Thanks to the city government, a historical injustice was corrected last Saturday with the renaming of Progreso Street in downtown Cebu City in honor of Jose S. Leyson, martyred Japanese era governor of Cebu province.
It is hard to explain why nearly half a century passed before the street was renamed. Cebu City councilors had authorized the
renaming through an ordinance approved on mass motion on Aug. 5, 1971.
Salient in the story of Governor Leyson is his self-forgetfulness in trying to ensure that his fellow Cebuanos were protected from heartless invaders.
“We were on a peak of the mountain when they (the Japanese) found us,” said Fe Leyson-Quan, one of Leyson’s last living daughters.
“They told my father that if he didn’t go down, they would kill us and all the people in the community,” she said.
“So he went down the mountain and served as the governor of Cebu under the Japanese government, all the while helping the guerilla movement fight the Japanese.”
Resisting the Japanese right under their noses with a guerrilla movement as allies was no mean feat.
Leyson’s predecessor, Gov. Hilario Abellana had fled the Capitol, refusing to be a puppet to the Japanese Imperial Army only to be captured, consigned to hard labor and executed by the same enemy.
Abellana had been betrayed by locals who collaborated with the Japanese as spies, identifying who were part of the
resistance.
In an environment rife with traitors and outright foes, Leyson did what he could to keep alive the flame of hope for freedom
although he would not live to see the time of liberation.
Like Abellana, he disappeared when World War II was ending and is understood to have been slain by the Japanese.
With a street now named after him, Governor Leyson’s courageous contribution to strengthening a culture of liberty among our people can be appreciated anew.
Similar projects to immortalize Cebuanos and other Filipinos who dedicated their lives to the defense and uplift of their fellows and to the cause of freedom should never be delayed.
Dilly-dallying foments citizen ingratitude and collective amnesia that are capitalized upon by the unscrupulous, a case in point being some police and military personnel’s campaign to paint the teaching of Philippine martial law history as subversion.
As some Filipinos, like the traitors among their ancestors who double-crossed Abellana and Leyson risk capitulation to authoritarianism, civil monuments honoring Nita Cortez Daluz, Father Rosalio Romano and their kind who fought the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship are in order.
The window to contest and refute the claim that his strongman regime was the golden age of Philippine history is shrinking.
Disclaimer: The comments uploaded on this site do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of management and owner of Cebudailynews. We reserve the right to exclude comments that we deem to be inconsistent with our editorial standards.
