Abandoned children fear as American troops eye Philippines

When the last US ship pulled out of the Philippines’ Subic naval base more than two decades ago, a desperate young woman’s hopes of finding her father sailed away with it.
Beirut Calaguas, now 44, is among the tens of thousands of “Amerasians” fathered by US soldiers who served in the Philippines, home to the US military’s biggest overseas bases until they closed down in 1992.
Like so many others, Calaguas has endured a life of discrimination and poverty, while battling the mental trauma of having been abandoned and not knowing either of her biological parents.
“When the Americans left, my heart broke, I resigned my fate to never finding my father,” said the fair-skinned, brown-eyed Calaguas at her ramshackle home in a rundown suburb close to the former US bases. “I used to cry every night. It’s very difficult to feel so alone in the world, and long for a father whose face you’ve never seen.”
Despite one study estimating there are as many as 250,000 Amerasians and their offspring in the Philippines, they are a largely forgotten community. Their plight, however, is gaining fresh attention with the United States preparing to deploy thousands of soldiers back to the Philippines as part of its “pivot” to Asia.
Clark Air Base in Angeles city and the Subic Naval Base in nearby Olongapo — about two hours’ drive north of Manila — were vital Pacific theater operations for the American military for nearly half a century.
Both played crucial roles as logistics and repair hubs for US forces during the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s, with Clark also serving as a launch pad for bomb attacks.
Hundreds of thousands of American troops and civilian contractors rotated through the bases for work and holidays, giving rise to infamous red-light districts.
Go-go bars and massage parlors were typically the meeting place for the US servicemen and the women who would bear them unwanted or unknown children.
These half-Americans were also often abandoned by their mothers.
In a conservative Catholic country where divorce is illegal, some mothers gave up their children to avoid the social stigma of being a single parent and to retain hope of marriage.