The big ship carries passengers from Seattle en route to Manila, including a group of Filipina students.
Barely 21-year-old Mila Vicente is overwhelmed in receiving a lei from a stranger.
The guy, Vicente Garin, works on Wake Island and is smitten by her and inquires with friends about Mila.
Looking for a drink to slake their thirst, Mila and her friends proceed to a kiosk in Leeds Department Store, where Vicente musters the courage to approach her and introduce himself.
Although flattered over the lei she received, Mila reluctantly replies to the young man’s request for her name.
“I don’t just give out my name,” declares the young Mila.
And Mila fondly remembers that moment she finally gives in to his request.
“I’m Mila Vicente,” she says. Then the guy says, “I’m Vicente Garin.”
Mila thinks the guy is fooling her leg. “Are you kidding me?”
The guy says, “No. My name is really Vicente.”
And that breaks the ice.
As she joins the others on her way back to the ship, she bids farewell to the guy, leaves her address with him, not knowing that a few hours hence they are running into each other in Yokohama, Japan.
In Japan, Mila, her friends, and her new friend hail a taxi to visit tourist spots and soak in the ambiance.
She says, “I even remember forgetting about the ukulele I bought.”
The ship soon docks in Manila and when she gets home she receives a telegram—from Vicente—hoping that she arrived safely in the Philippines.
Mila hasn’t had this attention from someone of the opposite sex. She admits there were suitors, but she says she admired the consistency and the thoughtfulness.
Mila says she is neither from a well-to-do nor a poor family. “We’re just O.K.,” she says.
She tells Variety that she grew up in Tondo, Manila in the pre-war years.
Born on Dec. 3, 1932, Mila is the daughter of an acrobat.
She remembers full well how she tagged along with her father wherever her father went. She recalls she went to the Manila Grand Theater, Savoy, Tocadero, Dalisay, among other places for vaudeville performances.
Before World War II, she says she had the opportunity to work with Filipino actors Teroy De Guzman and Golay (now known as Dolphy) in the movie “Dalagita” [Young Maiden].
She tells Variety she also became a movie extra in two other movies: “Pangit” [Ugly] and “Kenkoy” [Comic].
Even during the war, Mila says they never left Manila but hid in an underground shelter during the raids.
During that time, she tells Variety that they were lucky they had something to eat with camote and rice as staple food.
She also recounts how her father would buy rubber and sell to those who make wheels for horse carriages.
Although they didn’t suffer as much as the others did, she says she lost four siblings due to malnutrition before Manila was liberated from the Japanese.
After the war, she continued her education. Then her cousin, Victoria Silverio Blanco brought her to the U.S. to continue her studies.
She says she graduated Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington then went to the University of Washington where she pursued medical technology but never got to earn the degree.
All the time that she stayed in Washington, Mila says she had suitors, both Filipino and Americans. She says her cousin kept an eye—a hawk’s eye—on her.
She admits she didn’t want anything to distract her from her studies and didn’t want anything to disappoint her cousin. But, soon, she longed to come home.
And came home she did in 1956.
During her trip’s layover in Hawaii and Japan, she met the guy whom she would eventually marry and from whom she received a telegram the instant she arrived in Manila in November 1956.
Over the span of so many weeks, Mila says she and Vic—who worked in the billeting office of Transocean Air Lines on Wake Island—exchanged letters.
But in June 1957 Vic came home much to her suprise. Vic spent his vacation to be with her, she says.
On July 1, 1957, one week before he returns on Wake Island, Vic asked Mila’s hand in marriage from her parents.
“My parents agreed. They said, ‘Go ahead and apply for marriage license’,” Mila says.
They were wed the following day, she says, by no less than the former mayor of Manila Arsenio Lacson.
She also tells Variety that immediately after the reception at Moderna Restaurant, she and her husband Vic proceeded to Manila Hotel where they spent the night as Mr. and Mrs. Garin.
A week later, Vic left for Wake Island.
Despite the distance, the couple never failed to send each other letters. In those missives, she says, both of them expressed longing for each other’s love and company.
She says never a day passed her by without consigning her thoughts into paper to be shared to Vic.
Now a widow for more than five years, Mila says she would rather spend her time on Saipan with her relatives.
She says it helps too that she spends time with the manamko’ at the Office on Aging.
The congregate who lives in Chinatown with her relatives says even though her husband is long gone, she continues the habit of writing letters addressed to him.
Her compilation of love letters, she titled, “Letters for My Departed Husband” speaks volumes about love and respect.
“I could never find someone like him,” she says.
The former actress and former Guam resident says her husband, a World War II veteran (ROTC Hunters), went to Guam in 1992 armed with the letter from the United States Embassy in Manila certifying that he served during World War II.
Soon, he joins the ranks of Filipino WWII vets who were recognized for their efforts during the war and were given U.S. citizenship.
Mila, being the wife of the veteran, became a U.S. citizen too.
They stayed in Guam, she says, from 1993 to 2004 until he was needed to be taken to the Philippines for treatment for prostate cancer.
Mila says her husband passed away in 2005.
Despite the loss, Mila tries her best to get over this terrible grief.
Through love letters, she says, she gets to relive the love and respect they both shared.
When asked what she can advise couples, she says, “The three ingredients to a successful relationship are love, respect, and care.”
Even in the missives, she confesses, she remembers the exchange of naughty thoughts that only she and her husband share.
She tells Variety how a supertyphoon that hit the Philippines scattered her love letters and let her relatives in to a secret that they two share.
“They found out some things that Vic and I talk about,” says Mila as she laughed about it.
The letters she wrote her husband talk about her routine, how she misses him, and what would have taken place if he were alive.
In these letters, Mila continues to be bold in professing her love.
“We really enjoyed each other’s company. We truly love each other. I never get tired of saying how much I love him.”
