Right before I started my speech, I came to the realization that I never actually showed any pictures of the Filipino veteranos themselves! Probably an important thing to add to a presentation about Filipino veteranos, right?
After looking back on my write-out, I also noticed that I forgot to mention that, out of the 66 countries allied with the United States, the Philippines was the only country to have never received their benefits. I also forgot to mention that the parade that I marched in was possibly the last parade that the veteranos would march in, since they are growing older and older. It is hard to imagine how much smaller and smaller the population of remaining Filipino veteranos there are and how many of them never received justice. As the picture above shows, the veteranos are dying before ever getting the justice they deserve.
Aside from forgetting to include images of Filipino veteranos, I believe I did well on my final S4 speech. There’s definitely a lot more that I could’ve talked about in my speech, such as what benefits the veterans missed out on, personal stories/quotes from veterans themselves, or what revoking citizenship entailed for the veteranos. Of course, doing this would have made for a lengthy speech, so instead of adding more details, I decided that it would be better to leave it up to the extra links I provided on my blog post.
At first I was going to do the speech option that was about advocating for the veteranos, but after attempting to do online research on how exactly we can take action to undo the injustices committed to the veterans, I could not find much – no place to donate, bill to pass, or proposition to vote on. At the same time, I also found that it was nearly pointless to attempt to repeal President Truman’s Rescission Act by now, since many veteranos have already passed away and the remainder of them are on the brink of doing so. After realizing this, I decided to instead choose the speech option about explaining an advocacy experience rather than advocating for something in general. After shifting my speech to explain the march more, I focused on talking about the march rather than being an informative speech that talked about everything that had to do with veteranos. It was difficult to research veteranos in the first place since there are barely any articles or scholarly essays about them in the first place; the veteranos really are a subject that had been hidden from history! Knowing that veteranos are such a hidden part of American history, I’m glad that I was able to talk about them with the class and to spread awareness of them. The veteranos didn’t receive the benefits or recognition that they deserved, so the least I could do at this point is to tell their story and to inform people about this dark part of American history. I’m glad that I chose this topic for my S4 speech.
I also really liked your presentation topic! I definitely had no idea that Filipino veterans went unpaid/were treated with injustice after the war. It was really cool that you were able to talk about something that a lot of people don’t know about/something you could relate to!