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Philippine leaders were worried. President Quezon, never too great a lover of the U.S. and a continual proponent of freedom, proposed Philippine "neutrality" —which, in effect, would have turned the islands over to Japan. But Franklin Roosevelt assured him that the U.S. would fight to the last American for the Philippines; and Douglas MacArthur, getting ready to retreat to Australia, promised to return. Quezon, and the Philippines, stuck by the U.S.
From Corregidor, MacArthur ordered Leaders Quezon and Osmeña to escape to the U.S. His aide, sad-eyed Brigadier General Manuel Roxas—who was still on Bataan—was ordered by Quezon to remain behind as the head of the Philippine Government. Although Quezon later suggested that he come to the U.S., Manuel Roxas chose to stay (and was captured by the Japs on Mindanao). This decision was probably the turning point of his career. For when the first postwar elections came along, the Filipinos quite obviously preferred a man who had stayed behind to Sergio Osmeña, who had gone into exile in the U.S.
The Heir. Manuel Roxas was born on New Year's Day, 1892, in the house of his well-to-do grandfather in Capiz, on the Visayan island of Panay. His father had been killed six months before by the Spanish. At eleven, Manuel Roxas was sent to school in Hong Kong. But his dislike of Chinese food brought him back in a year to the schools of Capiz, then being set up under the American system.
At high school in Manila, Roxas ripped the pages from his books as he mastered them, and reaped scholastic honors like rice. At the new University of the Philippines, he drew first honors. In his law examinations he set marks never equaled. He taught law for a year, became secretary to Philippine Chief Justice Cayetano Arellano, and moved into the inevitable political career facing any promising young Philippine lawyer.
In 1919, Roxas became municipal councilor for Capiz, then provincial governor, then a member of the House of Representatives, then, in 1922, Speaker of the House and a pillar of the government party, the Nationalista. In 1921 he married Trinidad de Leon, the beautiful daughter of one of Luzon's wealthy landowners. His friends and backers were Manila's great. They saw eye to eye.
The Nightmare. When war came, Manuel Roxas joined the Army, where he caught General MacArthur's eye. The Japs discovered him early in 1942 when he was a Filipino war prisoner on Mindanao. They handled him gingerly: big plans were stirring. In November 1942, they flew him to his home in Manila, wooed him, and proposed that he take part in a puppet government.
Roxas refused, pleading ill health. Premier Tojo gave a dinner for him, and repeated the puppet proposition just before the meat course. Roxas explained about his health. Tojo sent three physicians to look him over. They found him in bed, weak, wan and sweating (Roxas, warned of their approach, had just been given a fever injection and had run up & down stairs). They diagnosed his trouble as hypertension.