20 JUNE

Mariano Ponce

1899 -  10,000  Murata rifles, 6,000,000 rounds of ammunition, and other war supplies purchased by Mariano Ponce from the Japanese start sailing aboard the Nonubiki Maru from Nagasaki to the Philippines four months into the Filipino-American War  (1899-1914); earlier in  September 1898, Ponce and F. Lichaucho had sought approval  for arms purchase in a letter to Apolinario Mabini y Maranan, Foreign Affairs Minister and chief adviser of President  Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy, stating that Japanese  officials are inclined to favor the Philippine cause against the North American imperialist aggression although they only wish to avoid "the possibility of a conflict with...  the Yankee one"; unfortunately, the privately-charted Japanese steamer will sink during a typhoon in the South China Sea before reaching the Philippines, the Bald Eagle nation through Admiral George Dewey had some 13 months earlier forged an alliance with Aguinaldo to fight Spain, deceptively promising the then-revolutionary leader that the United States would honor Filipino independence, only to instigate the Phil-Am War and manipulate news about it in the bid of US President William McKinley to make the Senate vote for the annexation [read: invasion] of the Southeast Asian archipelago and to approve the Treaty of Paris; the New York Times will erroneously report that the report about the arms shipment is false based on a supposed story in a Tokyo newspaper, saying that while Japanese:

"...admire the pluck of the Filipino people, who belong to the same race and with whom the Japanese have had some close relations in the past [they] are not badly disposed toward the Americans."

Photo credit: http://ngayonsakasaysayan.blogspot.com/