by Sonia Krug

I first fell in love with the Filipino Jeepney back in late 1965 when my family was evacuated along with other U.S. citizens due to a war scare from what was then Dacca in East Pakistan to Manila. The majority of us stayed at either the pre-Imelda Manila Hotel, crumbling, seedy and wonderful, or the newer Bayview Hotel from which a bus provided by the U.S. government transported our kids to the special school sessions at IS, held in the afternoons after regular classes were completed.

We mothers were quick to note the bright, bouncy, joyful public conveyances known as jeepneys, derived, we were told, from the American Jeep. We became jeepney explorers, taking a different jeepney almost every day to wherever it was going. Since we had never been anywhere in Manila and did not speak the language, we had no idea where we were going or where we were when we got there. It was marvelous fun and great city touring, so I was most disappointed to learn when I moved here jeepneys were no longer considered "safe" methods of transportation.

When Martha Paradies gave her talk recently for The Americans in the Philippines 1898-1945 Study Group, she included a bit about the jeepney. Martha generously shared her research notes with me and I learned much about the vehicle that had charmed my heart all those years ago.

With the Second World War looming the U.S. government commissioned various automobile companies to produce a vehicle capable of running on all its wheels, able to go up mountains, cross deserts and bodies of water, impervious to weather, and able to transport soldiers, goods, and weapons. Thus was the Jeep—the first four-wheel drive—conceived. Snub-nosed, ungainly, drab, the Jeep is the grandfather of today’s sleek, sophisticated utility vehicles, and the father of the jeepney.

The Jeep is said to have won the war for the Allies while those that remained in the Philippines won the hearts of the Filipinos, who made them their own in a way never to be imagined. No where except in the Philippines is a WWII Jeep a MacArthur, those used during the Korean War an Eisenhower, while one from the Vietnam Era is a Kennedy.

They became woven into local folklore. When the defeat of the Americans by the Japanese was at hand, it is said, the Americans sank a barge full of jeeps in Manila Bay to keep their mechanisms secret. "And" it is whispered, "When the Americans were leaving they dug a gigantic hole in the ground at La Loma and buried many jeeps loaded with valuables. . ."

Given the Filipino’s extraordinary talent for improvisation and reproduction the jeepney of today is pure Filipino. The first jeepneys were actual jeeps, their sides scraped down to the metal, then painted and adorned. Then the
rear was extended to make room for three passengers on each side, for a total of nine, but often carrying many more. Soon, as shiny elongated metal sides appeared on bigger bodies and diesel engines replaced gas, the jeepney became an entity all its own. The Jeep was in there somewhere but no longer so discernable. No two
jeepneys are ever alike—each is a tribute to the artistic talent of the designer and the originality of the owner, replete with flags, horses, colors, horns, flowers, religious adornments.

One summer a while back there was a photo contest for the most colorful jeepney, sponsored, I believe, by the Alliance Francaise. Nothing drab about these vehicles! They shriek a love of life and shake a fist at those who would curb their enthusiasms.

Not a utility vehicle alone, a jeepney may be used equally well for play. How many of you have noticed fellow member Susana May driving her smashing red mini-jeepney through the streets of Makati and environs?

Even as we may rant at the jeepney driver’s lack of regard for "rules of the road" we know if through some sorcerer’s wand jeepneys were to disappear overnight, we would miss them dreadfully.