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'LITTLE TOKYO'. Flags of Japan and the Philippines are placed in various locations in Davao City including in Barangay Mintal where Japan's First Lady Akei Abe, wife of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is set to visit on Friday, Jan. 13, 2017. Barangay Mintal is tagged as the Little Tokyo of prewar Philippines where early Japanese migrants reside?d and worked in the abaca plantations around it?. (Zea Io Ming C. Capistrano/davaotoday.com)

How Davao Became ‘Little Tokyo’

'LITTLE TOKYO'. Flags of Japan and the Philippines are placed in various locations in Davao City including in Barangay Mintal where Japan's First Lady Akei Abe, wife of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is set to visit on Friday, Jan. 13, 2017. Barangay Mintal is tagged as the Little Tokyo of prewar Philippines where early Japanese migrants resided and worked in the abaca plantations around it. (Zea Io Ming C. Capistrano/davaotoday.com)
‘LITTLE TOKYO’. Flags of Japan and the Philippines are placed in various locations in Davao City including in Barangay Mintal where Japan’s First Lady Akei Abe, wife of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is set to visit on Friday, Jan. 13, 2017. Barangay Mintal is tagged as the Little Tokyo of prewar Philippines where early Japanese migrants resided and worked in the abaca plantations around it. (Zea Io Ming C. Capistrano/davaotoday.com)

 

A lot of things have changed since the 1930s, when Davao City was born out of fear of Japanese control. What remained, however, is the affinity to it by the Japanese, who remain the top tourists to the city.

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DAVAO CITY (davaotoday.com) ? Mayor Rodrigo Duterte likes to regale his guests with the story of how, one time, using a piece of firewood, he crushed the hands of a man accused of stealing hand-held radios. The problem with the story, as the mayor himself would tell his visitors, is that he had actually punished the wrong man.

Duterte laughed out loud when he narrated this story one evening last week, during dinner with friends and journalists. He used the story to drive home the point that he hates thieves and criminals with passion.

The irony was apparently lost on him. To his critics, however, this story illustrates perfectly what is so wrong with Duterte?s obsession with ridding the city of criminals using what has been described by the mayor?s critics as criminal methods. Because he sidesteps due process, they say, he is bound to make mistakes sooner or later.

Indeed, according to the Coalition Against Summary Executions (CASE), an alliance of human rights and child advocates in the city, 12 of the 469 murdered by death squads or hired killers here from 1998 until 2005 had been cases of mistaken identity.

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Continue ReadingRody’s War