She noted that in 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an order conscripting Filipino soldiers into the United States Armed Forces. More than 250,000 Filipino soldiers joined the US armed forces in the months before and days following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

These men, she said, served on the battlefield and fought courageously alongside American soldiers throughout World War II, took part in the guerrilla resistance, and suffered in prisoner-of-war camps and in the infamous Bataan Death March in which untold numbers of Americans and Filipinos soldiers suffered and died under brutal conditions."

The US promised these Filipino veterans the same health and pension benefits as those of American service members but after World War II ended, Congress passed the Rescission Act of 1946, rescinding benefits that the Filipino soldiers were entitled to receive as US veterans. Since then, these veterans have been fighting for these benefits which were unjustly revoked by the 1946 Rescission Act," Clinton told her colleagues in the US Senate.

Last April 9 on the 66th anniversary of the Fall of Bataan, Clinton vowed to work for the passage of the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill that would provide federal benefits to the surviving Filipino veterans whose number is dwindling by the day. "It is my honor to have the opportunity to salute these brave Filipino men and women who gallantly gave their lives for the freedom that citizens of both the Philippines and the United States now enjoy. And to those who have survived, I pledge that America will not forget the hardships that you and your family endured from that war," Clinton said.

The National Alliance for Filipino Veterans Equity (NAFVE) praised the US Senate for its historic vote on behalf of Filipino World War II veterans. In a unanimous vote (94-0) last week, the US Senate voted to invoke "cloture" on a motion to proceed with floor debate for Senate Bill 1315.