From Four Nodes of History: The Human Rights Challenge in the Philippine Security Sector mopping operations was unjust, forced MacArthur to release the leaders of the Hukbalahap. • In a bid to clear up Central Luzon of resistance insurgents, MacArthur appointed many notorious Japanese collaborators as Officer in Charge (OICs) of local governments and allowed landlords to use private armies recruited from former local Japanese collaborators to retake their lands with the support of the Military Police. • Most national politicians who were left behind in the Philippines during the war became Japanese collaborators. MacArthur released the 5,000 top Japanese collaborators headed by Manuel Roxas that the US Army had arrested for collaboration and allowed them to influence and dominate Philippine politics. He hand picked Manuel Roxas to head the Philippine Commonwealth Congress when it was reconvened. This way, they would be beholden to him and always fear being charged with collaboration if they did not approve the policy directions the US directed. MacArthur reactivated all these politicians, producing a spineless, unprincipled and opportunistic tradition (balimbing) in the conduct of Philippine politics. 84 • This same policy was applied in building the armed forces. A significant number of Filipino USAFFE members that were captured and released by Japanese amnesty proclamation had joined the dreaded Japanese Bureau of Constabulary or collaborated and involved themselves in cruelties against guerrillas and the population. Japan also recruited additional Filipinos to the Japanese Philippine Constabulary and its paramilitary units. MacArthur inserted about 50,000 of these Japanese collaborators into the Philippine army, but a mammoth indignation rally forced him to remove them. As a result, the Armed Forces of the Philippines went down to 25,000. It was the remains of the Philippine military that had numbered 132,000 before the war.36 MacArthur formed them into thirteen military police companies, armed as police, to maintain internal peace and order.37 They became the core of the contemporary AFP. MacArthur abetted graft and corruption within the military organization that included the disappearance of 6,000 brand new army jeeps, and a significant number of weapons carriers, bull dozers, gasoline, spare parts and military equipment stored in military warehouses originally intended for the invasion of Japan. With the end of the war, they were intended to be donated to the national government for its reconstruction program. Most of the suspects that