WWII Batangas: Forced Cotton Planting and Civilian Hunger

Among the common themes related to World War II in Batangas found in the so-called “historical data” required by the administration of President Elpidio Quirino in 1951 were those of the forced plantation of cotton by farmers and the consequential hunger among the civilian population.

Most of the references to these cotton plantations were made in passing. However, the “historical data” for the barrio of San Mariano¹, now part of San Pascual but still with Bauan in World War II, provided more information about how the Japanese forced the plantation of cotton and how this ultimately resulted in hunger and diseases.

The Japanese, the account said, went to even the remotest barrios and ordered the plantation of cotton in “all tillable soil.” This was not limited to the peasantry alone. Japanese patrols went around the province and required even the wealthy landowners to have no less than one hectare of their lands planted to cotton.

Because of the forced cotton policy, “rice and other food crops were unseasonably harvested due to the fright of the people towards the Japanese soldiers.” These soldiers went from house to house to “urge” compliance with the cotton policy, in fact requiring everyone except children to work in the field to plant cotton and maintain the fields.

The “historical data” described what would become the citizens’ new routine as well as the hunger that ensued:

But what was behind this cotton policy of the Japanese?

There were two reasons why the Japanese forced the plantation of cotton not just in Batangas but everywhere else in the Philippines. The first was obvious – textile production. Indeed, textile machineries were brought in by the Japanese for this purpose⁴.

The second reason was less so – cotton was needed in the manufacture of explosives. Because Japan was in a state of war against the Allied Powers, the production of cotton for the manufacture of ammunition was deemed by the Japanese as of greater strategic necessity than the planting of rice and food crops⁵.

The cotton policy, it has to be pointed out, would ultimately turn out to be a failure. The seeds that the Japanese brought in were unsuitable to the soil and the climate. Moreover, plantations were frequently disturbed by guerrilla activities⁶.

The ultimate irony of this policy was described again in the “historical data” for barrio San Mariano, although it goes without saying that the same things happened elsewhere in Batangas. Notwithstanding the fact that they themselves caused civilian hunger and diseases because of their forced plantation of cotton, as liberation approached, the Japanese visited the barrio to ask the teniente del barrio “for palay, corn, pigs, fowls, eggs, and even some leguminous plants.”

The Japanese returned several times, confiscating not only food items but “everything they saw which they thought of value.” Starved as they already were, whatever meager supplies of rice they had, the barrio inhabitants buried underground, away from Japanese eyes.

Because of the frequent looting, many inhabitants eventually evacuated to safer places away from the reach of the Japanese. The silver lining to the cloud that was the Japanese occupation was that Allied Forces would land on the beaches of Nasugbu in late January 1945, and in early March begin the campaign to liberate Batangas from Japanese control.