Vice President of the Philippines

Salvador Roman Hidalgo Laurel KGCR
(Tagalog pronunciation: [laʊˈɾɛl], November 18, 1928 – January 27, 2004),
also known as Doy Laurel, was a Filipino lawyer and politician who
served as the vice president of the Philippines from 1986 to 1992
under President Corazon Aquino and briefly served as the last prime
minister from February 25 to March 25, 1986, when the position was
abolished. He was a major leader of the United Nationalist Democratic
Organization (UNIDO), the political party that helped topple
the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos with the 1986 People
Power Revolution.

Early life
Salvador Laurel was the fifth son and eighth child of José P.
Laurel, who served as president during the Second Philippine
Republic. Salvador was born to a family whose lineage spans
generations of public servants. His grandfather, Sotero
Remoquillo Laurel, was both a delegate to the Malolos
Congress in 1899 and secretary of the interior in the first
Philippine revolutionary government under President Emilio
Aguinaldo.

Laurel first enrolled at Centro Escolar de Señoritas, where he studied from 1933 to
1935. Laurel's father wanted Laurel to experience a public school education and so
enrolled him first in the Paco Elementary School (1935–36) and then the Justo
Lukban Elementary School (1936–37). He finished elementary schooling at Ateneo
de Manila Grade School in 1941. In his first year of high school, Laurel received
second honors, with a general average of 93.4. Barely three months later, his
studies came to an abrupt halt with the outbreak of the war in the Pacific
Theater on December 8, 1941. The school was temporarily closed by the Japanese
government as run by American Jesuits, which prompted Laurel to enroll at De La
Salle College High School, where he graduated in 1946.
Laurel was a member of Upsilon Sigma Phi during his university studies.

Stay in Japan
Towards the end of the war, the Japanese Supreme War Council issued an order to
have officials of the Philippine government flown to Japan. President Laurel
volunteered to go alone to spare his Cabinet members the ordeal of being
separated from their families. His wife, Paciencia, and seven of his children went
with him. Among the officials who accompanied him were former Speaker of
the National Assembly Benigno Aquino Sr., former Minister of Education Camilo
Osias and his wife, and General Mateo Capinpin. On March 22, 1945, the group
evacuated from Baguio and began a long and perilous overland journey
to Tuguegarao, where a Japanese navy plane would fly the group to Japan
via Formosa (now Taiwan) and Shanghai, China.[5] The odyssey ended in Nara,
where they were confined until November 10, 1945.

The long confinement gave the romantic and impressionable 15-
year-old Salvador the luxury of time to write poetry and prose
and satisfy his insatiable thirst for books. Whenever he was lucky
to find an English book, he would read it voraciously and discuss
it with his mentor, Camilo Osias. However, his most treasured
moments in Nara were those spent with his father, enjoying their
daily morning walks in the park when José would discuss his
views on life.

On September 15, 1945, his father Jose P. Laurel, his older
brother Jose Laurel III, and Benigno Aquino Sr. were arrested by
a group of Americans headed by a Colonel Turner and were
taken to Yokohama prison. The Laurel family, except for the
former president and Jose III, was flown to Manila two months
later on November 2, 1945.

Return to Manila
Christmas 1945 was the bleakest one for the Laurel family;
their Peñafrancia home was looted and emptied of its furniture, while
the former president was placed in solitary confinement in Sugamo
Prison in Japan. Salvador gifted his father a book entitled The World
in 2030 A.D. by the Earl of Birkenhead. Lacked in writing instruments,
he used that book to write his Memoirs.[7] He also wrote the poem To
My Beloved Father to lift up his father's spirits and sent it to him as a
Christmas present.

At La Salle, he joined a group of young men who planned to go
by sea to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia since 1949) and
join Sukarno in the struggle for independence from the Dutch
Empire, but local authorities stopped them at the pier. He
completed his secondary education at La Salle in March 1946.
His father Jose P. Laurel and brother Jose III would finally return
to the Philippines on July 23, 1946

Although all his older brothers were lawyers, he enrolled at
the University of the Philippines as a premedicine student, where
he obtained his AA (pre-medicine) and was admitted to medicine
proper, shifting to law two years later. He was admitted to the law
school while working to complete his (AA Pre-Law). He received
his LLB (Bachelor of Laws) degree in UP in March 1952. He was
a member of the Student Editorial Board of the Philippine Law
Journal.[