Senator William J. Fulbright, among others, expressed considerable skepticism as to whether South Vietnam had requested aid from the Philippines, but President Macapagal had been petitioned on July 15, 1964. In fact, a few months earlier, Manila had joined some other members of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) in a joint declaration of support for the Republic of Vietnam, a SEATO protocol state. Doctors and nurses, mainly from private organizations within the Philippines, had been working with South Vietnamese villagers since 1953 in a program called Operation Brotherhood. Three months after the 1964 joint SEATO declaration, the Philippine government had authorized additional economic and technical assistance to South Vietnam. Medical personnel, rural development specialists and members of the Philippine armed forces were dispatched. In August 1964, a small cadre of psychological warfare and civil affairs advisers also arrived in Vietnam.

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The engineer battalion could have been considered merely additional aid of the same kind. The public furor over Marcos’ proposal may therefore be explained by the parallels some Filipino congressmen, such as Ocampo, saw in the contributions of the South Korean government, which had started out with medical and engineer units and had escalated to a combat division. Many questioned whether sending Filipinos to fight in Vietnam would accomplish anything. Congressman Felix P. Amante, on March 15, 1966, said: ‘It is a mistake, Mr. Speaker, to say that we should not send [aid] to Vietnam unless we are sure that it would win the war for the South Vietnamese….We should make it clear that we are sending our help in fulfillment of a commitment so that in our hour of need other nations will honor their[s]…because we know that if we should find ourselves in the unhappy situation of the South Vietnamese, other nations, with the United States at their head, will pour billions of dollars and the lives of their sons, uncomplainingly, to give us help.’

The Philippine Congress discussed the policy and legal implications of military participation, as well as the thorny question of funding, given the tight budget situation. One congressman spoke emotionally about the murderous NVA and VC. Congressman Ramon V. Mitra brought up casualties on the other side, reminding his colleagues of ‘the horrors of being in a town bombed by American planes,’ as had happened in northern Filipino villages during the Japanese invasion. This touched a nerve, and various congressmen began discussing a long list of Filipino grievances against the United States, going as far back as 1898.

According to testimony from Wilson, the United States had offered a great deal for Philippine participation in Vietnam. Details of the offer included: ‘1) to equip PHILCAG [Philippine Civic Action Group] in Vietnam on a loan basis and provide logistics support; 2) to pay overseas allowances, over and above the regular pay to be provided by the Philippine government; 3) to provide replacement costs,’ to replace the unit being sent to Vietnam.

Wilson continued, ‘We offered the Philippines the following: Two SwiftCraft over and above the two committed earlier without relation to PHILCAG [these were patrol boats, used to control smuggling, a major problem in the Philippines at that time]; 5) Accelerated funding in FY66 of equipment for three engineer construction battalions previously considered for later funding under the Military Assistance Program; and 6) M-14 rifles and M-60 machine guns for one battalion combat team to be funded in FY66. All of these…to be funded by Defense from service funds as Vietnam-related costs, and not from the Military Assistance Program.’ The question of funding arose because the cost of the items would otherwise have been subtracted from the total allotted under the Military Assistance Program (MAP).

Senator Fulbright exploded after hearing additional testimony in the same vein. ‘This seems to be the ultimate in corruption for us to make deals like this in pursuit of an illusionary policy all designed to prove to the world that we have great support in Vietnam, which we do not…and no one except the Australians and New Zealanders pays for its own troops.’ Fulbright asked about the Philippines extracting a price for PHILCAG, since they were pro-interventionalists. Wilson said that the official reasons given by President Marcos were, first, ‘that the [overseas] allowances were so great that he could not afford it in his defense budget,’ and second, ‘the equipment needed by this unit in South Vietnam would cost so much that again he could not afford this extraordinary expenditure for it.’

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