New novel explores World War II in the Philippines

Dark on the Inside by Virginia Cantorna is a long-awaited novel. The Philippines is an often overlooked subject in World War II studies, as well as in fiction. Dark on the Inside fills that void beautifully, and it helps that Cantorna is herself a Filipina, her parents having been immigrants to Hawaii from the Philippines after World War II. Consequently, Cantorna grew up hearing stories about the war, and her ethnicity makes her the perfect person to tell the fascinating story of the Ugale family during the Japanese invasion.

Like most Americans, I had no idea of ​​Philippine history. Cantorna quickly puts everything in context so that readers are never confused by the events or the political and historical background of the novel. Many may not know that the United States basically conquered the Philippines by taking it from Spain during the Spanish–American War. Although the United States promised the Filipinos their independence, it kept the Philippines a colony with a continued promise of self-rule until World War II. Then the Japanese invaded the island.

Dark on the Inside begins with the dramatic moment when the Japanese invade. Cantorna, however, more than giving us a dramatic invasion scene, shows us how the war affects a family that lives in another part of the island where the invasion occurs; they learn the news by word of mouth and on the radio. The Ugales are made up of an elderly mother and father, two daughters, Liling and Glory, who are our main characters, and their two brothers, Bartolomé, who is married and lives apart from the family, and Felipe “Niño”, who is He has gone to work in Hawaii. Liling and Glory are twenty years old and well past the typical age of marriage. Liling has a fiancé, Raúl, in town, while Glory has a secret lover.

The chapters are narrated in the first person by different characters, but mainly, the narrators are the sisters or the men they are in love with. War quickly intrudes on the characters’ lives when the Ugale sisters go fishing, hoping to see the man Glory is in love with. A hairy Japanese soldier and his subordinate come to the river to bathe, scaring the girls and sparking a future conflict.

Conflict also exists in the girls’ relationships, driven largely by the role of religion in the village. When Glory finds herself pregnant by her lover and then disappears, she is forced to endure the shame and guilt the Catholic priest inflicts on her as she tries to raise her child alone. Meanwhile, Liling worries about the safety of her fiancé after he gets a job as a driver for the US Army.

Cantorna does a wonderful job of peeling back the layers of all the underlying tension in the novel. For example, the American doctor has a high social standing in the community and both Liling and Glory work for him, and yet they resent that while he is nice to them, he also seems to feel superior to the local “Brownies”. The Japanese, however, are much worse, committing terrible atrocities among the Filipinos, including a night attack on the village of Ugales, which is known as “The Event”.

The Japanese invasion caused American General Douglas MacArthur to leave the Philippines, but he uttered his famous words, “I’ll be back.” Later in the novel, when he returns with troops, the Filipino characters hate the Japanese so much that one of the American-born Japanese soldiers, working as a translator for the US Army, is killed by Filipino’s brother. Liling and Glory because he is wrong. for one of her Japanese enemies.

Throughout the novel, the various characters are skillfully portrayed, and amidst the horrors of war, we see moments of internal family conflict, as well as moments of tenderness, much of which surrounds Liling and Glory’s father, who he tends to beat up his wife and adult children. but then he gradually becomes more endearing as he develops a special relationship with Glory’s son.

Both horror and hope for a better day permeate the story. War destroys some of the characters; when they are not being killed by bullets or bombs, the living nightmares they have witnessed devour them until they slowly lose their minds. Others, however, discover after the war that a better life awaits them if they emigrate to Hawaii.

Taken together, Dark on the Inside is a novel about strong people who have to overcome tragedy to create a better life for themselves. It’s a book to put on the shelf alongside modern classics like The Color Purple and The Lucky Club that also show people grappling with issues of war, racial prejudice, domestic violence, and ultimately the hope that can be found. emerge in times of trauma. I am very pleased that Cantorna has given the Philippines and its people what they deserve by writing this novel and bringing to life a part of World War II that deserves to be remembered and from which we can all learn.

Also, I am looking forward to the next sequel, titled Dark on the Outside.