Cadaclan, is next to Camansi. It is mountainous area. Jesse have seen the path that I walked daily to school. I don't know how far, I forgot to ask my nephew (Jesse thinks it is about 5 miles one way) Melancholy is probably the best how I describe my feelings. I was happy to see it again, it made me feel like a child again. The path is now paved and there is now transportation that can take you all the way to the end which used to be my house and playground and is now the La Union Botanical Garden. I didn't really pay attention when the Japanese started the Botanical Garden. I was in elementary and high school at that time and busy doing teen-ager things, but I remember and seen the Japanese men. The Japanese are no longer there and I am impressed at what they've done to the area and have brought job to some of the local people. A lot have changed, especially the neighborhoods. Some I recognized, some I don't. Along the path the forest is more dense than it used to be. There are more houses in some areas where there are farms used to be. I said hello to a lot of people, they remember me and my family somehow I don't remember some of them. What can I say, it's been about 26 years.
It makes me sad that I don't have a single picture of my Aunt, my father's youngest sister who is 86 and is the only one alive now in my father's side. I am glad that Jesse got to meet her. I don't have a picture of my nephew's house too.
The sign, this is progress, this wasn't here before I left.
This was my homeroom in 6th Grade. It was brand new then and it has been almost 40 years. It has a lot of disrepair which makes me sad. I didn't take any other pictures of the other buildings.
I remember climbing and picking fruit from this tree on the way home from school. It is some kind of a berry tree. (They call it lomboy)
See the ocean, this picture is taken looking north. This is the view that I used to see everyday. I say it is a magnificent view! Down below to the right is where my dad built us a house with wooden floors that I waxed every weekend and a tin roof. It is where most of our fruit trees, guava, avocado, coconuts, mango, banana, papaya and others. The coconut tree was the only tree I couldn't climb and my dad built me a bamboo stairs for it. My childhood was fun, I enjoyed climbing the trees and singing on top of them. Can you imagine that? I would have love to go and see it but we no longer own the land and the path is so dense that you probably need a machete to get there. Makes me sad that no one is tending the land now, no one is tending the trees that my family planted.
Literally, there was a house on this lot. It was the house where I was born. It was a big house. I remember it had 2 kitchens, one on each end. We are a big family so it is obviously big and my father was a carpenter, so he kept adding on. It was on a stilt and we kept the animals under the house. The roof was made of grass that they changed every year. When I was 7 or 8 we had to move because the cliff behind eroded that it almost took the house with it. That's when my dad built the new house with wooden floors and tin roof.
Where they built the sign was my playground, this was just to the right of the house would have been. This is where my cousins and I run around and play hide in seek at night under the moon.
Names of the Japanese men that worked here. It is ironic that the Japanese came to work here because about 10-15 miles north of this place was the famous "Battle of Bacsil Ridge" it is where the Filipinos fought the Japanese during World War II.
The Philippine and Japanese Flag
Jesse and monkey. They had several monkeys and other animals and birds and the famous Philippine Eagle.
It is a forest that's why this picture is dark. There was a big watering hole close to this tree and it was where the kids go and swim and it is where I almost drown when I was about 5 and to this day I am afraid of the water even after I took swimming classes
Jesse and the Carabao. I took this picture on the way back to Camansi. I wanted to walk back way down to Camansi so Jesse can get the feel of the area but I think my nephew wasn't too trusting on some of the neighborhoods so he dropped us off at the school instead and it is only about a mile back to their place.
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