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.

An echo report about the Battle of Manilla Philippines is decades overdue

My husband was in the Navy and stationed in the Philippines, where we lived as a family for three years on the Subic Naval Base. We visited the cemetery in Manila where this report is the focus of the reason why many Filipinos are carry so many World War II mental wounds carried by their collective nightmarish memories.

A shop in Ologapo, Luzon Island, located ourside of the Subic Naval Base (L'Heureux photograph circa 1975-76)

Opinion echo: They survived the 1945, Battle of Manila or had family who did. Read their letters:

Every now and then, I am struck by the stories of hardship and struggle that many readers carry with them in their daily lives. These are often tales told in letters based on firsthand experience — for example, of botched abortions before 1972, or from the survivors of gun violence. Occasionally we’ll hear from Holocaust survivors, moved to tell of the atrocities they witnessed as their numbers grow smaller with time.

This week, we heard from another group of readers affected by the horrors of World War II eight decades ago. They wrote to The  LA Times after reading a Memorial Day article by Bob Drogin about the 1945, liberation of Manila, a largely forgotten battle for the capital of the Philippines in which 1 in 10 of the city’s civilian residents died.

But these readers — either the descendants of survivors or survivors themselves — hadn’t forgotten anything, and most expressed appreciation for The Times’ coverage. Reading their letters is a reminder of the history and trauma carried by so many of us, often in silence.

To the editor: I am one of the remaining few who experienced the Battle of Manila in 1945. Seeing its acknowledgment in The Times was unnerving.

Manila had lost telephones, gas and electricity. Parts of the water system failed. There were no police or firefighters. Hospitals could not treat patients. The city was starving.

Japanese forces included those from ships sunk by U.S. bombs, many of them Korean. They knew they were going to die. Their commanders had virtually no means of communicating with them as the Americans shelled the battleground without regard for civilian safety.

People didn’t know how to protect themselves. Many gathered at a college campus, where men were separated from women and children, and were then lined up to be machine-gunned but suddenly ordered to return home. My aunt was told to flee by a Japanese lieutenant. Her area became the scene of many atrocities.

Remembering this still brings about post-traumatic stress. It’s inescapable.

From Allen J. Manzano, in Carlsbad, California

To the editor: Your article brought back memories of tales heard from relatives who had firsthand experience and witnessed the atrocities and cruelty of war.

My grandfather was an officer of the Philippine army who was forced to leave his home and family to evade the Japanese soldiers hunting to execute him.

My father was a member of the United States Army in the Far East and was in the Bataan Death March. He survived by rolling into a ditch full of dead soldiers and pretending to be dead too. Many others described the atrocities they witnessed.

The people of the Philippines were caught in a horrific crossfire between U.S. and Japanese forces. The tales described by Drogin were familiar as well as painful. The past failure to recognize and document the stories for posterity is disappointing.

From Thelma Ordonez, in Los Angeles County, Arcadia

To the editor: Bravo for Drogin’s very interesting story about the Battle for Manila.

My uncle was a 19-year old Marine stationed in the Philippines in 1942 when the fortress on Corregidor island was captured by the Japanese. He spent much of World War II as a prisoner of war.

Fortunately, he was not subjected to the Bataan Death March, but he and other Corregidor prisoners were routinely tortured and beaten. He rarely talked about it.

Late in life, he revealed that he had escaped the POW camp and spent a year in the mountains fighting with guerrillas. I had never heard a story like that and long wondered if it was really true. Then I read Stephen Ambrose’s book, “The Pacific,” which told the tale of several American POWs who escaped, fought as guerrillas and were later evacuated to Australia.

My uncle returned home after the islands were liberated. He was treated at the Navy hospital in Norco, attended UCLA on the GI Bill and made a career in aerospace working on missiles and satellites. And, like so many veterans, he took most of his war stories with him when he died in 1990.

From Willard Gleeson, in Glendale, California

Battle of Corregidor May 5, 1942 – May 6, 1942

To the editor: For eight days and nights in February 1945, my father guarded the gates of Santo Tomas University in Manila with his platoon. They had no sleep, no cooked food and only rations to eat. Artillery fire rained continuously as they secured the university.

Against orders, he compassionately let wounded civilians through the gates for medical attention. He was only 23 and was awarded the Bronze Star for this heroic service. I cried reading Drogin’s informative article and then re-reading my father’s memoir about the events.

US Ambassador Kristie Kenney, ambassador to the Philippines 2006-2009, at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial.

What a shame if many in Manila blame U.S. forces for the “unnecessary destruction of their city,” as Drogin writes. (Maine Writer response:  This opinion was certainly not my experience while my family lived in the Philippines. In fact, my family visited Manila over a half dozen times and toured Corregidor.  Filipinos overwhelmingly disliked the Japanese, full stop! I never heard negativity about the American liberation of Manila. In fact, the Manila Hotel, where General Douglas MacArthur held his official command position, is still somewhat of a political shrine.  Filipinos who I knew loved General MacArthur.)

The innate savagery of war should not be blamed on the liberators who risked their lives to save the starving captive people.

From Ellen McCracken, in Santa Barbara, California