spears and machetes had fiercely resisted Spanish forays into

spears and machetes had fiercely resisted Spanish forays into their mountains to ‘‘civilize’' them. Their culture, though it served them reasonably well, was primitive without a written alphabet or calendar at the time that the first American administrators and missionaries arrived in the early 1900s. Louisa's great granddad, Vincent Gowen, coming to the mountains in 1927 after 14 years in China, was part of the second generation of Episcopalian missionaries who had earlier succeeded in winning Igorot confidence. They had established a few schools and churches and English was widely spoken by educated Igorots. Still remote, however; the area could be reached only after days on horseback over precipitous mountain trails. Some of the more remote villages still practiced head-hunting against their traditional enemies in nearby villages.

“So why did you leave the Philippines?" Louisa asked as her mom and 1 worked on the presentation. “World War IT I answered. Her great-granddad loved the mountains and the Igorot people, I said, and her great-aunt Ann and 1 were born there and felt deeply at home. We would have stayed longer but when the Japanese captured the Philippines in December 1941 it changed our lives. We hung on in the mountains for six months, witnessing by radio the fall of Corregidar, the surrender on Bataan, and Japanese conquests almost to Australia, but were finally interned in a former army base near Baguio, the mountain resort city at the south end of the Cordillera. Together with 500 other foreigners, mostly American, we stayed at Camp Holmes until shipped to Manila, the capital of the Philippines, in December 1944.1 told her about the ancient Spanish