ABSTRACT
At nine o’clock on the evening of 27 June 1924, a soldier of the Philippine Scouts approached the home of the Fort William McKinley Provost Marshal and asked to speak privately with the army post’s senior law enforcement officer.1 ‘Badly scared and excited…afraid that he would be killed if it were known that he had spoken to an American’, the young enlisted man revealed that many Scouts were meeting in homes outside the post and in barracks on the fort. Paid less than half an American soldier’s wage and denied other financial benefits granted to the rest of the army, Filipino troops were planning ‘to step out for their rights’ if they did not soon receive an acknowledgement of equal status with their American comrades.2 ‘A few tried and proven men’ fanned out across the post and adjacent barrios (villages) to learn more.
