Five times more ‘G.I. babies’ than previously thought

Five times more ‘G.I. babies’ than previously thought

The Phillipine Star
Manila, Philippines
2012-12-17

Jarius Bondoc

There are five times more American “G.I. babies” in the Philippines than previously thought — and they continue to multiply. This is according to a recent study by a visiting American social researcher and professor in Angeles City, Pampanga. Such finding categorizes military-origin Filipino Amerasians as a social diaspora. For, they forcibly are stripped of their citizenship, dispersed in slums, and suffer discrimination.
 
The number of abandoned offspring of US military servicemen could be 250,000 or more, analysis by P.C. Kutschera, PhD, shows. Their ranks are “expanding slowly but exponentially,” he says. He considers Filipino Amerasians born not only during the Vietnam War. Counted as well are those sired since American Occupation and Commonwealth years, to the present joint US-Philippine military exercises. Meaning, Filipino Amerasians are not only in their thirties or forties, but can also be geriatrics and newborns.
 
Previously the Filipino Amerasians were estimated to run to about 52,000. Most studies considered only the height of the Vietnam War in 1968-1975. At the time the US used the sprawling Clark Air Base in Pampanga and Subic Naval Base in Zambales as launch pads for military operations across the South China Sea. Close to 100,000 US military personnel were stationed in those largest air and naval bases outside mainland America, and in 19 smaller facilities throughout the Philippines. The Philippine Senate evicted the bases in 1992…

…Kutschera presented his research last October to the 9th International Conference on the Philippines, held at the Asian Studies Center, Michigan State University in East Lansing. (Full text at http://www.amerasianresearch.org; coauthored by Marie A. Caputi, PhD, a professor at Walden University, Minnesota.) The paper, “The Case for Categorization of Military Filipino Amerasians as Diaspora,” amplifies Kutschera’s 2010 doctoral dissertation. That earlier work is on psychosocial risk and mental disorder due to stigmatization and discrimination of Amerasians in Angeles City outside Clark Air Base…

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