Miscellaneous toys from the Philippines (late 1930s early 1940s)
Type: Miscellaneous
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My grandfather, Joe J. Romero, lived in the Philippines during World War Two and consequently never the opportunity to have any truly favorite toys. However, he did remember what he played with before the war. For example, he remembers playing with a beach ball in concrete lots when he was in Manila (see picture a). There was never the same level of racial discrimination in the Philippines as there was in the United States so he played with African Americans, White Russians, and others with no real idea that in some parts of the world that this was socially unacceptable. After he moved to a village, Casas, Tarlac, in the Provinces, he played less in concrete lots and more in river valleys thick with bamboo and rushing water. The boys would often take their bolos (see picture b) and cut down the bamboo and turn them into rafts and would travel down the river, sometimes for days at a time. He would also make slingshots out of Y-shaped sticks and bits of rubber from old tires. My grandfather and his friends would use them to hunt animals, but my grandfather never got any good at it.
This work by Julia Romero is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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