calugas – Wiki Philippines

Definition

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration of the United States, awarded for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. It was created in two Civil War strands: a Navy medal authorized when President Abraham Lincoln signed Senator James W. Grimes’s bill on December 21, 1861, for petty officers, seamen, landsmen, and marines, and an Army medal approved by Lincoln on July 12, 1862, on Senator Henry Wilson’s resolution, made permanent and extended to officers on March 3, 1863. (Wikipedia) The first presentation came on March 25, 1863, when Secretary of War Edwin Stanton decorated six soldiers of Andrews’ Raid — Private Jacob Parrott the first man to receive it — and the Navy followed with forty-one awards on April 3, 1863. (Wikipedia) The medal now exists in three service versions — Navy (worn also by Marines and Coast Guardsmen), Army, and Air and Space Forces — and since 1944 has hung from the light-blue neck ribbon bearing thirteen white stars. (Wikipedia)

For this wiki’s record the decoration is inseparable from Philippine ground. The Philippine–American War of 1899–1902 alone produced 86 Medals of Honor, and the Scout José B. Nísperos is listed as the first Asian recipient; the U.S. Army’s first three Medals of Honor of World War II, awarded under President Franklin Roosevelt, went to Philippine Scouts on Bataan — Sergeant Jose Calugas, Lieutenant Alexander R. Nininger, and Lieutenant Willibald C. Bianchi; and the 1944–45 liberation of the islands added the Navy medal of Commander Ernest E. Evans off Samar and the Society’s Battle of Luzon list of 22 recipients, among them the four Villa Verde Trail men this wiki’s entries carry — Villegas, Gonzales, Shockley, and Atkins. (Wikipedia, Wikipedia — Philippine Scouts, CMOHS — Evans, CMOHS — Battle of Luzon list)

Identities

Source	Identity	URL
Wikipedia	Medal of Honor (verified this session)	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor
Wikidata	Medal of Honor (Q203535) — “highest award for valor by an individual serving in the Armed Forces of the United States” (verified this session via the search API) (Wikidata — Q203535)	https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q203535
DBpedia	N/A — endpoint unreachable this session (ETIMEDOUT, three attempts)	N/A
ProductOntology	N/A	N/A
Wiktionary	Medal of Honor — proper noun, “(US, military) The highest military award given in the United States” (headword verified this session) (Wiktionary — Medal of Honor)	https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A — id.loc.gov unreachable this session (HTTP 403, repeated attempts)	N/A
MeSH	N/A	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A	N/A
AGROVOC	N/A	N/A
Google Scholar	Medal of Honor United States decoration Civil War 1861 1862 Navy Army Air Force Bataan Calugas Nininger Bianchi Philippine Scouts Luzon 1945 Villa Verde Trail Evans Samar 1917 review board 911 rescinded	N/A
ConceptNet	N/A	N/A
OpenCyc	N/A	N/A

Also Known As

The Medal — the standard shorthand of recipients and the services
MOH — the common abbreviation
Congressional Medal of Honor — the styling carried in the name of the chartered Congressional Medal of Honor Society
Navy, Army, and Air Force Medal of Honor — the three service versions

Examples and Analogies

A thousand yards through shellfire: the medal’s Philippine register opens with a mess sergeant’s run — Jose Calugas, “voluntarily and without orders,” crossing a shell-swept field at Culis, Bataan, on January 16, 1942, to organize a volunteer squad that put a silenced gun back in action. (CMOHS — Calugas)
Four medals on one trail: the Villa Verde Trail’s hundred days produced four of the Luzon decorations — Villegas’s six foxholes, Gonzales’s entrenching-tool rescue at Hill 507, and the actions of Shockley and Atkins — four of the campaign’s twenty-two medals won on one narrow Caraballo track, the trail this wiki’s Villa Verde Trail and 32nd Division entries carry. (CMOHS — Battle of Luzon list)
The captain who went in harm’s way: Ernest E. Evans’s citation — “the first to lay a smoke screen and to open fire” against a fleet “vastly superior in number, firepower, and armor” — is the naval counterpart of the infantry medals, earned in the Philippine waters off Samar. (CMOHS — Evans)
Verified decoration data:
Creation: Navy medal authorized December 21, 1861 (Grimes bill, signed by Lincoln); Army medal July 12, 1862 (Wilson resolution, signed by Lincoln); Army medal permanent and open to officers March 3, 1863 (Wikipedia)
First presentations: six Andrews’ Raid soldiers, March 25, 1863, Jacob Parrott first; forty-one sailors, April 3, 1863; earliest action honored retrospectively, Bernard Irwin’s of February 13, 1861 (Wikipedia)
1916–1917 review: five retired generals, June 1916 – February 1917; 2,625 Army medals reviewed, 911 rescinded (CMOHS — Review Board)
Present scale: 3,536 recipients and 3,555 medals; 472 for World War II; 86 for the Philippine–American War (Wikipedia)
Bataan 1942: Calugas (Culis, January 16), Nininger (Abucay, January 12), Bianchi (Bagac, February 3) — the Army’s first three World War II medals, all Philippine Scouts (Wikipedia — Philippine Scouts, CMOHS — Calugas)
Luzon 1945: 22 recipients on the Society’s Battle of Luzon list, including Atkins, Gonzales, Shockley, and Villegas (CMOHS — Battle of Luzon list)
Samar 1944: Evans, Commander, USS Johnston, action October 25, 1944; presented posthumously September 28, 1945 (CMOHS — Evans)

Usage Scenarios

1. Researching Philippine-Campaign Valor

The decoration is the spine of any valor study of the American wars in the Philippines: 86 medals for the 1899–1902 war, the Bataan three of 1942, Evans’s Samar medal of 1944, and the 22-name Luzon list of 1945. (Wikipedia, CMOHS — Battle of Luzon list)

2. Citation-Study Practice

Medal of Honor records teach the discipline of two dates: Calugas’s action of January 16, 1942 was decorated at a presentation of April 30, 1945 at Camp Olivas, Pampanga; Evans’s action of October 25, 1944 was presented posthumously on September 28, 1945; this wiki’s Villegas entry carries the same pattern in General Orders No. 89 of October 19, 1945. (CMOHS — Calugas, CMOHS — Evans)

3. Filipino and Minority Service History

The medal is the primary register of Filipino and minority service: Calugas the Filipino and Nísperos the first Asian recipient among the Scouts, the Mexican-Americans Villegas and Gonzales on the trail, and Evans among the Society’s American Indian recipients. (Wikipedia — Philippine Scouts, CMOHS — Evans)

4. Visiting Philippine War Memorials

Evans’s name is cut on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery — the ABMC record of the medal’s unrecovered Philippine dead — and his ship’s wreck is the site this wiki’s USS Johnston entry documents. (CMOHS — Evans)

5. Commemoration and Calendar

The Society counts down each year to National Medal of Honor Day on March 25, the anniversary of Stanton’s first presentation of 1863. (CMOHS — Evans)

Strategies

Anchor every claim to the citation text: the official citations are fixed documents — Calugas’s gun, Gonzales’s dig, Evans’s smoke screen — and this wiki’s own entry practice holds retellings against them. (CMOHS — Calugas, CMOHS — Evans)
Keep action date and award date distinct: every medal has two clocks, the deed and the decoration; conflating them is the standard error of popular retellings. (CMOHS — Calugas, CMOHS — Evans)
Count by the Society’s campaign lists: the Battle of Luzon list shows how the Society’s own categorization — not ad hoc tallies — fixes a campaign count. (CMOHS — Battle of Luzon list)
Carry the branch versions separately: Evans’s is a Navy award, the Luzon and Bataan medals Army awards — distinct designs, distinct citation channels. (Wikipedia, CMOHS — Evans)

Security and Safety Measures

The integrity review as precedent: the decoration polices itself — the 1916–1917 board’s rescission of 911 medals remains the standing cautionary record against award inflation. (CMOHS — Review Board)
Custody of the medals: recipient medals are museum objects with tracked locations — Calugas’s medal is held by the Fort Sam Houston Museum in San Antonio — provenance discipline the Society’s own records model. (CMOHS — Calugas)
War-grave convention: the unrecovered dead the medal commemorates — Evans among them, at sea off Samar — are honored by record and by leaving their resting places undisturbed, the convention this wiki’s USS Johnston entry applies to the wreck. (CMOHS — Evans)
For researchers: verify names, dates, and units against the Society’s recipient pages — the Calugas record itself shows marker dates drifting from citation dates. (CMOHS — Calugas, Wikipedia — Calugas)

Historical Context

The medal was born of Civil War necessity: the Navy strand of December 21, 1861, the Army strand of July 12, 1862, the first medals to Parrott and the Andrews raiders in March 1863. Its first half-century was expansive — more than forty percent of all medals were for the Civil War — and standards drifted with them, to medals for reenlistment, for funeral guards, for civilians. (Wikipedia) Congress answered in 1916 with the review board of five retired generals, which sat from June 1916 to February 1917, blind-reviewed 2,625 Army medals with names replaced by numbers, and rescinded 911: 864 for the 27th Maine’s reenlistment awards, 29 for Lincoln’s funeral guard, and six from civilians including Dr. Mary Edwards Walker and William “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Six were later restored — Walker in 1977, the five scouts in 1989 — all now on the Roll. (CMOHS — Review Board)

The Philippine thread runs the whole length of that history. The war of 1899–1902 brought 86 medals; the Scouts’ decades brought Nísperos, listed as the first Asian recipient; and World War II opened at Bataan, where the Army’s first three medals of the war went to Scouts — Calugas, the Filipino mess sergeant from Leon, Iloilo; Nininger; and Bianchi. (Wikipedia, Wikipedia — Philippine Scouts, CMOHS — Calugas) The liberation followed: Evans’s destroyer stand off Samar on October 25, 1944, commemorated on the Manila Walls of the Missing, and in 1945 the Luzon campaign’s 22 recipients — among them the four of the Villa Verde Trail this wiki’s entries on Villegas and Gonzales carry, with Shockley and Atkins. (CMOHS — Evans, CMOHS — Battle of Luzon list)

Challenges and Controversies

The 1916–1917 Purge and Its Reversals

The rescission of 911 medals remains the decoration’s great internal controversy — a purge that struck the only woman recipient and five civilian scouts who, the board itself wrote, had “rendered distinguished service in action and fully earned their medals” — and its partial reversal (Walker 1977; the civilians 1989) shows the record still being corrected a century on. (CMOHS — Review Board)

Counting the Philippine Campaign

Philippine medal counts shift with the lens: 86 for the insurrection, three for Bataan, one off Samar, 22 for Luzon — figures that attach to differently bounded campaigns, so counts should name their campaign and carrier. (Wikipedia, CMOHS — Battle of Luzon list)

Calugas’s Dates and Presenter

The official citation fixes the action at Culis on January 16, 1942, while a historical-marker caption in the standard account’s record carries January 6; and the Society’s page records the April 30, 1945 presentation by Maj. Gen. Richard Marshall, where the standard account credits General of the Army George Marshall. This entry follows the Society’s record on both points. (CMOHS — Calugas, Wikipedia — Calugas)

Tag: calugas

Medal of Honor