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Philippines Gains Independence from the Americans
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Manila, July 4. (AP)—The Stars and Stripes, which floated over the Philippines for 48 years except for war's disastrous intermission, was lowered proudly today by U.S. Commissioner Paul V. McNutt—symbolizing the birth of the new Philippines republic.
President Manuel A. Roxas sent the flag of the republic aloft in its place, in a colorful rain-splashed ceremony before a crowd estimated at 600,000, thus climaxing the islands' 400 years of bloody struggle for freedom.
Roxas was sworn in as President and Elpidio Quirino as Vice-President.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who led the liberation of the islands from the Japanese, was guest speaker.
Representatives of 50 nations attended the ceremonies marking independence under the Tydings-McDuffie Act. Freedom came to the archipelago after a 10-year transitional period as a commonwealth with a Filipino chief executive.
President Truman was represented by Postmaster General Robert E. Hannegan, W. Stuart Symington, Assistant Secretary of War for Air, and J. Weldon Jones, assistant director of the Budget Bureau.
From President Truman came a message pledging that the United States will assist the new republic “in every way possible.”
Separate committees represented the House and Senate of the American Congress. Paul V. McNutt attended as the first U.S. Ambassador to the new nation. He was the last High Commissioner to the Philippines under the commonwealth.
Sen. Tydings, first to speak, called the granting of independence “one of the most unprecedented, most idealistic and most far-reaching events in all recorded history.”
He said it established “a new example of human justice, human dignity and friendly relations between great people...and an entirely new concept of international relationships.”
Gen. MacArthur told the crowd “the eyes of all oppressed peoples are cast with the burning light of a new faith” upon the new republic—”a nation conceived in the centuries-old struggle of a people to attain political liberty.”
The republic will be nurtured in its first tender years by the strong economic hand of the United States. The Tydings bill for rehabilitation gives the islands cash, or its equivalent, of $620,000,000 for partial restoration of the tremendous war damage.
Source: Associated Press (July 4, 1946)Later on, the official date of Philippine Independence was moved to the 12th of June; the date when Pres. Emilio Aguinaldo first declared independence from Spain's control.