Filipino History

Major Battles of the Philippines

The Philippine Reserve

The forging of the Philippine Army Reserve Division of 1940 required aid from the United States. After the Philippine constitution was finished the government wanted to create a Philippine National Defense. Major Vicente Lim, the first Filipino graduate of West Point, was appointed to help create the army. Various plans were being taken into account in creation of the military force. The defense plan was being developed in Washington D.C. and eventually became the Philippine National Defense plan. United States Major Eisenhower and Major James B. Ord, under General Mac Arthur, planned and drafted the basics of the Philippine defense plan. Later on they went into details. Working closely with the Philippine budget, Ord and Eisenhower developed a plan suited for the Philippines.

Training periods were cut down and pay of officers and men had to be reduced. The final product was 1,500 officers and 1,900 men. The yearly cost was about 22 million pesos. Mac Arthur told them to redo the plan since he promised the Filipinos that the new army would only cost 16 million pesos a year. The regular force was reduced even further to 930 officers and 7,000 men. This plan required more officers but it would be fixed by maintaining more recruits per year. The first few years focused on construction of barracks and buildings.

The plan was to have a small regular force and a large reserve force. Every populated island was to be protected. To avoid long duty hours and cut costs, military training had to be done in schools. Since there was a shortage of officers, the United Sates had to send in more military advisors to train the troops. A Philippine officer school had to be created. It would be the Philippine Military Academy based on the United State’s West Point.
The plan portrayed the military prestige of Mac Arthur, Ord, and Eisenhower. The reserves would be organized into divisions. The final product of the Reserve in World War II was 444 officers, 7199 enlisted men, 518 pistols, 132 automatic rifles, seventy six .30 cal. Machine guns, ten 50. cal. machine guns, 12 2.96 inch howitzers, 12 81-mm mortars, and ten 3 inch mortars.
Source:<Ricardo Trota Jose. The Philippine Army 1935-1942. Manila: Anteneo De Manila University Press, 1992>