San Diego, CA. When Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili decided to invade South Ossetia while Vladimir Putin was enjoying the opening fireworks at the Beijing Olympics, he did not anticipate that he will be met with equally or more massive fireworks in the process. Putin left the Olympics and shortly thereafter tanks and warplanes were bombing Georgian forces for the world to see. Perhaps it is because of the Beijing events that Americans were glued to the medal tally counts that many missed the significance of what was taking place on the other side of the world. EXACTLY one hundred seven years ago today, August 21, 1901, the American cattle cruiser ‘Minnewaska’, which was renamed US Army transport ‘Thomas’, docked at Manila Bay after a month-long voyage from San Francisco, California on a very important mission. Two days after they were quarantined off the sunset-laced bay, a “new” army of 540 American teachers walked down the gangplank into the annals of Philippine history. So it was on that day, August 23, 1901, that a hearty band of American teachers, armed with books, pencils, papers, and slates, actually stepped on Philippine soil to start an arduous task of planting the seeds of American-style public education system in the country.

        Crossing the international dateline from Honolulu, the vessel entered the Philippine waters, passed by a lighthouse off Masbate’s San Bernardino Strait where on the northeast side they took a glimpse of the majestic Bicol mountains. Another night and a day, the US ship Thomas sighted Corregidor and dropped anchor on the waters of Manila Bay. They earlier passed by Sangley Point in nearby Cavite where American Commodore George Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet on May 1, 1901 and consequently placed the entire archipelago under the shadow of the Star-Spangled Banner. The Thomasites’ arrival was exuding with warmth and excitement that one of them marked it as “roughly analogous to that of the Mayflower in American history.”

        True, there were a variety of reasons why the early American teachers came, such as lure of travel, spirit of adventure, patriotic duty, to join husband soldiers deployed in the Philippines, or simply to gain employment. But, undeniably, their coming took a bright chapter in Philippine history which the Filipinos never had under three centuries of Spanish colonial rule where only the sons of the elite had the chance to be in school run by the religious orders.

        Within a short span of time, the Thomasites were fanned out to the provinces to build schools and teach democracy. On the year of their arrival, the first provincial high school outside Manila was established in Tarlac, and more followed elsewhere, including the Visayan islands.

        It would take a year later that a similar high school was begun to be established in Naga, then still known as Nueva Caceres. Completed on July 15, 1903, with Frank L. Crone as school in charge, William Freer, the American education supervisor of Ambos Camarines (the two Camarines provinces were one) wrote about the birth of the public school system in Naga: “The Provincial High School (referring to what is now the Camarines Sur National High School) organized at Nueva Caceres in the early fall of 1902 was most successful from the beginning. Starting with a handful of young men and women students in one of the primary buildings, it soon occupied a separate structure leased and fitted up by the province, and the attendance increased daily. During the second year, the school was obliged to move to a much larger building, the students, above all fourteen years of age, numbering over two hundred and fifty coming from all parts of the province. Knowing but little English, they were first organized in preparatory classes, taking up the regular course study as soon as thereafter as they might be able.”

        Making notes on their voyage to the Philippines, Adeline Knapp, one of the original Thomasites, wrote that the Spanish-American war had been the direct cause of three remarkable expeditions by sea, any one of which was notable among the enterprises of great nations. The first was when the vanquished Castillan soldiers were sent back to Spain; the second was when Spanish-American teachers from Cuba where shipped to study American methods and ideas at Harvard. “The third and most notable of these expeditions is like the second one for educational purposes; but which has grown out of other conditions than those that prevail in Cuba.” She said the need for the Philippines was to send an army, not of conquest, but of education which “was destined to be greater and more far-reaching in its final effect.”

        According to a literature prepared by the Public Affairs Section of the US Embassy in Manila, the ‘Thomas’ was the best transport in the service of the US government. She was then the newest, the largest and the steadiest of them all, and her machinery was the best and most modern. Her beam was two feet wider and her keel twelve feet longer than that of other government transports. Her only inferior ‘character’ was his speed because of her huge size.

        The vessel was built in Ireland in 1893. She first flew the British flag under the name ‘Persia”. Later she was turned over to the Atlantic Transport Line, and was engaged in cattle trade between London and New York. Her name was changed to ‘Minnewaska’, and such name she retained until she was purchased by the US government in 1898. Soon after the outbreak of the Spanish-American war, she was commissioned to transport troops, horses, and commissary stores from the US to certain ports in Cuba and Puerto Rico. After a year of possession by the American government, she was sent to a shipyard in Philadelphia to be overhauled and refitted as a modern transport for armed troops. Her first trip to Manila was made in the fall of 1899 by way of the Suez Canal and since then sailed between San Francisco and Manila. It was Thomas’ seventh trip across the Pacific when it ferried the teachers in 1901. On two of her voyages, she bore the remains of General Lawton and Colonel Liscum. The former was killed in the Philippines while the latter in China.