08/05/2026
Jose Abad Santos was born on February 19, 1886, in a residence in San Fernando City, Pampanga which would soon be lost more than a hundred years later in the terrible, destructive slurry of Mount Pinatubo, and, in the midst of tragedy, be lost from public consciousness and never be rebuilt againβthe space which it once occupied is now inhibited by the complex of a fast food restaurant, Jollibee in Downtown, San Fernando City.
But a hundred forty years ago, the said residence gave birth to a martyr for the Filipino peopleβthe chief justice and acting president of the Commonwealth during the time of turmoil and carnage by the Japanese forces. He refused Quezonβs offer to join the government-in-exile as they fled the country, saying that he would rather join his countrymen in their struggle and hardship.
Soon, he was captured by the Japanese forces, who offered him to lead a puppet government in creation.
"I cannot accede. To obey you is to be a traitor," Jose Abad Santos said to his captors, who arrested him alongside his son, nicknamed Pepito, in Cebu. "I would prefer to die rather than live in shame." Macapagal would eventually eulogize him as a great Filipino martyr, next only to Rizal. βI like to think that it was as he would want it to be β his body commingled with the brown earth of the country he deeply loved,β Pepito would, years after, write about his father in a memoir.
It would be declared in 2000 that he would be given an annual commemoration day in his home province of Pampanga every May 7th, the initially known date of his ex*****on, which was eventually confirmed to instead be the first of May 1942.
Nonetheless, on this day, we remember Jose Abad Santos, who declared it an honor to sacrifice his life for his own country.
Words by Ashley Lozano
