Research Abstract
Funded by the Sumitomo Foundation, the project seeks to help complete the narrative on how Japanese reparations helped stimulate the postwar Philippine economy. In particular, it seeks to surface the crucial role of Japanese reparations in improving the infrastructure and services of the Manila Railroad Company (MRR) and its successor, the Philippine National Railways (PNR), which continues to provide a commuter service on the island of Luzon, and the Philippine Railway Company (PRC), later called the Panay Railways, Inc. (PRI), which operated a passenger and freight railway in the island of Panay up to the mid-1980s. This research is, in part, an offshoot of the EIDR project, “The Mass Transit System in Metro Manila: From Tranvia to MRT, 1879-2014,” of which the TWSC was an integral part of. Data gathering for this project is ongoing, and it is scheduled to be completed on March 31, 2022.