Vicente Lim

Vicente Podico Lim (February 24, 1888 – December 31, 1944) was a Filipino Brigadier General and World War II hero. Lim was the first Filipino graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point (Class of 1914). Prior to the establishment of the Philippine Army, he served as an officer in the Philippine Scouts (a now-defunct native Filipino unit of the US Army). During the Battle of Bataan, Lim was the Commanding General of the 41st Division, Philippine Army (USAFFE). After the fall of the Philippines he contributed to the Filipino resistance movement until his capture and subsequent execution.

Lim was one of the seven Charter Members of the Boy Scouts of the Philippines. He is memorialized in the Philippines' 1,000-Peso banknote together with two other Filipino heroes who fought and died against the Japanese during the Second World War.

Vicente P. Lim was born on February 24, 1888, in the town of Calamba in La Laguna (now Laguna), and was the third of Jose Ayala Lim Yaoco and Antonia Podico's four children. As a Chinese Filipino, His father was a full-blooded Sangley (Chinese migrant) who braided his hair in a queue, while his mother, Antonia Podico, was a Mestiza de Sangley (Chinese mestiza). Jose Lim died when Vicente was just nine years old, leaving Vicente's mother to raise him and his three siblings from the earnings of a small business. Vicente and the other Lim children, Joaquin, Olympia and Basilisa, like many Chinese Filipinos, grew up identifying themselves as Filipinos.

Among the friends of Jose Lim and Antonia Podico-Lim was the family of José Rizal, who was later recognized as the Philippines' national hero. The Lim Family, like the Rizal Family, leased land owned by the Dominican Order: rice lands in the Calamba barrios of Lecheria and Real and sugar land in Barrio Barandal. In 1891, recurring disputes between the Spanish administrators of the Dominican estate and the tenants over rental rates and conditions came to a head and resulted in the eviction of many tenants from their lands. Among the victims were the Lim and Rizal families.

Vicente completed grade school in Tanauan, Batangas.

It was during the Philippine–American War where the fourteen-year-old Vicente's sense of nationalism and patriotism first came to the fore. It is said that he formed a group of children his age to act as couriers for the guerrilla movement of General Miguel Malvar's forces operating in the Calamba area.

In the period following the Philippine–American War, Vicente continued his studies at Liceo de Manila, and completed the teacher training program at the Philippine Normal School. He went on to become a teacher in a public school in Santa Cruz, Manila for a year. He decided to pursue further studies and returned to Philippine Normal. Vicente was an outstanding student, getting top marks in mathematics, as well as in other subjects. He was as good an athlete as he was a student. Impressed by his athletic skills and intelligence, a supervisory teacher encouraged Vicente to take the entrance examinations for the United States Military Academy at West Point. While Vicente only placed second in these exams issued by the Philippine Bureau of Civil Service, his 99% score in Mathematics won him the coveted scholarship. In 1910, Vicente became the first Filipino to enter West Point.

Army records reflect his birth date as April 5, 1888. By the time Lim reported to the United States Military Academy on March 1, 1910, he had already passed his 22nd birthday, which made him technically ineligible to enter the academy. While Lim took the West Point qualifying examinations in 1908, which would have made him eligible to report to the academy in March 1909, it is likely that the process of shipping required documents back and forth across the Pacific simply took too long. It thus became necessary to "indulge in the time-honored practice of adopting a birth date more amenable to Academy regulations."