By Gerardo R. Partido
Variety News Staff

CONGRESSWOMAN Madeleine Z. Bordallo has given supporting testimony to a bill that confers benefits to Filipino veterans who served in World War II.
Bordallo testified before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs in support of H.R. 760, the Filipino Veterans Equity Act of 2007.
H.R. 760, introduced by House Committee on Veterans Affairs Chairman Bob Filner of California and co-sponsored by Bordallo, seeks to fully restore the rights, privileges and benefits of veteran status to surviving World War II veterans of the Commonwealth Army of the Philippines, as well as to all of the Philippine Scouts, and to those individuals from the Philippines who served in the United States Armed Forces-organized organized resistance units.
“These soldiers served shoulder to shoulder with American servicemen under the command of General Douglas MacArthur to resist the Imperial Japanese Forces in their homeland in the greatest conflict of the 20th century. They were seen and treated as equals in the line of duty and in the battle to secure freedom and democracy against tyranny in the Second World War,” Bordallo said in her testimony.
Conscripted Filipino soldiers were supposed to be entitled then to full veterans’ benefits and they were so promised in the name of the good faith of the United States government.
Congress, however, withheld these benefits from them with the passage of the Rescission Acts of 1946.
In her testimony, Bordallo pointed out that there was no inequity on the frontlines of the war and no distinction between the sacrifices of soldiers, both Filipino and American alike, and no differences in their calls to duty as service members under the United States Armed Forces.
“This is the inequity which compels us—as members of Congress— to act to right the wrongs of the inequity and to come here today to testify on behalf of bringing justice to our Filipino veterans,” the congresswoman stressed.