On Veterans Day, I was watching “Victory at Sea” on WETA TV. For those of you who are not familiar with the program, it was a series that aired in 1952 and 1953 that used WWII video footage from numerous countries to highlight the role of the Navy during the war. In the episode “Return of the Allies,” the program covers the battles to retake the Philippines from the Japanese in 1945.

The Philippines were a territory and Commonwealth of the United States for 43 years prior to the invasion by Japan, making this campaign to retake the island nation back from the Axis forces not only a strategic maneuver, but also a personal one. One year after the surrender of Japan, the United States granted the Philippines full independence. Though this is history to us, I have a “what if” question. “What if” we kept the Philippines? To get an impression of what US-owned Philippines would look like today, we need to go back and examine the past century of the island nation.

The United States took ownership of the Philippines in 1898 following the Spanish-American War. This transition from Spain was not received favorably by the Filipinos, who battled the rule of the United States during the Philippine-American War. Peace was obtained after a decade of war and regional skirmishes, allowing the US to help shape the new Philippine government and domestic services. The peace was unsettled by the invasion of Japan during World War II, resulting in US forces being repelled from the island nation. After retaking of the Philippines and the end of WWII, the US granted the Philippines full independence in 1946.

If we want to examine what would have happened if the Philippines became a state, we first need to understand how a territory becomes a state. According to the Constitution:

Article IV, Section 3: New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

The lack of a specific procedure in the Constitution is remedied by precedence in the Northwest Ordinance and later with the Enabling Act of 1802. Though not rigid process, the guidelines established by the two documents are:

1. The territory must be organized with a population in favor of statehood
2. 1 Delegate for every 1,200 residents must be selected to attend a Constitutional Convention
3. A State Constitution must be drafted, forming a “republican” government as directed by Article IV, Section 4.
4. The U.S. Congress for admittance into the Union.

This process has been bypassed six times with the formation of California, Kentucky, Maine, Texas, Vermont, and West Virginia.

My intent with this multi-part article is to explore the numerous variables involved with determining if a territory should be admitted as a state. In the case of the Philippines, I’ll explore the possible outcomes if statehood was attempted at three periods during the U.S. administration of the Philippines: 1898, 1935, and 1946.

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