The agony of a city: Manila 70 years ago
Warsaw, the capital of Poland, has long been considered as the most destroyed city of World War II. More people were killed in Warsaw by the Germans than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki which suffered from atomic bomb attacks. The devastation was the result of anti-Polish sentiment in Germany, intensified by Hitler’s antipathy toward Jews and Slavs. Aside from being Poland’s largest city, Warsaw also had the largest Jewish population of any city in the world.
Manila, once known as the “Pearl of the Orient,” comes in second among cities that suffered death and destruction the most during World War II. Perhaps, what distinguishes the experience of Manila from that of other capitals around the world is that its death toll and destruction were administered just before liberation by both friend and foe.
Japanese naval forces trapped in Manila went on a killing and burning rampage, attacking US forces laid down deadly artillery fire, sometimes at point blank range, in a bid to root out enemy forces holding out in the city. Caught between the crossfire of these opposing armies were unarmed civilians, mostly women and children. With the Americans already inside the city limits, many believed that liberation was at hand, only to discover that it would come but at a price no one had imagined.
* * *
Just a few hundred meters behind the Manila Cathedral is a monument of black marble dedicated to all the innocent victims of war.
Memorare—Manila 1945
Let this monument be the gravestone for
each and everyone of
the over 100,000 men, women, children and
infants killed in Manila during the battle of
liberation, Feb. 3-March 3,1945.
We have not forgotten them, nor shall we ever forget.
During the Japanese occupation, my father Modesto Farolan worked as board secretary of the Madrigal-owned Jai Alai Corp. However, for him and Don Vicente Madrigal, it was not all Jai Alai business. They found time to get involved in Red Cross work, to a point that the Japanese secret police (Kempeitai) became wary of their humanitarian activities. They were secretly passing on copies of shortwave broadcasts from the United States to friends in the underground. After a while, Japanese suspicions led to the arrest of several people connected with the Jai Alai office. To spare him from possible Japanese interrogation, President Jose P. Laurel appointed my father governor of his home province, Ilocos Norte. The whole family then moved to Laoag and later to Sarrat, staying with relatives up to the end of the war.
In early 1945, my father returned to Manila to serve as general manager of the Philippine National Red Cross. It was here that he underwent one of the most harrowing experiences in life, as he came face to face with death at the hands of Japanese Marines bent on killing every human being in their line of sight.
On the morning of Feb. 6, 1945, Gen. Douglas MacArthur announced that “Manila had fallen”. Operational plans for a great victory parade into the city led by the commander himself, had been sent out. The awful truth however, was that most of the city was firmly in the hands of Japanese naval forces under the command of Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi.
Before the end of the month, more than 100,000 non-combatants would perish in one of the most brutal episodes in the history of Asia and the Pacific.
In the afternoon of Feb. 10, my father was at his desk at the PNRC offices on Isaac Peral (now UN Avenue), when Japanese Marines with fixed bayonets burst into the building. A volunteer surgeon, Dr. German de Venecia, who was preparing two patients for surgery, was shot twice and died instantly. The two patients were bayoneted to death. The attending nurses were also attacked but they survived the bayonet thrusts. On hearing the first shots, my father dove under his desk. A Marine fired two shots at him; fortunately, both missed their target. The attackers then turned on Mrs. Juan P. Juan, her daughter and a 10-day-old granddaughter. All three died. Believing he had accounted for everyone in the room, the Marine left. This procedure was repeated throughout the building, room by room. My father would later testify, “from where we were, we could hear the victims in their death agony, the shrill cries of children, and the sobs of dying mothers and girls.”
In other places in the city, particularly in Malate and Intramuros, Japanese forces went on a similar rampage. Some 2,000 men, women and children of all nationalities were assembled at Plaza Ferguson. The men and boys were taken to the Manila Hotel; the females aged 15 to 22, were separated from the older women. Of this group, 25 were
taken to the Bayview Hotel fronting the present US Embassy. Others were dispersed among several apartments close to the combat areas to service Marines about to do battle with the liberating forces.
Groups of Marines roamed through the residential
areas picking out institutions and buildings swollen with refugees. Entering the buildings, they shot and bayoneted those inside, then set the place on fire and shot those who attempted to escape. They seemed to derive pleasure from attacking civilians in air raid shelters with hand grenades. The massacres continued in schools, hospitals and convents—San Juan de Dios, Santa Rosa College, Manila Cathedral, Paco Church, St. Paul’s convent, and St. Vincent de Paul church on San Marcelino Street. The sickening narratives of the atrocities and bestialities of Japanese troops can be found in two books which detail what
happened during those fateful days: “By Sword and Fire: The Destruction of Manila” by Alfonso J. Aluit, and “The Battle for Manila” by Richard Connaughton, John Pimlott and Duncan Anderson.
* * *
A National Historical Institute marker close to the Memorare monument indicates that those who died in the liberation battle “were mainly victims of heinous acts perpetrated by the Japanese imperial forces and the heavy artillery barrage of American forces.” The noted writer
Carmen Guerrero Nakpil put it this way: “Those who had survived Japanese hate did not survive American love. Both were equally deadly, the latter more so because it was sought and longed for.”
* * *
On Saturday, Feb. 14, at 8:30 a.m., a commemorative ceremony will be held at the Memorare monument on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Battle for the Liberation of Manila. Former President Fidel V. Ramos will be the guest speaker.
