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Loakan Airport at 75: a historical note

BAGUIO CITY (Mar. 14) — It was on March 11, 1932 or 73 years ago when a plane first landed at the Loakan Airport. James J. Halsema wrote about it in “E.J. Halsema: Colonial Engineer,” at a time when his father, Eusebius Julius was Baguio’s mayor.

A board of five Army Air Corps Officers was appointed to survey all proposed sites for a permanent airfield capable of expansion. The board was headed by Major John Brooks, commander of Nichols Airfield (today’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport). They chose as an ideal spot Loakan, a narrow valley occupied by rice paddies, at the head of the Bued canyon south of the city center. Halsema supported the choice, since fog affected this site less than the other proposed areas and as it lay within the city limits close to the main roads to the center of Baguio.

A passage in the book reads, “…the daring Army air corps’ Major Brown had landed at Burnham Park in 1919, the crash of another Army plane at an improvised strip in Trinidad Valley and disagreement on a proper site for a field delayed commercial air service between Manila and Baguio until 1932. For years, Manila businessmen headed by Maj. J.E.H. Stevenot pressured (Eusebius Julius) Halsema to build a field either in Trinidad or on Forbes’ Polo Field in Baguio Proper. But Halsema resisted, pointing out that fog frequently covered the Trinidad valley and that the Polo Field was in a heavily populated urban area. Instead, the Mayor encouraged the opening of landing strips in the normally dry riverbed at Naguillan, 40 kms (24 mi.) northwest and at Rosario, 30 kms (18 mi.) southwest of Baguio in the lowlands of La Union, although he knew these steps were only an interim solution. As a commercial aviation enthusiast, Governor General Davis disarmed the Mayor’s critics, who perceived his interim solution as “foot dragging.”

As Halsema had expected, advocates of the other sites were quick to complain via inspired editorials in the Manila newspapers. They claimed that Loakan (then Luacan) was both unsuitable and unsafe. The Igorot owners of the property were reluctant to sell their ancestral land and initially demanded exhorbitant sums to lease or exchange them. But Judge Marcelino Montemayor upheld the city’s right under a Davis executive order to expropriate the rice paddies as the airfield’s location. Acting Governor General George C. Butts and Maj. Gen. John L. Hines, Commanding General of the Philippine Department, wielded pick and shovel to loosen dirt that Halsema dumped … to inaugurate work on December 26. (1931)

Delayed by paddy mud so viscous that the City’s only tractor was mired firmly and a steam road roller had to be used to pull it out, the one kilometer (.62 mi.) long, 100 meter (338 ft) wide grass-paved air field was not ready on schedule. … Flying a Klemm trainer monoplane, Capt. Theodore Cammaan, who had been a Luftwaffe ace in World War I, made the first landing at Loakan on March 11.” (1932)

At that time, Ibaloy elders of Loakan described the area where the airport was to be put up as a vast land of rolling hills on a plateau of rich yielding rice and taro fields along a large river flowing from what is presently the PEZA or Philippine Export Zone Authority area, towards the middle of the present airport and drained at Kennon road (above the checkpoint). It was one of their main sources of livelihood then.

Nine Ibaloy elders, Tagli, Ngaway, Aninit, Salomi, Dacdacan, Agoyos, Gomdad, Maximino Carantes, and Alson Carantes then wrote to the mayor on July 4, 1931, expressing opposition to the construction of a landing airfield in Loakan valley.

Speaking for their communities, they said that “The proposed site is privately owned, and the rice fields are our main source of livelihood and where we raise the major sustenance or maintenance of our daily life.” The elders stressed in the petition that future generations are at risk with the impending threat to their economic base.

On July 1, 1931, then city secretary Felis Balinong wrote them a reply. “Gentlemen, I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your letter on July 4th protesting against the use of landing field at Luacan for the reasons given therein, and to advise that the report of the committee appointed by His Excellency, the Governor-General, regarding the selection of the landing field has not as yet been received by this office, and hence no action will be taken until receipt of same. Should Luacan field be selected, we assure you that nothing will be done without considering your interest but without at the same time depriving the Government of its right of eminent domain. Any attempt, however, to exploit the Government will not be looked upon with favor…” the letter read.

The expropriation case was filed on October 31, 1931 and amended on December of the same year. Compensation for about 107,000 square meters of developed and productive farmland was pegged at two centavos per square meter at a time when wage was P1 a day.

The signatories and their descendants since then have spent much of their time and meager savings on lawyers and litigations to collect just compensation which, to this day, they never got. The airport was then covered by some fourteen land titles (seven original certificates of title and seven transfer certificates of title) when it was expropriated by the government. Until today, the Igorot owners have not been fully paid yet. Through the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (RA 8371), and in recognition of the indigenous peoples’ rights over their ancestral lands, the appeal of the descendants of the owners of these lands must be heeded: that the present national government be faithful to the law in the recognition of their rights and be humanely fair in the settlement of this historical injustice. # via NORDIS

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