Open City
Open City
Posted 10:22pm (Mla time) Feb 20, 2005
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the February 21, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
THE BATTLE for Manila 60 years ago did not change the course of World War II or hasten its end. It did not inaugurate a new phase in the Pacific campaign or create a military breakthrough. But it was marked by unspeakable atrocities and plumbed new depths of human suffering. For that reason alone, it deserves to be remembered, not only in the country but around the world.
The incomparable success of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's leapfrogging strategy had put Allied forces within invading distance of Japan two years after the fall of Bataan. Japanese outposts had famously withered on the vine, left behind without supply lines and reinforcements as the Allies attacked some islands and skipped others.
The ironic consequence of MacArthur's success was that it threatened to make his celebrated promise to return to the Philippines militarily irrelevant. American commanders at the highest levels asked: Why not skip the Philippines altogether? Their preferred base of operations for an invasion of Japan was Taiwan, then known as Formosa.
When the Philippine plan finally prevailed, the stage was set for one of the most heartrending stories in the annals of warfare.
On the due of what survivors still call liberation, more Filipinos died in a single series of events than at any other time in history. The Battle of Manila was tsunami-like in its devastating impact: More than 100,000 died in the four weeks of fighting between Feb. 3 and March 3, 1945. Most of them relived Rizal's nightmare: that is, they died without seeing freedom dawn.
The Inquirer series in the last two weeks drew an indelible portrait of that horrific experience. Many of the dead were consumed in an orgy of violence, started by Japanese naval troops stationed in Manila and under orders to defend what was then the largest occupied city in Japan's so-called Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Many more were killed in an unending rain of fire: the Americans' massive and unrelenting artillery bombardment. Many others died simply because they were caught in the indiscriminate flames of crossfire.
We honor all of them by remembering their ordeal, their holocaust. But we honor them best by honoring those who survived them.
For every story of a baby bayoneted in the air, we must remember those who survived with desperate cunning, those who played dead, for instance, even when Japanese soldiers knifed them to make sure they were dead.
For every story of a family trapped by a collapsing, bomb-weakened wall, we must remember those who dug holes or helped others find trenches, braving shrapnel or debris on their missions of mercy. The honor roll, thankfully, goes on and on.
By praising them, we don't simply mean to ease their "survivor's guilt." By recognizing their pluck, their grace under intense pressure, their sheer will to live, we honor that which makes up truly human.
At a time of unbearable anguish, when the line separating man from beast was crossed again and again, the common example of human beings doing uncommon things was a sign of hope: Despite the horrors of war, in a city that should have been by all lights declared open a second time since 1942, it was possible to imagine life as it ought to be once again.
Posted 10:22pm (Mla time) Feb 20, 2005
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the February 21, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
THE BATTLE for Manila 60 years ago did not change the course of World War II or hasten its end. It did not inaugurate a new phase in the Pacific campaign or create a military breakthrough. But it was marked by unspeakable atrocities and plumbed new depths of human suffering. For that reason alone, it deserves to be remembered, not only in the country but around the world.
The incomparable success of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's leapfrogging strategy had put Allied forces within invading distance of Japan two years after the fall of Bataan. Japanese outposts had famously withered on the vine, left behind without supply lines and reinforcements as the Allies attacked some islands and skipped others.
The ironic consequence of MacArthur's success was that it threatened to make his celebrated promise to return to the Philippines militarily irrelevant. American commanders at the highest levels asked: Why not skip the Philippines altogether? Their preferred base of operations for an invasion of Japan was Taiwan, then known as Formosa.
When the Philippine plan finally prevailed, the stage was set for one of the most heartrending stories in the annals of warfare.
On the due of what survivors still call liberation, more Filipinos died in a single series of events than at any other time in history. The Battle of Manila was tsunami-like in its devastating impact: More than 100,000 died in the four weeks of fighting between Feb. 3 and March 3, 1945. Most of them relived Rizal's nightmare: that is, they died without seeing freedom dawn.
The Inquirer series in the last two weeks drew an indelible portrait of that horrific experience. Many of the dead were consumed in an orgy of violence, started by Japanese naval troops stationed in Manila and under orders to defend what was then the largest occupied city in Japan's so-called Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Many more were killed in an unending rain of fire: the Americans' massive and unrelenting artillery bombardment. Many others died simply because they were caught in the indiscriminate flames of crossfire.
We honor all of them by remembering their ordeal, their holocaust. But we honor them best by honoring those who survived them.
For every story of a baby bayoneted in the air, we must remember those who survived with desperate cunning, those who played dead, for instance, even when Japanese soldiers knifed them to make sure they were dead.
For every story of a family trapped by a collapsing, bomb-weakened wall, we must remember those who dug holes or helped others find trenches, braving shrapnel or debris on their missions of mercy. The honor roll, thankfully, goes on and on.
By praising them, we don't simply mean to ease their "survivor's guilt." By recognizing their pluck, their grace under intense pressure, their sheer will to live, we honor that which makes up truly human.
At a time of unbearable anguish, when the line separating man from beast was crossed again and again, the common example of human beings doing uncommon things was a sign of hope: Despite the horrors of war, in a city that should have been by all lights declared open a second time since 1942, it was possible to imagine life as it ought to be once again.
posted by Dante at 3:44 PM
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