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  Jonah Lalas Lalas is a fourth-year international development studies and political science student who challenges you to question your beliefs and assumptions. Email him at graduate@ucla.edu. Click Here for more articles by Jonah Lalas

Sixty years ago on July 26, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued an executive order that called on all able-bodied Pilipinos in the Philippines, a colony of the United States, to fight and serve under the U.S. flag. Consequently, over 400,000 Pilipino soldiers fought alongside American soldiers in the Philippines for the years that followed Japanese occupation until the war ended in 1945.

Yet, despite their courageous military service, Pilipino veterans were given nothing but the Rescission Act of 1946. It held that the services of the Pilipinos who served under the U.S. military “shall not be deemed active service for purposes of any law of the U.S. conferring rights, privileges, or benefits” except for those who were killed, maimed or separated from service due to physical disability.

This obviously leaves out a large number of Pilipino veterans who now suffer from the illnesses and poor heath conditions that come with old age. Yet unlike other U.S. veterans and those from 63 other allied nations, they were denied pensions and proper health care.

In fact, many of the Pilipino veterans did not learn about the discrimination committed against them until they applied for veterans’ benefits in the 1980s and were denied. Since then, the Pilipino veterans have participated in mass protests, lobbied congressmen and have even chained themselves to the White House gates in the hopes of achieving the benefits other veterans receive.

Oppression is oppression, and regardless of what form it comes in, it has to be eliminated.

Why is this issue important to us?

While many second-generation Pilipinos feel a more direct connection to this issue – as many of these veterans may just as easily be our grandparents – it’s important for all people, no matter what race, to get involved. Racism and oppression are the key themes that surround this issue.

Last Thursday, about 100 people, including over 50 students from UCLA, participated in a rally in downtown Los Angeles at the Immigration and Naturalization Service Federal Building in support of the World War II Pilipino veterans.

The demonstration went hand in hand with actions in Washington, D.C., where other activists are working to lobby congressmen and senators to support two bills (H.R. 491 and S.B. 1042) that would finally give full recognition to WWII Pilipino veterans in the United States. These bills would help take steps toward providing them with the benefits that other U.S. WWII veterans received 55 years ago.

Still, the Pilipino veterans’ movement is about more than compensation and health care coverage – it’s about gaining recognition, respect and equity for a grave injustice committed against them.

Washington, D.C. will be developing a memorial dedicated to World War II veterans, but will they recognize the active service of the Pilipino veterans? Unless we fight back and make those demands, it is likely that the 55,000 Pilipino veterans (4,000 of them in Los Angeles county) will die unrecognized. It’s up to us, the younger generation, to take action and carry on the fight.

I’ve heard the comment that this issue is a “Pilipino issue,” a battle best left to be fought only by Pilipinos. This reasoning is completely false. What lies at the center of this issue is discrimination, and as long as this act of racism remains out of the realm of public discussion and unaddressed by the legislators, then similar acts of social injustice against others will occur.

The struggle of these veterans is no different than the movement toward reparations for Japanese Americans for the years of suffering they experienced in U.S. internment camps during World War II.

It is no different from the movement to provide compensation to the families of the millions of Jewish victims who died in the Holocaust.

It is no different from the movement to force the Japanese government to acknowledge and provide compensation to the Asian “Comfort Women,” who underwent years of physical and psychological damage as sex slaves to the Japanese army during the Second World War.

It is no different from the move toward granting full benefits to the Latino veterans who fought for the United States, but were declared ineligible of the benefits in the G.I. Bill after World War II.

And it is no different from the African Americans’ movement to receive reparations for over 200 years of enslavement.

All of these issues concern undoing past wrongs brought on by powerful governments against people on the basis of their group identity. They concern times in history when certain people were not recognized as humans, but as inferior beings, on the basis of race, sex, class, etc.

Some people may argue that it is wrong to compare slavery, the Holocaust and rape to the veterans issue, and that relatively speaking, being denied benefits is not “as bad” as genocide.

But oppression is oppression, and regardless of what form it comes in, it has to be eliminated. One cause for social justice is worth just as much as any other. We must hold our government accountable for all wrongdoings.

Clearly, the veterans issue is not just a “Pilipino issue,” but one that concerns everyone interested in equality and social justice. Indeed, there is no such thing as a “Latino issue,” an “African American issue” or a “women’s issue”; the struggles of any group which has been disadvantaged are linked.

The diversity of students who protested at the INS building to show support for the veterans is inspiring, but we should be able to see more of these broad coalitions in the future.

Only then can we become more effective in bringing justice not only to the Pilipino veterans, but to all people who’ve been oppressed and denied recognition, respect and dignity because of their group identity.