THE OPEN CITY (Japanese photograph).
 

On 26 December, Manila was declared an open city. All newspapers published the text of the proclamation and radio stations broadcast the news through the day. A huge banner bearing the words Open City and No Shooting was strung across the front of the city hall. That night the blackout ended and Manila was ablaze with lights.

With the evacuation of the government and the army, a feeling of foreboding and terror spread through the city, and the exodus, which had ceased after the first confusion of war, began again. "The roads back into the hills," noted one observer, "were black with people striving to reach their native villages . . . . The few trains still running into the provinces were literally jammed to the car tops." The business district was deserted and there were few cars along Dewey Boulevard.

Here and there a few shops made a brave attempt at a holiday spirit with displays of tinsel and brightly wrapped gifts. On the Escolta, two Santa Clauses with the traditional white beards and red costumes looked strangely out of place. One walked up and down as if dazed while the other, more practical, piled sandbags before the entrance to his shop. "No girls in slacks and shorts were bicycling along the water front," wrote Maj. Carlos Romulo reminiscently, "and there were no horseback riders on the bridle path . . . the Yacht Club, the night clubs and hotels ... all looked like funeral parlors." "Let it be known," reported NBC correspondent Bert Silen, "that our Christmas Eve was the darkest and gloomiest I ever hope to spend."

Late on the night of 26 December Radio Tokyo acknowledged receipt of the Manila broadcasts declaring the capital an open city.5 Official notification to 14th Army came later, either on the 28th or after, when Imperial General Headquarters forwarded the information from Tokyo. Apparently MacArthur made no attempt to notify the Japanese forces in the Philippines of his intentions, but a mimeographed announcement of the open city declaration was in the hands of the Japanese troops by 31 December.

Either the Japanese in the Philippines were unaware of the open city declaration or they chose to ignore it, for enemy aircraft were over the Manila area on 27 December. The Army's 5th Air Group sent 7 light and 4 heavy bombers against Nichols Field, and at least 2 fighters over the port district that day.7 But the main bombing strikes, directed against the Manila Bay and Pasig River areas, were made by naval aircraft. For three hours at midday, successive waves of unopposed bombers over Manila wrought great destruction on port installations and buildings in the Intramuros, the ancient walled city of the Spaniards. The attacks against shipping continued the next day, with additional damage to the port area.

 

 

 

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