Our city in ashes

It is one of the relatively untold stories of World War II, the Battle for Manila. It was a month long affair that saw our city, the Pearl of the Orient, razed. It is a chapter of World War II that remains relatively unstudied, here and abroad.

The Battle for Manila raged for one month in 1945 (February 3-March 3). This year was the 65th anniversary of the event. Except for the generous gift amounting to 700 books on World War II in the Philippines by Roderick Hall to the Filipinas Heritage Library, and the private efforts of the Memorare-Manila 1945 Foundation (led by Ambassador Juan Jose P. Rocha, Ambassador Miguel Perez-Rubio, Dr. Benito Legarda, and other members) it would have likely passed; sadly unremarked.

There is one excellent book that was done specifically on this event called The Battle for Manila. It was a joint venture between three British historians, Richard Connaughon, John Pimlott and Duncan Anderson. The driving forces behind the project were Roderick Hall and his sister Consuelo H McHugh.

When the atomic bombs were dropped, 90,000-166,000 people died in Hiroshima while 60,000-80,000 people died in Nagasaki. The firebombings of Tokyo by the Americans saw over 50 percent of that city destroyed and over 100,000 killed. Over a month-long campaign, which saw some of the worst urban fighting in the entire Pacific Theater, over 100,000 Filipino civilians died (some killed by the Japanese soldiers and others by American strategic bombings), 1,010 US soldiers and approximately 12,000 Japanese soldiers were killed as well. The damage done to Manila exceeded that of London during the Germany bombings. From The Battle for Manila: “During the month-long battle which followed between February 3 and March 3…the city was completely destroyed: all that remained by the end were heaps of smoldering rubble. The charred bodied half-buried in the ruins bore terrible witness to a massacre beyond the nightmare of any Manileno . . . The destruction of Manila was on the same scale as . . . Warsaw . . . and smaller only than the battles of Berlin . . . and Stalingrad.” By the end, Manila was the second most destroyed city in World War II. Intramuros was almost completely leveled; much of it still remains to be rebuilt today.

Manila, and the Philippines, was known as the Pearl of the Orient. Among the cities throughout the world, we were one of the most unique. The destruction of Manila was an incalculable loss of heritage. From The Battle for Manila: “Manila was uniquely beautiful: she was universally known as the Pearl of the Orient, a jewel beyond price . . . Yet in the case of Manila, something rare, and something irreplaceable, was destroyed. The Philippines had lost their capital, but the world had lost a city whose very evolution, drawing upon the cultures and histories of four different continents, had made it part of the international heritage.” The tragedy of the Battle for Manila has been further compounded over the years. We have failed to preserve, much less rebuild, what survived. Irreplaceable cultural heritage sites are allowed to deteriorate and (such as the case of the Jai Alai fronton in Manila) torn down in the dubious name of progress.  

The stories of the survivors of World War II can be harrowing and touching. For example, the story of Don Arturo Ynchausti Ortigas rescuing his nieces and nephews (Roderick, Consuelo, Ian and Alaistair Hall) from the rubble of their home and delivering the children to their father in the University of Santo Tomas; just a few weeks before the Halls had lost their mother (Mrs Consuelo McMicking Hall), their grandmother (Mrs. Angelina Rico de McMicking) and aunt (Miss Helen McMicking) to the Japanese. 

We hope that one day Intramuros can be rebuilt and a museum created to honor all those who died and fought during the Japanese Occupation. We should never forget.