began as the Luna Memorial Institute, an academic high school founded in 1926 in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija, by Hon. It was named after Gen. Antonio Luna, a national hero who was assassinated in the place. A few years later, the controlling interests were bought by prominent people of San Jose, Nueva Ecija and it was moved to this latter town. The late couple Judge Felix L. and Marceliana Malinit Mam
enta, together with Don Francisco V. Arzadon, Sr., Don Domingo L. Rivera and Don Catalino M. Gan bought it in 1934 and was transferred to Tayug, Pangasinan. It started classes in Tayug, Pangasinan on June 4, 1934 with the auspicious number of 123 students. Through the earnest, devoted and untiring efforts of the administration and teachers, the school attracted the attention and patronage of all elements. Yearly enrollment steadily increased which reached its peak before the outbreak of the war in December, 1941. However, operation of the school was interrupted by World War II. In February, 1945 soon after the liberation of Tayug from the Japanese by the Americans, the school reopened to offer completion of courses to its 1941 students. Even with the shelling of Japanese positions and nightly blackouts, classes went on, students and teachers alike, bent on making up for the years lost during the Japanese occupation. Classrooms were under battered houses, under the trees, or in tents using whatever equipment and books the school was able to save during the war. In answer to the felt need and demand for higher education of the people in this eastern part of Pangasinan, the Luna Memorial Institute was reorganized into Luna Junior College in November 1945. The courses were expanded to include two-year courses in Normal, Liberal Arts and Commerce and Vocational courses in dressmaking, embroidery, typewriting and stenography. The Luna Junior College became the LUNA COLLEGES in 1948 offering Bachelor degrees. Eventually, the Graduate School was opened on July 1, 1963 offering the Masters of Arts in Psychology. In the course of time, the Master of Arts Major in Educational Management was an additional offering. Side by side with the academic expansions were material expansions. The rented building used before the war in the town proper being damaged during the war, the school moved to its present four-hectare site. The school celebrated its Golden Anniversary in March 1984 with many honorable and distinguished alumni present.
