Subic Bay

Anthony Mills drops you into the sights and sounds of Subic Bay - Olongapo, Philippines with such vivid detail that they who served there will look around for people and places they knew. - "Subic Bay - The Last American Colony," provides an intimate look into the thoughts and lives of the civilians and Naval personnel and Philippine nationals of the greater Olongapo area.

With the expiration of the treaty that established the American bases in the Philippines on the horizon, the American and Philippine nationals struggle to carry on the only way of life they know.

When a typhoon strikes simultaneously with the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, Americans and Philippine nationals work together to save their lives, their homes and their livelihoods; all which are centered around the naval base.

On the Main Gate bridge, American servicemen and women, merchant sailors, officers and enlisted, licensed and unlicensed, Philippine nationals would walk to and fro.

Americans who lived, "on the economy,: (out in town) and Philippine nationals with two -when trolleys of five- and ten-gallon plastic jugs of fresh water would make their way through the crowd. A water spigot opposite the pedestrian walkway was made available specifically of this purpose ... on the bridge there would be, 'vendors,' who solicited themselves with their attire, with their eyes and how they leaned against the yellow steel rail ... Closer to the Maingate, friends and paramours would await their lover-supporters where, at times, an evil-faced man with a goatee, dressed in a dainty pink cloth with a rim of white lace and a cowl, would overlook the activity of the bridge. - All had to stand behind a double yellow line, and, every so often a Marine sentry had to remind the pedestrians about this. - Past the double yellow line to the left (from the inbound end of the bridge) was the badge and pass office where many people - young and old and in-between, toddlers and they who were on crutches - waited to be processed to enter the Main Gate and experience a bit of North America.

By 1500 hundred it was completely dark. A blinding pumice, 'blizzard,' had swept over the entire Subic Bay area. The pumice came out of the sky like small snowflakes, with an occasional ping-pong ball drops. The pumice was feather-light, but, the accumulated weight on the trees and buildings began to tell. Large tree branches, flat and sparsely-support roofs began to sway. - Unlike the sentries that guarded the Roman garrisons when Mount Vesuvius erupted on August 24, 79 A.D., the Marines at the Main Gate let anyone come and go, unable to negotiated that which was beyond their control. - At about this time, a rumble could be heard, one of the three major earthquakes that were to occur that night took place which initiated a second phase: Mount Pinatubo Began To Explode.

But the major topic on every newspaper, both in town the in the Stars and Stripes, was how the Philippine Senate would vote on the Military Bases Agreement of 1947 that was to expire on September 16th. The Senate was due to vote on the treaty on September 13th.