This report is appreciated: My family lived on the US Subic Bay Naval Base Philippines

Echo essay by Bob Drogin, published in the Los Angeles Times:

Military history about World War II in the Philippines.

In our family's experience living and traveling in Luzon Island, reminders and memorials about World War II were visible in almost any scenario, including on the Subic Bay Naval Base. Japanese war gunners' caves were still easily visited on Grande Island, while we were living there, presumably created by the occupying Japanese army to defend the Subic Bay.

MANILA, Philippines — The honor guard stood smartly, their swords gleaming in the morning sun. Soon, drummers beat a crisp tattoo and Marines carefully placed floral wreaths by a massive bronze statue. Finally, rifles cracked a salute and a mournful taps echoed across the old walled city known as Intramuros.

The Battle of Manila left thousands of civilians dead or wounded. Here, Filipino survivors gather after their liberation by U.S. troops on Feb. 23, 1945. (Naval History and Heritage Command)

Tucked under tropical trees on a quiet corner plaza, the ceremony marked the 78th anniversary of one of the most savage — but least known — clashes of World War II, the battle to liberate Manila in 1945. In addition to 1,000 American and 16,000 Japanese combatants, at least 100,000 unarmed Filipino civilians were killed — 1 in 10 Manila residents.

Many were massacred in atrocities by Japanese troops, but many also were pulverized by U.S. artillery barrages. Countless others were maimed, impoverished and traumatized.

Manila American Cemetery has more than 17,000 marble headstones for Americans killed in the Pacific war, and more than 36,000 names on stone tablets for those missing in action, or lost or buried at sea. It is the largest U.S. military cemetery overseas. (Bob Drogin/Los Angeles Times)

Much of the graceful city was turned to rubble. Large parts of its rich cultural heritage — archives of the Spanish colonial era, records from the Philippine revolution, birth and death certificates, ornate churches, grand libraries and treasured art — were obliterated. Only Warsaw suffered more among Allied capitals in the war.

“We had our own holocaust here,” Mike Alcazaren, a Philippine documentary maker who attended the February 18, ceremony, told me. “And no one knows about it. It’s very sad.”

That grim historical gap is what drew me to Intramuros during a visit this year to the Philippines. I was The Times’ Manila bureau chief from 1989 to 1993, and I had read haunting accounts of the heroism and horrors of the Pacific war. I even wrote of WWII relics that rust in peace on Guadalcanal and elsewhere.

Yet, I knew almost nothing about the monthlong battle that had devastated the heart of the American colony. History books barely mentioned it. Schools didn’t teach it. Monuments didn’t honor it. I wanted to find out why.

What accounted for the collective amnesia? Only about 30 people attended the ceremony at Intramuros. Was it best to leave the past in the past? And as a new war rages in Ukraine, are there lessons to be learned — to not let those horrors also be forgotten?

I soon found a small group of survivors, historians, hobbyists and others determined to honor the unimaginable sacrifice and loss here. With their help I visited memorials, markers and museums, as well as more grisly sites. Some opened only in recent years as a result of their work.

After the memorial ceremony, I walked into a dim, dank dungeon-like vault in the immense stone walls of Intramuros that opened to the public only in 2020. In 1945 Japanese troops locked about 600 Philippine prisoners inside with no food, no water, and left them to die.

Gritty black-and-white photos tacked to the walls show the ghastly conditions American soldiers found when they pried open the thick iron doors.

“I put them up,” said Desiree Benipayo, an author and businesswoman who runs the nonprofit Philippine World War II Memorial Foundation. “People need to see what happened. People need to know.”

But the reckoning is fraught. Japan is the largest aid donor to the Philippine government and a major source of investment. 

Tokyo has never formally apologized for the atrocities, and Philippine officials seem wary of giving offense.

In 2017, the National Historical Commission erected a bronze statue on the Manila waterfront to honor “comfort women,” the euphemism for those forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese troops. 

But it was pulled down after a Japanese minister complained to Rodrigo Duterte, then the Philippine president, that the statue’s appearance was “regrettable.”

I found a far different and unexpected monument in Mabalacat, north of Manila, built by local officials in 1998, to attract Japanese tourists. Behind a tall torii gate, a larger-than-life statue of a kamikaze pilot is flanked by a huge wall painted with Japan’s wartime Rising Sun flag.

Since the suicide pilots sank dozens of U.S. warships and killed thousands of Americans, I was appalled. It was, I thought, like finding a statue of Osama bin Laden in Lower Manhattan.

But I found encouraging changes too. The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, which has run tours to battlefields in Europe and the Pacific for years, sold out its first-ever tour to the Philippines in March. James Scott, who in 2018, wrote “Rampage,” a vivid history of the Battle of Manila that spurred the renewed interest — including mine — helped guide the group.

“I like to think history eventually corrects itself,” Scott told me from his home in Charleston, S.C.

Researchers now can access an invaluable trove of war-related material at the Filipinas Heritage Library in Manila. In 2010 it acquired the Roderick Hall Collection, some 5,000 books, manuscripts, military reports, newspapers, films and audio about the war in the Philippines. I spent an afternoon there browsing some of the poignant, often painful memoirs.

“We stood in the sun for hours, many of the elderly with ankle, legs and knees swollen to almost the bursting point,” Ruth Hooper, an American teenager who was interned by the Japanese in Manila, wrote in one. Filipinos who tried to help them “were hanged by their thumbs until they died.”

I also spent a sobering morning at the Manila American Cemetery, the final resting ground for most of the Americans killed in the Pacific war. It is America’s largest military cemetery overseas, dwarfing those in Europe. Long lines of white marble headstones, 17,058 in all, climb the gentle green hills. Another 36,268 names, etched on giant stone tablets, honor those missing in action, or lost or buried at sea.