WELTHY FISHER, now 84, still is responding vitally to the plea of her late friend, Mohandas K. Gandhi: “Go to the villages and help them. India is the villages.” 

Saksharta Niketan, or Literacy House, which she founded, has become the means of fulfilling Gandhi’s commission. First established at Allahabad in 1953, its permanent headquarters were moved four years later to Lucknow. Over the past 11 years, it has trained nearly 7,000 literacy teachers. These men and women have taught simple reading and writing to an estimated one and one-half million villagers and city laborers, for whom learning to write their own names made the difference between “being nobody and becoming someone.”

Once villagers achieve functional literacy using carefully prepared primers, they are given simple readers on hygiene, local government, farming and other subjects of immediate concern in day-to-day living. The 55 books especially written and published by Literacy House for new readers circulate through mobile Tin Trunk Libraries, often carried on the rear of bicycles. A weekly newspaper in Hindi, Ujala, keeps new literates abreast of events. For writers encouraged to develop these constructive, popular materials, a quarterly, Lekhak, provides a forum of intellectual exchange. Among other techniques for mass communication now in use, the ancient art of puppetry is proving highly effective in imparting ideas. 

Located on a grassy plain near the capital of Uttar Pradesh, one of the largest states of North India, Literacy House increasingly is called upon by national and state governments and semi-government agencies for social education. Since 1958 some 3,000 elected village councilmen and voluntary leaders have been instructed in the responsibilities of their new offices. Two continuous programs teach women to become community development workers. Adding an international dimension — other than financing from Canada, India and the United States — have been teacher-trainees from Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines, Sarawak and the Tibetan refugee community. 

In keeping with its founder’s concept, “in a surrounding close to nature life flows with dignity and grace” on the campus of Literacy House. The modest red-brick buildings, including hostels for 100, were designed for function and unostentatious comfort. Welcoming everyone is a central House of Prayer for All Peoples, respecting diverse beliefs and acknowledging one God. 

WELTHY FISHER, who mobilized talents and resources and led in this effort, first came to Asia in 1906. As the young American headmistress of a mission school in Nanchang, deep in Central China, she helped educate a new type of modern Chinese woman in a time of turbulent transition from Manchu Empire to Republic. World War I brought her to France in service with the YWCA to do welfare work among Chinese laborers in munition factories. Married in 1924 to the Right Reverend Frederick Bohn Fisher, Methodist Bishop of India and Burma, she shared joyously in his extraordinary mission and close friendship with India’s spiritual leaders. 

Loss of her husband in 1938 led Mrs. FISHER to fourteen years of travel, writing and lecturing about educational systems she studied in South America, the Middle East and Asia. She was 72 years old when memory of Gandhi’s insistent plea encouraged her to work with the Allahabad Agricultural Institute in making technical knowledge understandable in the villages. From this beginning grew her vision of a house to help in some measure India’s 320 million illiterates. For this work she found expression in the lines of a mystic Oriental poet: “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” 

In electing WELTHY HONSINGER FISHER to receive the 1964 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding, the Board of Trustees recognizes her unstinting personal commitment to the cause of literacy in India and other Asian countries whose teachers have sought her guidance.

In accepting this award this afternoon, I should like to title the few words I have to say as “Dedication to Man.”

Reflection on the thoughts and life work of a great man brings us to a solemn moment. Such a moment is this. We are here to remember — to remember the dedication of life of your late great president Ramon Magsaysay and its world-resounding emphasis on man. 

A half century ago an American seer, Edwin Markham, wrote words that were indelibly graven in the life of the man we honor today: 

We are all blind until we see 

That in the human plan, 

Nothing is worth the making 

That doesn’t make the man. 

Why build these cities glorious 

If man unbuilded goes. 

In vain we build the work 

Unless the builder also grows. 

To accept such a sensitive award as this is to accept the challenge of a life lived for the uplift of man—not only for the citizens of the Republic of the Philippines but for man everywhere on the globe. 

In this era of a world, not “shrunken” but of an ever-enlarging world of communication—a whispering gallery, if you will the challenge takes on a world-wide aspect—the aspect of man. Since I come from Lincoln’s country, I may use his words to say: 

It is. . . for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us . . . that we here highly resolve . . . that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. 

Such a dedication was also that of your great president who now, after a short 57 years, belongs to the ages. 

It was my privilege in the early years of service in China to know the great Chinese liberator, Sun Yat-sen, who lived many a year with a heavy price on his head because he was dedicated to man — to man’s freedom and his inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

In later years I have sat on the floor with the great Gandhi, sometimes meditating with him on his Monday day of silence, at other times hearing him tell, laughingly, humanly, of the vast undertaking of the liberation of hundreds of millions in India. He always differentiated between the sinner and the sin — forgiving the sinner but hating the sin of those who refused justice and freedom to men. 

In this sparse line of those dedicated to the service of man — man beyond their racial, religious and national borders — stands your late stalwart president. 

I accept this award with the humility of one who has tried to light a candle for physical, mental and spiritual enlightening in some of the far corners of the earth, for I have discovered that illiteracy is darkness. There are stairs of literacy that must be built. It has been my striving to build some of these stairs of literacy here and there. The stairs are crude and difficult, as the late Olive Schreiner said hers were, but others will come after me and they will climb — and on my stairs. And soon a world — a world half in the darkness of illiteracy — will begin to climb, to make better stairs and finally reach the top step in individual freedom and development. Man, the child of God, will come into his own. I have long believed with the oriental wise man, that “it is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”

Within the past decade the Far Eastern Economic Review has become the most consequential journal of its kind in Asia. Providing detailed and increasingly dependable information on trade, finance, economic problems and progress, and related political trends, it has earned regard as valued reading among businessmen, government officials and scholars. 

In most of Asia, the objective careful economic reporting and analysis that is vital to development is both a new and difficult craft. Statistics often are incomplete and occasionally unreliable. Preoccupation with politics in the era of new independence has sometimes led to ignoring the hard realities of economic life upon which material achievements must be based. Private businesses and governments are often reluctant to permit probing inquiry. 

Despite these and other obstacles the editors of the Far Eastern Economic Review, RICHARD G. WILSON and KAYSER SUNG, and their staff produce each week a journal that is setting a standard for critical but fair examination of the complex spectrum of economic affairs. With their 40-odd colleagues in Hong Kong and 20 correspondents in Asia and the West, this editorial team, since 1960, has also published a Yearbook that is proving a reliable reference source for industrialists studying markets and government planners charting investments. 

RICHARD G. WILSON came to the Review as editor in 1958. Trained both in law and journalism in England and the United States, he chose to apprentice on the Financial Times of London to specialize in economic journalism. Well-traveled and scholarly, his particular interests are the problems in Africa and Asia of telescoping economic and social advance into a short span of time. 

KAYSER SUNG, who joined the Review in 1959 as Deputy Editor after 12 years with Reuters, mastered his profession during the hard years in wartime China. He was appointed concurrently Publisher and Managing Editor in 1964. His passion for research as the foundation for all reporting is becoming a distinguishing mark of the journal’s staff. An authority on such subjects as the textile industry in Asia and the terms of European trade with the Far East, he also shows himself sensitive to the human dimension. 

In their editing of the Review, WILSON and SUNG have demonstrated that journalism can play a constructive role in fostering healthy growth. Both respected for their professional and personal integrity, these two editors are making economic news significant and readable. 

In electing RICHARD GARRETT WILSON and KAYSER SUNG to receive the 1964 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism and Literature, the Board of Trustees recognizes their accuracy, impartiality and continuing search for facts and insights in recording Asia’s quest for economic advancement.

I feel intensely moved and honored in accepting the 1964 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism and Literature, which has been conferred on Richard Wilson and myself for our work with the Far Eastern Economic Review. I am also grateful for this chance to come to Manila and receive the Award in person. This gives me an opportunity to say something about the journalistic principles, which you have chosen to recognize. 

With improving communications in the world today, with the drawing together of peoples through many types of organized meetings and through private contacts, and with the rising interest in foreign countries which is felt almost everywhere, I feel that newspapers and periodicals face a new, heavy and growing responsibility. There is certainly a keen demand for simple but intelligent explanations of the complicated problems of Asia, Africa and other hitherto underdeveloped regions; for dependable information about their domestic and foreign attitudes; for comprehensible analyses and interpretation of financial, commercial and industrial developments. Good reporting serves moreover to promote the economic growth of the developing countries and the welfare of their peoples. 

In the profession of journalism I believe in writing that may be argumentative, but is nonetheless factual and balanced. This high Award has not only strengthened that belief, but has inspired me to work more vigorously to meet the requirements of the region in the journalistic field. 

On the Far Eastern Economic Review we have neither striven for public recognition nor expected any such thing. You will understand, therefore, how moved we were in Hong Kong, I and every member of our staff, to read of our election for the Ramon Magsaysay Award. It was recognition more perhaps of an effort than an achievement; the honoring of a principle of journalism, which I believe, is in conformity, whatever the shortcomings of our actual performance, with the great spirit of your late, deeply lamented President.

Within the past decade the Far Eastern Economic Review has become the most consequential journal of its kind in Asia. Providing detailed and increasingly dependable information on trade, finance, economic problems and progress, and related political trends, it has earned regard as valued reading among businessmen, government officials and scholars. 

In most of Asia, the objective careful economic reporting and analysis that is vital to development is both a new and difficult craft. Statistics often are incomplete and occasionally unreliable. Preoccupation with politics in the era of new independence has sometimes led to ignoring the hard realities of economic life upon which material achievements must be based. Private businesses and governments are often reluctant to permit probing inquiry. 

Despite these and other obstacles the editors of the Far Eastern Economic Review, RICHARD G. WILSON and KAYSER SUNG, and their staff produce each week a journal that is setting a standard for critical but fair examination of the complex spectrum of economic affairs. With their 40-odd colleagues in Hong Kong and 20 correspondents in Asia and the West, this editorial team, since 1960, has also published a Yearbook that is proving a reliable reference source for industrialists studying markets and government planners charting investments. 

RICHARD G. WILSON came to the Review as editor in 1958. Trained both in law and journalism in England and the United States, he chose to apprentice on the Financial Times of London to specialize in economic journalism. Well-traveled and scholarly, his particular interests are the problems in Africa and Asia of telescoping economic and social advance into a short span of time. 

KAYSER SUNG, who joined the Review in 1959 as Deputy Editor after 12 years with Reuters, mastered his profession during the hard years in wartime China. He was appointed concurrently Publisher and Managing Editor in 1964. His passion for research as the foundation for all reporting is becoming a distinguishing mark of the journal’s staff. An authority on such subjects as the textile industry in Asia and the terms of European trade with the Far East, he also shows himself sensitive to the human dimension. 

In their editing of the Review, WILSON and SUNG have demonstrated that journalism can play a constructive role in fostering healthy growth. Both respected for their professional and personal integrity, these two editors are making economic news significant and readable. 

In electing RICHARD GARRETT WILSON and KAYSER SUNG to receive the 1964 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism and Literature, the Board of Trustees recognizes their accuracy, impartiality and continuing search for facts and insights in recording Asia’s quest for economic advancement.

I feel very deeply honored by my joint election with my colleague KAYSER SUNG to the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism and Literature in 1964. I accept this Award with humble awareness of the honor that is done me. The Magsaysay Award is renowned throughout Asia and the world for its integrity and for the thoroughness of its selection process. This is why I feel this afternoon, along with the pleasure and pride which I take in this honor, a little bit of a burden because this is something which I will have to live up to all my life. 

Ramon Magsaysay stands out in the turbulent postwar history of Asia as a man who had the courage to go into public life and to stand continuously and devotedly for what he felt to be right. He was one of the leaders of this part of the world who did not believe in compromises but who knew only that what was right had to be done. Magsaysay was a man of the people. He knew what the people needed and he did everything to use his power to provide for these needs. It was his simplicity, his directness, his integrity and his great humanity which inspired us during his dramatic career, and which continue to inspire us today. 

His life and work are a proof to people, both here in the Philippines and in the countries across the sea in Asia, Africa, Europe and America, that it is possible for a private person who believes in national progress to go into public life and to achieve something without a loss of self respect or a diminution of honesty and good dealing. It is not easy in politics to continue to inspire your compatriots in this way, but Magsaysay showed that it could be done. What is most needed in this period in Asia’s history, when extraordinarily rapid social and economic change is under way, is the appearance in public political life of men and women who are prepared to sacrifice their own personal comfort, private convenience, and professional opportunities in order to establish an important precedent. 

People are usually willing to be bullied or ill-treated until somebody comes along who shows that it is not necessary or pre-ordained that people should put up with such things, and that with determination and spirit, a change can be made in society. It is easy to pass laws and make speeches. The difficult thing is to establish the habit of good and incorrupt public service. 

This is the light in which I, an Englishman who has lived and worked in Asia for six years, see the achievements and the importance of the late President Magsaysay. 

What is now a looming threat to the values and ideals which we all intellectually share is not so much the social stagnation of individual nations, or the varying speeds of their advance, but the vastly greater opportunities of misunderstanding and prejudice which the new media of mass communication and ease of transportation make possible. The Philippines is on the march, and so is Malaysia, and so is Indonesia. But how many Filipinos are really aware of what is happening in these neighboring countries? How many Indonesians are really aware of what is happening in their own society? How much more misunderstanding there is in these days of rapid change and of striving for a dignity, which was not always respected in the past, between England and Indonesia, between the Philippines and America! 

It is my belief, and the belief of my colleagues on the Far Eastern Economic Review, that the best thing we can do in these circumstances, the best use to which we can put the little talent we have for writing and for the organization of information in written form, is to present for an international readership a continuous documentation of Asian developments that combines seriousness with readability, healthy skepticism with warm sympathy, and which never becomes involved with any single political faith or party or any one nation. 

Because we attempt this kind of detachment, we do not ourselves take part in the individual changes going on in each Asian country it would be presumptuous to do so. What we try to do is offer an impartial account and commentary on the events that occur so that people everywhere understand clearly what is being done and what is not being done. 

I think that this aspect of journalism in Asia is now being increasingly recognized and I am very proud to have been able to play a small part in it. But I never expected to receive the honor, which you have just awarded me, and I thank you for it.

Escaping in late 1950 and early 1951 from Communist persecution of Roman Catholics in Kwangtung Province in South China, Father AUGUSTINE NGUYEN LAC HOA and 2,100 of his parishioners lived precariously for eight years in Cambodia. In 1956, the priest searched in 25 countries for a more permanent solution for his people but found only sympathy and no answer to their problem. Forced again to move by communist guerrilla harassment and finally Cambodian recognition of Communist China, many of the stateless refugees sought sanctuary on their own in the new Republic of South Vietnam. A few who could afford the long voyage left for Taiwan. Learning from the priest of their plight, the government of South Vietnam offered to the remaining 450 facilities to migrate, citizenship and a homestead. 

On March 17, 1959 Father HOA and his weary flock arrived at Binh Hung, the remote place on the southernmost Camau Peninsula where they had permission to settle. Swampy, mosquito-infested and imperiled by guerrillas entrenched in surrounding mangrove forests, it was barely habitable, but the land was fertile and fish were plentiful in waterways crisscrossing the delta. 

In three months of relentless toil that spared no adult or child, a village was raised above the flooded land and the first rice crop planted. The guerilla-wise priest, himself a former soldier, also drilled every man to be an aggressive fighter. When the Viet Cong struck, the villagers fought back, armed only with fishing knives and wooden staves. With the few weapons then supplied by the government, the defenders suffered losses but never defeat in the frequent raids and ambushes that followed. Father HOA taught them no battle could be won by standing still; day and night patrols moved out learning every place for ambush or hiding and engaging the enemy on his own ground. 

The fighting spirit of the little band earned government recognition as a Village Self-Defense Corps, qualifying it for military aid. Refugee Chinese Nationalist soldiers, Montagnards from the central highlands, Nung from the north, and local Vietnamese were recruited to join the defenders. Urgently needed supplies began to arrive regularly by helicopter. Government agencies, Catholic Relief Services, CARE and others helped. In three years, Vietnamese moving in from outlying farms for protection swelled the population of the village and adjoining hamlets to over 1,500. 

As military commander without rank for Hai Yen Special Sector, the priest worked closely with Buddhist and Cao-Daist leaders—whose adherents were most numerous in the area—to promote security measures in villages. Though the Viet Cong were not eliminated, his Corps of Sea Swallows—by late 1963 numbering more than 1,000—extended relative security over 200 square kilometers to 18,000 inhabitants. 

This year, when the military command was given to regular army officers, Father HOA welcomed the change. Now 56, he devotes his energies to his spiritual duties and schools, and serves as adviser-chaplain to the Sea Swallows, admonishing any who tire of the long struggle: “For our freedom, if we are tired, we cannot be free.” 

In electing Father AUGUSTINE NGUYEN LAC HOA to receive the 1964 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his extraordinary valor in defense of freedom, strengthening among a beleaguered people the resolution to resist tyranny.

There are wonderful surprises that come our way, at one time or another, in our life. And to me this prestigious award is the greatest and most wonderful surprise of all. 

I am here today to receive this great honor of the Magsaysay Award, not on my behalf, but on behalf of the men and women who have fought, and are still fighting, under the insignia of the Sea Swallows. The great benefit of this Award will go to the Sea Swallows who are enduring great hardships to maintain tranquility and security for the thousands of inhabitants in our swampy area. But the glory of this Award should go to no one else but 203 Sea Swallows who have offered their lives voluntarily to the cause of freedom and justice for all. 

As for myself, I am only a simple priest who tries to do his duty in administering to the people of my area. Normally, a priest would simply administer to the spiritual needs of his flock. But in the area where we are, we have to do more. 

There are those who have suggested that we should be like the early Christians—to allow ourselves to be killed for our faith. But experience has taught us that communism does not allow us the luxury of martyrdom. Yes, I can tell you from personal experience. I have tried. I spent over 12 months in their jails. The god-hating communists are not satisfied by merely taking our bodies—what they want is our souls. 

Fighting really is the minor part of the struggle against communism. The most important part is the struggle for the minds, the hearts, and the souls of the people—all people, especially the communists. And it is precisely on this premise that your great President Magsaysay was able to defeat the Hukbalahap rebellion. 

Many have asked me, if that is the case, why are we not winning in Vietnam? My answer is simple. The misplacement of the order of importance. The Magsaysay Way is: winning the people first, winning the war second. I am afraid in Vietnam today the order is reversed. I can talk plainly like this because I am a soldier as well as a priest. Weapons are important. Fighting is necessary in order to protect the people from being physically harmed by the armed communists. But arms are useful only for defensive purposes. Our offence is to rely solely on winning the people, because as soon as the people understand what communism means, and as soon as they have faith in our ability to protect them, and as soon as they have confidence in our integrity, the battle is won. 

When fought as a conventional war, we really have no chance to win. How can we explain to a mother when her child is burned by napalm? And how can we expect a young man to fight for us when his aged father was killed by artillery fire? Indeed, how can we claim to be with the people when we burn their homes simply because those houses happen to be in the Viet Cong controlled territory?

You may say that it is easy for me as a priest to think of love above war, but facts have proved that love is the only way for us to win. It is the only way for us to survive. 

In conclusion, I want to extend our deep, deep appreciation for the great honor and benefit you have bestowed upon us. May God bless the people of the Philippines. It is my sincere hope that you will continue to promote the Magsaysay Way, the only way that the world can be peaceful and free.

Now in his fourth term as governor, YUKIHARU MIKI over the past 13 years has led in transforming Japan’s Okayama Prefecture from a stagnant area relying on fishing and agriculture into an industrial miracle of modern Japan. While creating a major port and giant, bustling industrial estate from once muddy shallows along the Seto Inland Sea, he also cared for the people. Through creative planning there is now congenial living for citizens of Okayama as they shift from a rural to industrial economy. For those remaining on farms, modern methods and new pursuits — including dairying — have brought prosperity. 

YUKIHARU MIKI first entered government service in 1938 as a medical doctor in charge of the Health Consultation Center of Okayama, where he was born in 1903. Later, as a senior official in the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Tokyo, he was the crusading author of Japan’s first Tuberculosis Prevention Law. 

A political novice and a poor man, he was induced by friends, in 1951, to stand for election as governor of Okayama Prefecture. The resounding majority that swept him into office inaugurated a new chapter in Okayama’s history. Until then the prefecture had been by-passed by the postwar rush toward industrialization and reconstruction of Japan’s great cities. Although coastal areas were more prosperous from fishing, fertile rice land and commerce, inland Okayama was poor. 

Mobilizing the skills and enthusiasm of the prefecture, Okayama’s new governor developed a master design for a new industrialized community with “sun, green and space.” In 1954, at the sleepy fishing village of Mizushima, dredges began sucking silt to create a deep-water channel and filling in shallow tidelands. Bulldozers carved off hills for rock fill. Dams and canals were built to insure an uninterrupted flow of fresh water for industrial use. Strictly zoned industrial, residential and recreation areas were linked by broad new roads. Special schools trained farmers for industry. 

With a burning sincerity and vision that won hardheaded bankers, the governor floated bond issues and negotiated loans. He had spent US$55 million on the prefecture’s development before signing up the first big industrial clients in 1958. Industry was lured to Okayama by the governor’s personal, persistent visits to the headquarters of corporations throughout Japan. Today, 20 companies are manufacturing petroleum products, steel, chemicals, synthetic fibers, vegetable oils, marine engines, automobiles and heavy electrical equipment in plants erected on some 27.7 million square meters of reclaimed land. He aimed to double the prefecture’s per capita income in 10 years; the goal was realized in five. 

While industry provides employment and income for a new way of living for 1.7 million inhabitants, Governor MIKI is equally concerned with health, education and better homes. New schools, care for the mentally retarded and aged, parks and sewage disposal plants, all have been provided. His administration and the great new metropolis emerging under his leadership give substance to the theme that was his choice: “Friendship, orderliness and service.”

In electing YUKIHARU MIKI to receive the 1964 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his humanistic foresight in engineering rapid but orderly modernization, assuring well-being for the entire community.

It is a great privilege as well as an immense pleasure for me to come to Manila to accept the honorable Ramon Magsaysay Award. I am deeply moved with a sense of gratitude when I think of all the hospitalities you have extended to me to attend these presentation ceremonies. You have even provided me with the opportunity of visiting for the first time the famous “Land of the Morning” and “Pearl of the Sea of the Orient,” which I have long dreamed of seeing. 

However, my joy is mixed with another sentiment. I venture to say that I entertain a lingering anxiety as to whether the scars of war that took place 20 years ago have completely healed. Among the guests attending this ceremony, I would not be surprised to find some people who had the misfortune of losing their relatives or property during the last war. 

I am a physician and have devoted my whole life to the protection of human lives, but, when I think of the last war, I feel that being a member of the Japanese nation I share the responsibility for causing suffering to the people in the Philippines. Therefore, it was with a sense of guilt that I set foot on your soil. Perhaps to some people it was rather strange that I lacked the happy expression of a welcomed guest when I arrived. 

It was indeed a happy surprise to me and my staff when we learned that our small prefecture in the western part of Japan had caught the attention of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation. I must say with all humility that what I have done in the past 14 years as the governor of the Okayama Prefecture is very small. 

During my governorship, your late President Ramon Magsaysay appeared with great prestige on the international horizon, and I already developed in those days a high esteem for his simple and humble personality. He inspired me with his conviction that all people had the right to live in peace and happiness and that one should devote his life for the rights of humanity. His “selfless devotion” to the crusade for the welfare of the people was what I tried hard to the best of my ability to live up to in my work as a public servant. 

It was by a strange fortune that I left the field of public health to become a governor. Although my life has been marked by vicissitudes, one thing remains unchanged. I have always held to the belief that I belong to the common masses and what is most valuable in life is to serve the welfare of the public. 

I am deeply touched this afternoon by your gesture of generosity in affording me the opportunity as the first Japanese to receive the Magsaysay Award. 

In all sincerity, it is my feeling that your generous gesture is an expression of the magnanimity and friendship of the Filipino people who are trying to forget the past and to forge a new friendship with Japan. For such sentiment, I cannot find a proper word of appreciation. 

I accept this Award for the five thousand members of my staff in the prefectural office who worked closely with me, as well as the members of the prefectural assembly who cooperated with me. Their devotion, dedication and ability have given the Prefecture of Okayama the public image that you are recognizing this afternoon. I, therefore, wish to express my sincere thanks on their behalf and on behalf of the Japanese people, who share my feeling of appreciation for this Award, to those who conferred this honor upon me.

In Tanauan, Batangas, where economic progress formerly was stifled by usury, PABLO TAPIA has shown that perceptive and patient use of credit can unlock great potentialities. Today farmers raising bountiful and diversified crops and merchants with thriving stalls all demonstrate the results that can be achieved. This growing prosperity is not limited to the few but is shared by an ever widening proportion of citizens.

Tanauan suffered cruelly during World War II and, amidst the chaos following liberation and independence, the community’s needs seemed limitless. To rebuild their homes, replace their carabao or market wares many Filipinos had nowhere to turn but to moneylenders whose interest rate on loans often reached ten per cent per week. Yet, savings others accumulated in bamboo tubes and tin cans were idle and frequently lost.

Arraying themselves in battle against these practices that were sapping the town’s vitality, PABLO TAPIA and a small group of like-minded citizens, in 1947, reestablished the Square Deal Savings and Loan Association. Founded in 1926 by a beloved Tanaueño, Juan V. Pagaspas, this institution had been destroyed during the fighting that also cost the life of its champion. Now TAPIA and his associates walked from house to house in the barrios and in the poblacion, persuading farmers and townspeople to deposit five or ten pesos each month. Basilisa Carandang, a fellow lawyer who later became his wife, set up books and provided rent-free premises in her home.

Within three years, the Association had capital and deposits totalling P300,000.00. An inveterate horticulturist by avocation, TAPIA used these funds productively in loans for seed, fertilizer, water tanks and the like. Local industries were financed, such as tailoring of remnants into inexpensive clothing. Showing faith in the small farmer and merchant, character loans often were given. In effect, TAPIA supervised the credit, constantly visiting farms and markets to suggest ways of increasing income. He started a monthly newspaper, Tinig ng Tanauan, to give depositors helpful information on farming and community affairs.

In 1951, to cope with increasing demands for small credit, the Association was converted to the Square Deal Banking Corporation with the help of the late Senator Jose P. Laurel and Vicente Sabalvaro, who had been associated with the pre-war institution. The farmers’ cooperative, also reactivated by TAPIA and his colleagues in 1948 as a sister organization of the Association, was expanded to sell agricultural chemicals, fertilizer, poultry feeds and hardware, as well as general merchandise. A warehouse, rice mill, corn dryer and lumber mill were added. Specialists from the College of Agriculture at Los Baños were encouraged to demonstrate new techniques in Tanauan, and TAPIA took truckloads of farmers to the college to learn.

In 1957, with the volume of business exceeding two million pesos, the bank was helped by the late Alfredo L. Yatco, Teodoro F. Valencia and again by Senator Laurel to reorganize as the Philippine Banking Corporation with headquarters in Manila to avail itself of greater capital resources. TAPIA, who transferred to Manila in 1960 as Vice-President in charge of the branch banking he knows so well, still commutes to meet his farmer and merchant clients in Tanauan every Sunday, which is the heaviest banking day.

In electing PABLO TORRES TAPIA to receive the 1964 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes his steadfast determination in mobilizing the savings of his community to provide workable credit facilities for its productive needs.

It is with a deep sense of humility and gratitude that I accept the honor you have just conferred upon me, an Award which is in recognition of a community movement of which I was only a part.

I accept the Award and the honor on behalf of our community—the people who shared our beliefs and our hopes, the people who worked with us, the people who bore with us the sacrifices and hardships that must be borne in the effort to improve themselves, their community and the country.

With this signal honor you have bestowed on me, please allow me to reaffirm and rededicate myself to the noble ideals and great deeds of a great man — our beloved Ramon Magsaysay — who did so much for so many in such a short span of time, a period of dedicated, enlightened and sincere public service, which, unfortunately for the country, was so abruptly cut short by his untimely death on a desolate mountain in Cebu.

Let me say that out of the cash award, a permanent scholarship shall be created at the University of the Philippines College of Agriculture for a deserving but poor student, a permanent endowment shall be given to support five high school scholars in our province, and a trust fund will be started to engage the services of a livestock technician to help our farmers. I am also making available to the Tanauan Facoma a sum necessary to purchase more modern printing facilities for our Tinig ng Tanauan.

I feel that with these the memory of our beloved Ramon Magsaysay, the principles he stood for, and his efforts to help our country and our people, shall, in a small way, be perpetuated for posterity.

Let me take this opportunity also, to express my deepest thanks to the Trustees of the Foundation for the distinction they have conferred upon me, our community, and our bank. My only regret is that there are many persons, living and dead, who shared in the labors of this civic undertaking but must remain anonymous, and that some of those who worked with us cannot now be here, and that they died little knowing that they had participated in a movement that could provide inspiration to the entire country and throughout Asia.

You have honored me in a way I never dreamed of.

This venerable Award shall not be my badge of retirement — as one’s work is never done. Rather, it shall serve as a fountain of inspiration and a reservoir of strength in my efforts to continue to contribute — to do my little bit — in everybody’s job of community development for our loved ones, for our future generations and for the country.