia.

 

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