God Bless America Girl Scouts in New York City. Smith performed the song on her two NBC television series in the 1950s and in her short-lived "The Kate Smith Show" on CBS, which aired from January 25 to July 18, 1960. "God Bless America" also spawned another of Irving Berlin's tunes, "Heaven Watch The Philippines," during the end of World War II after he heard the Filipinos sing a slightly revised version of the song replacing "America" with "The Philippines." The song was used early in the Civil Rights Movement as well as at labor rallies. During the 1960s, the song was increasingly
Heaven Watch the Philippines Leyte in 1946, in front of an audience that included Sergio Osmeña and Carlos P. Romulo. Berlin was touring U.S. military bases with a stage production of "This Is the Army", in 1945. During a stop in the Philippines, he heard children in Leyte singing the song "God Bless America" (which he had written in 1918 and had revised in 1938) with the lyric "God Bless the Philippines". Touched by that and feeling that they might like a song of their own, he composed "Heaven Watch the Philippines", trying to combine the spiritual quality of "God Bless America" with their