These World War II Jeep Buses Prove Americana Lives On In The Philippines - Jalopnik
But to understand the Jeepney — the colorful, open-window Jeeps stretched out to become public buses — you need to understand the role that America played, and indeed continues to play, in their history and national psyche. The Jeepney (Jeep plus jitney, or maybe Jeep plus knee, no one really knows for sure) is easily the most iconic vehicle in the Philippines and the country’s most popular form of public transit. But they aren’t just constant attempts to refresh all those Willys Jeeps that America didn’t want to pay to haul back to the States after World War II. Jeepneys are a microcosm for the legacy of the undeniable Americanness that exists in tattered... When WWII came to an end, American forces in the Philippines had a lot of used, and hard-used, equipment. There was little reason for the U. S. to keep these Jeeps, given their condition, the peace-time setting, and the significant fact that unlike Europe and Asia, North America hadn’t been devastated, or even really harmed. Not only was the continental United States unscathed, but the expansion of production capacity for the war effort meant that American factories and their newly unrestricted corporate owners could proceed to produce a wide range of new consumer... Source: jalopnik.com
