Destruction of Manila
FEBRUARY should be a month to recall the massacre of Manila 72 years ago. It was probably the second day of February, 1945, that we had the first glimpses of American soldiers pacing Raon St. from about a kilometer away in Evangelista St. near Quiapo Church. We had no inkling that Manila would be destroyed in a month. For the next few nights we kept vigil because the Makapili, helpers of the Japanese military, was setting fire to houses north of the Pasig River.
A few days later, exhausted from the sleepless nights, we found ourselves running away from the fire towards the church. There we found many other people because of spreading fires. With a friend I left the church to see what happened to our house a few blocks away. We still could open the door but the upper floors were ablaze. I’ll never forget the roaring fire consuming what used to be our home. Later I remembered that my father had put some valuables in two bauls (wooden travelling boxes) to make it easier to pull them in case of evacuation. In those bauls were autographed copies of Rizal’s books, the Noli Me Tangere and the El Filibusterismo. They were gone with the flames.
That same day we left the church and went across Quezon Blvd. and were graciously accepted in the Nakpil house where my mother was given the big bed in the main family room since she was an invalid. Fires were starting everywhere but not in the Quezon Blvd. section where we were. I remember a fire brigade (which I joined to help) that passed water from the local estero up a couple of blocks in pots and pans and whatever could contain water. They drenched the front of the ancestral houses on Quezon Blvd. made of wood that could go up in spontaneous combustion because of the heat from across the boulevard. I remember also a lady who went after a man who had taken her balutan. The crowd then started to beat the man. Although just a teenager I shouted at the rabble to stop and they did, to my surprise.
The destruction of Manila may be put in three parts. The first were the fires on sections north of the Pasig River, second the fighting in Intramuros and the sections around Manila City Hall, and lastly the massacre of the people and the fires south of the Pasig River. After the fires were put out, we in the north side watched the battery of howitzers bombarding the south side from the Sunken Gardens west of the racetracks in Tayuman. There were no planes used to flatten south Manila but bombardment from the northside howitzers. The American occupied the north side. Except for a few snipers, there were no more Japanese soldiers.
They say that the Japanese Headquarters with Generals Homa and Yamashita had ordered the Japanese forces to stop fighting but a Marine Office who was in charge of south Manila fought it out and killed civilian Filipinos wherever they could. City Hall and the building beside it like the Agriculture bldg., the Finance bldg., and the national museum bldg. were bitterly fought for from floor to floor and back again. Many American and Japanese soldiers lost their lives in those buildings. In Intramuros the Japanese soldiers rounded up all the male civilians, about two thousand, and locked them up in Fort Santiago dungeons and left them there to die from hunger.
On the south side, fire and murder of civilians continued for over a week. A notable place were the big buildings of La Salle on Taft Avenue where over a hundred people were bayoneted to death by the Japanese soldiers including the German La Salle Christian Brothers and my classmate Tony Cojuanco Jr. and his family; and in Paco the burnt areas stenches of death lasted for months. Many people in Ermita and Malate died as they run to escape the fires and Japanese soldiers. San Lazaro Hospital was filled with the wounded. I searched that hospital looking for a friend who I found after four times going around.
This is my account of the destruction of most of Manila and the massacre of her people.