The following has recently been archived in the discussion section of Michelle’s Wikipedia article. I have no way of verifying the accuracy of the statements.

A Half-Filipino Schoolmate’s View

I went to school at Emma C. Attales School in Absecon, NJ, with Michelle and her brother, Michael. I think our two families comprised the entire Filipino-American contingent in the area. Michelle and I even shared the same piano teacher. You can find more extensive documentation of our past here. [Ed. Link pointing to defunct site removed. Vide infra.]

First of all, as regards the “Asian American Stance”, why do so many people find it surprising that a person of Filipino descent could harbor hatred toward people of Japanese descent, especially when considering any topic pertaining to World War II? Has every one forgotten what the Japanese did to the Philippines?

My grandfather (as well as the rest of my family) was a resistance fighter in the Philippines in WW2, so I can certainly understand the viewpoint. Not that I agree with Mrs. Malkin…

You should understand that we grew up in an era and an area where the view of “Asian-Americans” was quite a bit different than what some people may be used to in today’s urban centers. Hip-hop didn’t really exist outside of New York City in 1982. Also, I find the “Asian-American” label (as if there is some over-arching “community” outside of A. Magazine) to be more than a bit useless, given the propensity of Asians to attack each other.

As disappointed as I am in what Michelle has become, I will say that much of the criticism I’ve read of Michelle is more than a little over the top, propelled by people who would seemingly like nothing more than to fit all Filipino-Americans, or even all Asian-Americans, into one sloppy mess of a common, ancestral experience. Nothing could be further from the truth.

-Michael Amper

The external link from the Wiki discussion page pointed to a now-defunct site that was filed in the Internet Archive on February 2, 2005. By my estimation, this is the post it pointed to (with very minor edits on my part):

Me, Michelle, and I

A few weeks ago, as I write this, I was taking a break from the standard yard chores on a quiet Sunday afternoon and decided to flip on the old tube. What I came across that day shocked me. BookTV (C-SPAN) was airing a lecture being given at the University of California Berkeley by a young woman of obviously Filipino descent, and being generally supportive of my fellow Filipino-Americans, I decided to settle in and watch. To my utter amazement, the subject of the lecture was “In Defense of Internment”, the title of a new book by one Michelle Malkin which presumes to offer a new perspective on the subject of the internment of thousands of people by the Government of the United States during the Second World War and defends the evident racial profiling that led to that debacle. The subtitle of the book is “The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror”.

The lecturer was the author of that book, Michelle Malkin. Now, at the time that I discovered this lecture on C-SPAN, I did not know anything about Michelle Malkin, but as I said, she appeared (at least to me) to be of obvious Filipino descent, so I could understand that a Filipino could harbor some resentment of the Japanese. In fact, many people in the United States harbor a deep resentment toward Japan and the Japanese, for a variety of reasons–not least of which are the events of the Second World War and the subsequent protection of Japan by the United States in the wake of the Japanese surrender which led to the growth of Japan into an economic superpower in later years.

What made this lecture (and lecturer) shocking to me was that this young woman seemed to believe that not only was the internment of Japanese-Americans and others justified and justifiable, but that she was using the internment as an example to illustrate that many of actions taken by the Government of the United States in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001 are also justified and justifiable as a means of furthering “national security” (I use this term with some trepidation). I’m not sure which is the more shocking — that someone could actually believe that the internment during WWII could be seen as right and necessary, or the assertion that the United States should return to the utilization of similar policies today.

Mrs. Malkin followed her lecture with a brief question and answer session where she summarily dismissed some very real concerns posed to her by the students attending the lecture. Indeed, she wholesale ridiculed some of the attendees who were understandably outraged by her position. Not surprisingly in a place like Berkeley, an institution long known for it’s liberal atmosphere which itself is based in an area long known for it’s liberal atmosphere in a state regarded as a bastion of protection of civil liberties, there were those so angered by Mrs. Malkin’s words that they felt it necessary to speak up and out of turn in a protest-like manner. To these outbursts, Mrs. Malkin responded with an arrogant and evident superiority complex that did nothing to further a reasonable debate on the subject.

Something else about Mrs. Malkin disturbed me; however, I did not fully realize what it was at the time. The other day, while browsing the Internet looking for political discussion, what with the upcoming election, I came across a reference to Mrs. Malkin that sparked my curiousity to find out more about this woman, so I made a brief visit to her World Wide Web site to find out a bit more. Navigating to her “About” page, I found that she was “South Jersey-raised”. That provided me with the proper memory refreshment to understand what it was about Mrs. Malkin that I found disturbing — I recognized her. A quick visit to Google’s inestimable search engine revealed the truth.

I quickly found through a search on her name that she lived for most of her early life in the samll town of Absecon, New Jersey. I, too, lived in Absecon when I was younger, and now I knew why I recognized Mrs. Malkin. One more search and I had my final answer. Michelle Malkin was born Michelle Maglalang. Michelle and I were schoolmates at the Emma C. Attales School.

This is where things get interesting. As I read more and more about Michelle, I came to discover that she has apparently become a rabid attack dog for the extreme reactionary elements of our society. She is a regular commentator for the Fox News television channel and a syndicated political editiorial columnist whose byline is published in over 200 outlets. “In Defense of Internment” is Michelle’s second book. Her first book was the New York Times bestseller, “Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores”, a book which purports to demonstrate how lax immigration policies are leading to the decay of that currently nearly holy ideal “national security” and the decay of American society in general.

I find it somewhat odd that a woman who is descended, like I am, of Filipino ancestry would find the need to restrict American immigration policies out of fear. For one thing, our immigration policies are already in some ways the most restrictive in the world. For another, immigrants from the Phillipines face very possibly the toughest challenges of all in attempted to secure the legal right of immigration in the United States.

Let me back-track a little here and tell you a little more about myself and about Mrs. Malkin and the similarities and differences between us. As I said before, Michelle and I were schoolmates and lived in the same small New Jersey town and we are both descended of Filipino parentage. Michelle is two years younger than I am–she was in the sixth grade when I was in the eighth grade. Both of our fathers were physicians.

Now, you should know that the Filipino-American population of southern New Jersey in the early 1980’s was not large. In fact, it was miniscule. To my knowledge the Amper Family and the Maglalang Family were the only two Filipino-American families in the Absecon area. Between Michelle and her younger brother Michael, and myself, my older brother, and my younger sister, there were only, as far as I know, five Filipino-American children in the immediate area, which is to say within probably a 30 mile radius. Despite that fact, Michelle and I were not close friends or really even acquaintances, though we each certainly knew who the other was, as we both were above-average students both in school subjects and that of classical piano. Michelle and I even had the same piano teacher.

I attended the same Holy Spirit High School in Absecon, whose main claim to fame was immortalized in “The Preppie Handbook” some years back, as did Michelle, though I finished my secondary education in New York City at the estimable Peter Stuyvesant High School. Michelle attended Oberlin College. I myself applied to Oberlin College, but I was wait-listed there, and decided on Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, only about 150 miles away. Michelle and I both eventually elected to discontinue the pursuit of music as a career in our college years.

Before we go any further, I should relate to you a story about our early years so that we can get it out of the way right now in the event that it comes up in the future. When my eighth-grade class was graduating from the Emma C. Attales School, it was decided that the class should sing a song together during the graduation ceremonies. The song we picked was The Beatles’ “In My Life”. I was selected to provide the accompaniment to my classmates on the piano. Unfortunately for me, I developed a severe case of procrastination in my practicing brought on by stage fright. I had only performed once before a school function, a rather poor rendition of one of Chopin’s Preludes, and my adolescent fear of embarrasment overcame me. Michelle had to play in my stead, as I was in no way prepared for the performance. To be honest, Michelle was the better pianist, anyway, so I was rather relieved, if more than a bit embarrased, to have her play.

I bring this up only because I have read and seen some of Mrs. Malkin’s harsh and rather rude criticism of her critics and those whose views she apparently finds so distateful, and I can imagine a scenario where this little anecdote (which was really our closest interaction ever, as I recall) might be used to illustrate the notion that I might have some deep-seated resentment for Michelle. I should also mention that although “In My Life” has become in later years one of my favorite Beatles songs, I still cannot play it on the piano, though that is not for lack of talent, but for lack of effort to actually learn it, yet.

There are some other points that illustrate the various similarities and differences between Michelle and me, but I will leave those to other articles where they will make more sense in context. For the most part, I hold views which are, if not diametrically, then certainly greatly, opposed to the views which Michelle has made public in her reportage and writings. I find it disappopinting that a fellow Filipino-American with whom I share some common history could so vehemently support causes which are so misguided as to be patently ridiculous.

I am hesitant to go as far as some in criticism of Michelle, so I will not allow my critique of her views to fall to the level of base name-calling and common insult, but that any person today could be so evidently misled by ideology, let alone a young person, let alone a young woman, let alone a young woman of immigrant, upper-middle class, professional parents of visible miniority status, calls for those of us with more measured opinions to speak truth and be heard, that we may all go forward into an uncertain future unencumbered by fear, loathing, self-doubt, and ignorance.