Herbert Adams Gibbons
In the early 1930s, Gibbons argued that an American withdrawal from the Philippines would be futile, because Japan would immediately colonize the country if the United States were to pull out. In 1931, in a speech in Manila, Gibbons referred to the Philippine calls for independence as "claptrap." He said that if the United States were to withdraw, then it might as well negotiate with the League of Nations to hand the Philippines over to Japan as a mandate. The American business community roundly praised Gibbons' speech. However, Philippine nationalist leaders attacked Gibbons, saying that he was raising the "Japanese bogy" as a hurdle to Philippine independence. (Ultimately, the United States did not grant Philippine independence until 1946, after Japan was no longer a military threat to the former colony.)
Moro people
In 1898 via the treaty of Paris the Philippines was turned over to the United States of America. The Americans took over the Philippines in 1898, despite the ratification of the Philippine Declaration of Independence on September 29, 1898 by the Malolos Congress. Prior to the signing of the treaty, a cable message from Pres. McKinley on Nov. 25, 1898 was very explicit: "... to accept merely Luzon, leaving the rest of the islands subject to Spanish rule, or to be the subject of future contention, cannot be justified on political, commercial, or humanitarian grounds. The cessation must be the whole archipelago or none. The latter is wholly inadmissible, and the former must therefore be required." This however, did not settle well with the Muslims (Moros), and they fought, and are still continuing to fight to take back the homeland they lost to the subsequent violence of American colonizers.