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The Politics of Asia-Pacific War Memorialization in Thailand's Victory Monument and the Philippines' Shrine of Valor
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Abstract
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This paper explores the politics of Asia-Pacific War memory and memorialization in Southeast Asia, evident in the production context and visual semiotic resources of Thailand's Victory Monument, a generic memorial to Thai war heroes, and the Philippines' Shrine of Valor, a historical shrine complex dedicated to Filipino and US soldiers of the Asia-Pacific War. These heritage structures represent two divergent memorialization practices that demonstrate how the commemoration or suppression of war memory is influenced by politics, agendas, and the benefits it brings to the state. In Thailand, the inward justification and outward restraint stem from the difficult choices the state had to make during the war. In the Philippines, while war memorialization was pronounced and served state aims, it was initially undermined by President Ferdinand Marcos, who wanted to bolster his fraudulent war heroism claims. The cases illustrate how diverging national memorial practices surrounding the war's contested past achieved similar aims and how memorial sites become repositories of meaning potentials through which we could make sense of the nation and its international entanglements.
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