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Old 04-17-2002, 03:35 PM
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Default Spanish-American War slang

Andy

Registered to :Aug 23, 2001
Messages :197
From :Massachusetts
Posted 29-01-2002 at 10:19
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Slang that entered our language from the military, during the S-A W.

Asiatic - An odd person, one who acts abnormal, crazy.

Back bone - Courage.

Bolo - A man who shoots badly. One who would be better off with a bolo than a rifle.

Boondocks - A distant unpopulated place.

Goo-goo - A Filipino.

Khaki - The color and name of the summer uniform.

Police - To clean up an area.

Shave tail - A newly commissioned Lieutenant.
********
More war slang to follow.


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Keith_Hixson

Registered to :Aug 23, 2001
Messages :445
From :Ellensburg, Washington
Posted 29-01-2002 at 11:09
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Some real neat slang comes from the colonial era.

Lock, Stock, and Barrel.

Square Meal.

just a few from the top of my head.

___________

Never heard of Asiatic or Goo Goo.


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Andy

Registered to :Aug 23, 2001
Messages :197
From :Massachusetts
Posted 29-01-2002 at 16:50
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Keith, it's really quite sad but Goo-goo in later days became the word Gook. A term you may be more familiar with.

Stay healthy,
Andy


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Beau

Registered to :Aug 29, 2001
Messages :163
From :P-Town
Posted 15-03-2002 at 11:39
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Secretary Root's Record:
"Marked Severities" in Philippine Warfare
By Moorfield Storey and Julian Codman


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An Explanation by Private Soldiers
What is the real explanation?

It is found in the statements from the men engaged in the contest, officers and soldiers alike, published in the newspapers of this country; and these statements explain what General MacArthur does not. They are not anonymous.

Thus A. A. Barnes, of Battery G, Third United States Artillery, writes to his brother, March 20, 1899:

The town of Titatia was surrendered to us a few days ago, and two companies occupy the same. Last night one of our boys was found shot, and his stomach cut open. Immediately orders were received from General Wheaton to burn the town and kill every native in sight, which was done to a finish. About one thousand men, women, and children were reported killed. I am probably growing hard-hearted, for I am in my glory when I can sight my gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger.

F. L. Poindexter, of the Second Oregon Regiment, under the same date, describes an attack on a body of natives, and says that on March 18

reports, which afterwards proved to be somewhat exaggerated, came in that two companies of the Twenty-second Infantry had been literally cut to pieces, having fallen into an ambush. After a hasty consultation it was decided to proceed at once to kill or drive into the lake every native possible to be found in the half-moon district lying between the mouth of the Mateo River and the further end of the lake, a distance of twelve miles.

In the first case a single man is found dead; but how killed, whether wantonly or in self-defence, or by whom, no one knows. In revenge a town is burned, and hundreds of men, women, and children are slaughtered.

In the second case, upon a rumor of a military reverse that turns out to be exaggerated, orders are given to kill the whole population of a district twelve miles long.

General Order No. 100, Section I, Chapter 28, provides:

Retaliation will therefore never be resorted to as a measure of mere revenge, but only as a means of protective retribution, and, moreover, cautiously and unavoidably; that is to say, retaliation shall only be resorted to after careful inquiry into the real occurrence, and the character of the misdeeds that may demand retribution. Unjust and inconsiderate retaliation removes the belligerents farther and farther from the mitigating rules of regular war.

Imagine the whole population of a Virginia district put to the sword because Mosby had surprised a detachment, or Winchester burned because a soldier was found dead in the street.

Take the statement made by a correspondent of the New York Evening Post, of whom that paper said, --

The writer has been in a responsible position in Manila ever since the occupation of the island by American troops, [and] his statements can be relied upon to be absolutely accurate and unbiased.

He writes as follows:

In some sections our people have adopted the policy of giving no quarter, and we are getting reports of insurgent bands of from ten to fifty being surrounded and every man killed. Young had one killing of 318 lately, and J. M. Bell a killing of 156, while there have been several ranging from 50 to 100.

Was this charge not true?

The Boston Advertiser is a Republican newspaper, and in its columns appeared this statement:

The time has come, in the opinion of those in charge of the War Department, to pursue a policy of absolute and relentless subjugation in the Philippine Islands. If the natives refuse to submit to the process of government as mapped out by the Taft Commission, they will be hunted down and will be killed until there is no longer any show of forcible resistance to the American government. The process will not be pleasant, but it is considered necessary.

Who has been the person in charge of the War Department ever since the Taft Commission was appointed, and has not this statement been proved to be true by what has happened since?

On May 3, 1901, General James M. Bell, in an interview printed in the New York Times, said:

One-sixth of the natives of Luzon have either been killed or died of the dengue fever in the last two years;

and, as Senator Hoar said,

I suppose that this dengue fever and the sickness which depopulated Batangas is the direct result of the war, and comes from the condition of starvation and bad food which the war has caused.

General Bell is a witness whom the War Department cannot discredit. "One-sixth of the population of Luzon" -- one in every six of men, women, and children -- had either been killed or died in two years. This means 616,000 people. The population of Luzon is estimated by the War Department to be 3,727,488 persons.(36) How many were killed, and how? General Bell gave a suggestive answer when he said as a part of the same statement:

The loss of life by killing alone has been very great, but I think not one man has been slain except where his death served the legitimate purpose of war. It has been thought necessary to adopt what in other countries would probably be thought harsh measures.

A Republican Congressman, who visited the Philippines during the summer of 1901, confirms this answer in an interview published in the Boston Transcript, and in other newspapers, on March 4, 1902:

You never hear of any disturbances in Northern Luzon; and the secret of its pacification is, in my opinion, the secret of the pacification of the archipelago. They never rebel in Northern Luzon because there isn't anybody there to rebel. The country was marched over and cleaned out in a most resolute manner. The good Lord in heaven only knows the number of Filipinos that were put under ground. Our soldiers took no prisoners, they kept no records; they simply swept the country, and, wherever or whenever they could get hold of a Filipino, they killed him. The women and children were spared, and may now be noticed in disproportionate numbers in that part of the island.

Thus did we here protect "the patient ... millions."

It is an officer of historic name, then serving in the Philippines, whose wife, at his request, wrote to the Philadelphia Ledger a letter, which was published on November 11, 1901, and in which the writer said:

The present war is no bloodless, fake, opera bouffe engagement. Our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, and children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people, from lads of ten up, an idea prevailing that the Filipino was little better than a dog, a noisome reptile in some instances, whose best disposition was the rubbish heap. Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men "to make them talk," have taken prisoners of people who had held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and, an hour later, without an atom of evidence to show that they were even insurrectos, stood them up on a bridge, and shot them down one by one to drop into the water below and float down as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses.

This statement, among others, was brought to the attention of Secretary Root when a petition, signed by ex-Senator Edmunds, S. L. Clemens, some thirty-six professors of the University of Chicago, and many other men of equal character and standing, was presented in the Senate of the United States on February 4, 1902, quoting this statement among others and asked for an investigation.

Did Mr. Root then take or has he since taken any steps to investigate these charges?




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Beau

Registered to :Aug 29, 2001
Messages :163
From :P-Town
Posted 15-03-2002 at 11:55
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Remembering Balangiga
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"Kill Every One Over Ten"

On September 28, 1901, Filipinos under the command of Gen. Vincente Lukban launched a surprise attack on U.S. soldiers stationed in the town of Balangiga on the island of Samar. Many had maneuvered into position by disguising themselves as women. The ringing of a church bell signalled the moment for the attack, and Filipinos armed with bolos rushed the unprepared troops of Company C, eventually killing 59 and wounding 23. The battle sent shock waves through American residences in the Philippines, and throughout the United States. It occured seven months after Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, the leader of the Philippine Revolution, was captured by Frederick Funston, and most Americans believed that Filipino resistance to U.S. rule was near its end. Instead, they were faced with the U.S. military's worst defeat of the war. Americans would be even more shocked by the U.S. military's response to its defeat at Balangiga. The U.S. military used it as an excuse to wage extremely brutal campaigns in Samar and Batangas that lasted into 1902.

In October, U.S. Brig. Gen. Jacob H. Smith was put in charge of the "pacification" of Samar, and he gave orders that led to widespread atrocities. "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better you will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States," he told Major Littleton W. T. Waller. When Waller asked for clarification, Smith specified that everyone ten years of age or older should be killed. He later sent Waller a written order "that the interior of Samar must be made a howling wilderness." It is estimated that as many as 50,000 Filipinos died from the ensuing campaign of extermination and devastation on Samar.

When they became known in the United States, Smith's orders and the atrocities carried out in Samar under Waller's direction led to widespread denunciations of U.S. atrocities in the Philippines. The events on Samar were revealed along with evidence of other atrocities during U.S. Senate hearings on the Philippines in the spring and early summer of 1902. On April 28, 1902, officers of the Anti-Imperialist League formed a separate Philippine Investigating Committee to independently gather and publicize information about U.S. atrocities. Less than a week after the conclusion of the embarrassing hearings, President Theodore Roosevelt declared that the war in the Philippines was over. His announcement had more influence on the domestic political situation than on conditions in the Philippines. Warfare continued in the Philippines until 1913.

U.S. troops took three church bells from Balangiga as war booty after they recaptured the town. Two are now housed at F.E. Warren Air Force Base outside Cheyenne, Wyoming, and, in 1997, a third bell was held by the 9th U.S. Infantry Regiment stationed near Tongduchon in South Korea. The Bells of Balangiga became an international issue in 1997 when their return to the Philippines was demanded by the Philippine government as it prepared for the 1998 centennial of the declaration of Philippine independence from Spain and the creation of the Philippine Republic. The bells have still not been returned to the Philippines.



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Beau

Registered to :Aug 29, 2001
Messages :163
From :P-Town
Posted 15-03-2002 at 12:06
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The cable news has kept the home folks fully informed as to the progress of this "goo-goo" hunt, so it is unnecessary to recount any details of battles. The cruelties of Spain toward these people have been fully discussed, but if the thing were written up by a recent arrival here, he would make a tale just as harrowing. But the old boys will say that no cruelty is too severe for these brainless monkeys, who can appreciate no sense of honor, kindness, or justice.... With an enemy like this to fight, it is not surprising that the boys should soon adopt "no quarter" as a motto, and fill the blacks full of lead before finding out whether or not they are friends or enemies.
--A private in the Utah Battery


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Andy

Registered to :Aug 23, 2001
Messages :197
From :Massachusetts
Posted 21-03-2002 at 11:56
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Beau:
I?m glad to see you have taken up the reading of your ancestor?s history. The history of the prey being mis-treating, murdering and abusing by the conquerors is very old and very consistent. The US-Filipino war is certainly a black mark on our history. It wasn?t much different from many other 19th century wars of Imperialism involving many other peoples but that is no excuse. What amazes me is how the Filipino people seemed to be pro-American/ anti-Japanese during WWII. The evolution of our relationship would also be interesting to study.

You understand I used the term ?goo-goo? and then the word it evolved into, to enlighten, not to give anyone a new slur word. Check my posts, I?m not into using that sort of language. It?s not just a PC thing, a man is a man.

Stay healthy,
Andy



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Beau

Registered to :Aug 29, 2001
Messages :163
From :P-Town
Posted 21-03-2002 at 12:44
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I knew someone, and I suspect that you would, bring up our collective refrain --- abuse --- which I already knew. "Those people" are half my ancestorial heritage. The other half brings in the Mexican-American War. And, on Mogly's German and Italian ancestry --- do we really need to dig that European standard up ?

I have not read alot about that War, mostly articles on Professor Jim Zwick's website "www.boondocksnet.com" which has some magnificent articles and graphics --- too include Imperialism in Africa, as well as turn of the century notes on "Child Labor." I have seen a big section on Mark Twain, and commentaries by "The Anti-Imperialist League."

Do I really look that stupid.

Beau
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