PH-US cemetery opens new visitor center
THE American Battle Monuments Commission ( ABMC) on Saturday officially opened a new interpretive visitor center at the Manila American Cemetery ( MNAC) in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City.
The Manila Visitor Center (MVC), the first in the Pacific, tells the story of World War II (WW2).
John Law, charge’ d’ affaires of the American Embassy in Manila, said the dedication also marks the 75th anniversary of the return of Gen. Douglas McArthur to the Philippines. The general served as chief US military adviser to the Philippines before the war.
The day after Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941, Japan launched its invasion of the Philippines. After struggling against great odds to save his adopted home from Japanese conquest, MacArthur was forced to abandon the Philippine island fortress of Corregidor under the orders of President Franklin Roosevelt in March 1942.
Left behind at Corregidor and on the Bataan Peninsula were 90,000 American and Filipino troops, who, lacking food, supplies zand support, would soon succumb to the Japanese offensive.
During this journey to Melbourne, Australia where he was transferred, he was informed that there were far fewer Allied troops in the city than he had hoped. Relief of his forces trapped in the Philippines would not be forthcoming. Deeply disappointed, he issued a statement to the press in which he promised his men and the people of the Philippines, “I shall return.” The promise would become his mantra during the next two and a half years, and he would repeat it often in public appearances.
Fulfilling his promise to return to the area he was forced to flee in 1942, McArthur went back to the Philippines on Oct. 20, 1944.
The MVC ceremony was attended by members of the Veterans of the Pacific campaign, next-of-kin family members of fallen soldiers buried at the MNAC and those memorialized in the cemetery’s Tablets of the Missing wall, and American and Filipino dignitaries and military members.
The MNAC is the largest of the 15 WW2 cemeteries that ABMC manages and maintains on foreign soil, with more than 17,000 graves of fallen service members and more than 36,000 names of the missing honored on the walls of the memorial.
The MVC has an exhibit gallery and a state-of-the-art theater that shows a 17-minute film that highlights the contributions and sacrifices of the US and the Philippines during WW2.
The cemetery also provides informative and emotional context to why and who the Manila American Cemetery commemorates, including 29 Medal of Honor recipients who fought to free the world and ensure tyranny did not find footing on American shores.