- 2 -
Life started getting difficult after 21 September
1944, the date of the first air raid on Manila by US carrier aircraft. US
troops landed on the island of Leyte on 20 October, 1944 and began the
liberation of the Philippines. The first landing on Luzon was in early
January, 1945, at the Gulf of Lingayen, North of Manila. American troops
moved towards Manila in a cautious way, as most Japanese troops had
abandoned Manila for the mountains of northern Luzon, and were in
positions flanking the approaching Americans.
For my family, the Battle for Manila began at 11
am on the morning of 20 January, 1945, two weeks before the liberation of
Santo Tomas Internment Camp. We were sitting on the porch, and heard
pounding on the garden gate. It flew open and a skirmish line of Japanese
troops approached the house with fixed bayonets. Yells coming from the
kitchen were followed by the servants bursting in, prodded by more troops
with fixed bayonets. Fortunately my younger brother and sister were
playing at a neighbor’s house and so were not arrested. We were herded
into a corner of the porch, and the soldiers began a 3-hour meticulous
search of the premises. All suspect items, including radios and toy
pistols were collected.
The men had their hands tied behind their backs,
and we were marched 6 blocks to a former Masonic temple, the headquarters
of the Japanese Marines. We were left in a corner of the yard. About 5 pm
that evening, a list of names was read out, and these people were
released. My brother Ian and I were included together with our servants.
We never again saw my mother, grandmother, uncle Alfred, aunt Helen and
the two family friends who were at home that day.
We returned home, and for about one week were
allowed each day to send hot food to the family. Some days later, in the
evening, there was a pounding on the garden gate, and a group of bandits
entered and took over the house, searching for valuables. They stayed
until early dawn the next morning, when a bus arrived and the men departed
with the items they had selected. A Spanish friend of my mother’s, married
to a German, complained to Japanese Army headquarters, and so we found
ourselves for some days having two Japanese army sentries patrolling our
home each evening, while the Japanese marines were holding our family!
By this time, the American army had entered north
Manila, and things became even more difficult. It was impossible to go out
to shop for food. Artillery shells landed unexpectedly throughout the day,
large fires started, and many who had lost their homes took shelter with
us. Our home was protected by a large garden, but the garage, a separate
building on the property line, was destroyed by fire. In early February,
in what is now called the St. Paul’s Convent massacre, hand grenades were
thrown into rooms packed with people who had been arrested. They blew out
the walls, killing and wounding many. Those escaping came running to our
home. I remember well the wave of people coming over the six-foot garden
wall. By this time some 150 people were sheltering under our home, as it
was too dangerous to stay in the house because of the artillery shelling.
As with most homes in our district, the house was built 5 feet off the
ground because of the frequent floods during the rainy season. The
deceased were wrapped in sheets and placed in the drawing room. The
utilities ceased. There was no electricity nor gas, no refrigeration, and
water was drawn from a well in our front yard.
On the
16th of February we discovered that American troops were only 100 yards
from the house, and together with several other men, we went to ask
whether we should remain. One soldier told us they would be pulling back
that evening and recommended that we cross the line. Most of the people
sheltering at home decide to do so. We were shepherded across no man’s
land by two GI’s, while snipers fired at us. At one point we had to wait
for a tank destroyer to block an intersection guarded by a Japanese
machinegun nest.
That night we slept out in the open and saw a
magnificent display of tracer bullets, shell bursts and flares in the sky.
The area was devastated. All houses had been destroyed by fire. Next
morning we started to build ourselves a shelter. Breakfast was provided by
a mobile US Army canteen that fed all of us refugees. I saw a family
friend walking by, who told me that my father was frantic for news of us.
He offered to take us to the internment camp. We walked and hitchhiked on
army trucks in a big detour around Manila to avoid the areas with heavy
fighting, and those still under Japanese control, and arrived at Santo
Tomas in late afternoon. where we were reunited with our father.
Following publication of The Battle for Manila on
the 50th Anniversary of the liberation in 1995, the British Military Staff
College at Sandhurst conducted a study on FIBUA (fighting in built up
areas), concluding it had been a mistake for the US Army to surround
Manila without allowing the defenders an escape route, which might have
saved the city from such destruction. My personal conclusions are
different. When the Japanese army under General Yamashita, pulled
out of Manila to stage their defence in the mountains of North Luzon,
command of the city had been transferred to Admiral Iwabuchi. His personal
circumstances, I believe, doomed Manila. The Admiral had the great
dishonor of having survived the sinking of the ship he commanded without
losing his life. I believe he was determined never again to abandon his
post. I further believe that a contributing factor in the destruction of
Manila was the strategy employed by General MacArthur, with one landing at
Lingayen Bay. MacArthur did not plan a simultaneous landing South of
Manila, as the Japanese had done in 1941. However, because of the slow
progress, in late January, after much vacillation, he decided on a second
landing by the 11th Airborne Division, by parachute at Tagaytay Ridge, and
by landing craft at Nasugbu, in Batangas Province, South of Manila. These
troops made rapid advances to Manila, which they reached in three days.
There they met their first resistance from a defensive line that had not
been built until after the Lingayen landings in the North. I believe that
had MacArthur planned simultaneous landings to the North and South of
Manila, there is a good chance that most of Manila could have been spared
destruction. However, I am no military tactician nor aware of the problems
MacArthur faced.
We returned to our home from the internment camp
in early April. There the army had provided us with a generator and a
water trailer. There were less than five houses left standing within a
radius of 300 yards around our house. Here we stayed until 25 May, when my
father arranged for my brother Ian and I to travel with the Red Cross to
Edinburgh, Scotland, where we joined my grandmother and resumed our
education. I saw the celebration of VE Day while in Manila, and was
present for the parade on Princes Street in Edinburgh marking VJ Day.
R.C.M.Hall
|