Colonial Manila, 1909–1912: Three Dutch Travel Accounts ed. by Otto van den Muijzenberg (review)

Abstract

410 Lim’s division did not participate in the later battles in Bataan and was not part of the Bataan Death March. The Japanese however brought him to Camp O’Donnell in Capas, Tarlac. In July 1942 the new colonizers released him from the camp, after which he went to a hospital to recuperate. He had plans then of starting an underground resistance movement against the Japanese. When he left the hospital he tried to escape in a batel, a large sailboat; unfortunately, the Japanese found him and brought him to Fort Santiago in Manila. He was believed to have been executed later by the Japanese. His remains were never identified, and the day of his death was never ascertained (264–65). Although Lim never attained his ambition to put his mark on the military history of the Philippines, his death at the hands of the Japanese made him a hero worthy to be memorialized. Meixsel states in the introductory part of the book that his goal in writing Frustrated Ambition was to provide a new perspective on military affairs in the Philippines during the American occupation, a perspective that “return[s] some agency to Filipino soldiers who attempted to affect the course of their own country’s history, a history from which they have, for far too many years, remained largely absent” (8). The way that he sets about achieving this goal may not appeal to every reader who may be looking for a biography on Vicente Lim, as the book’s title announces, but is then inundated with information on the Philippine Army. A proper biography of Lim remains to be written, and toward that goal Meixsel’s book will serve as a very useful resource.