<figure class="image-550">
<img loading="lazy" src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-29/macapagal-aguinaldo-june-12-1962.webp" alt="Black and white historical photo of President Diosdado Macapagal, General Emilio Aguinaldo, and officials standing on the carved wooden balcony of the Aguinaldo Shrine in Kawit, Cavite." />
<figcaption>
President Diosdado Macapagal and General Emilio Aguinaldo (saluting) and dignitaries, gather on the iconic balcony of the Aguinaldo Mansion in Kawit, Cavite, during the June 12 Independence Day celebration in 1962.
</figcaption>
</figure>

It was the final step in a change that had actually begun two years earlier - and it settled a question that had quietly unsettled Filipino nationalists for more than six decades: on which date had the Philippines truly become free?

<h2>
Three competing dates
</h2>

By the early 1960s, the Philippines had, in effect, three plausible independence dates competing for official recognition:

<ul class="k-list">
<li>
June 12, 1898 - the day General <a href="/articles/3325/emilio-aguinaldos-life-and-leadership" class="news_link">Emilio Aguinaldo</a>, from his ancestral home in Cavite el Viejo (now Kawit, Cavite), read the Acta de la Proclamación de Independencia del Pueblo Filipino, declaring the Philippines free from more than 300 years of Spanish colonial rule. The declaration was drafted by <a href="/kauswagan/articles/799/today-in-philippie-history-december-7-1830-ambrosio-rianzares-bautista-lawyer-and-gen-emilio-aguinaldo-s-confidante-was-born-in-bi-an-laguna" class="news_link">Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista</a> and signed by 97 Filipinos. That same afternoon, the Philippine flag - sewn in Hong Kong by <a href="/kauswagan/articles/1637/today-in-philippine-history-june-24-1859-marcela-agoncillo-was-born-in-taal-batangas" class="news_link">Marcela Agoncillo</a> - was unfurled publicly for the first time, and the Marcha Filipina Magdalo (later known as Lupang Hinirang) was played as a national anthem.
</li>
<li>
July 4, 1946 - the day the United States formally withdrew its sovereignty over the islands through the Treaty of Manila, with President Harry Truman's Proclamation No. 2695 recognizing the Republic of the Philippines as a separate, self-governing nation. Because this was the date on which the U.S. actually relinquished colonial control, it was the date Filipinos officially celebrated as Independence Day for the following sixteen years - not coincidentally, the same date as American Independence Day.
</li>
<li>
A handful of other dates with historical claims, cited by some scholars and nationalist writers: August 1898, when the Bacoor Assembly ratified the June 12 declaration and helped organize Aguinaldo's Revolutionary Government; and even earlier symbolic moments, such as the August 1896 <a href="/articles/3289/cry-of-pugad-lawin-august-23-1896" class="news_link">tearing of the cédulas</a> (colonial tax certificates) that marked the start of the <a href="/kauswagan/articles/906/about-the-katipunan" class="news_link">Katipunan</a>-led revolt against Spain.
</li>
</ul>

For nearly two decades after the war, the Philippines celebrated its independence on July 4 - the same day, and often with echoes of the same rhetoric, as its former colonizer's own national holiday. To a rising generation of postwar nationalist historians, that overlap was precisely the problem.

How June 12 Became the Philippines' Independence Day

Discover why the Philippines moved Independence Day from July 4 to June 12 - the 1898 declaration, a historian's crusade, and RA 4166.

August 4, 1964: June 12 was designated the Independence Day