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The Death of Manila in World War II and Postwar Commemoration

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Nakano Satoshi

“The Death of Manila” in World War II and its Postwar Commemoration

1. Introduction and Summary

The Battle of Manila (3 February to 3 March 1945) was the single most devastating
instance of urban warfare fought between the United States and Japan in the
Asia-Pacific Theater of World War II. The battle transformed a plan to liberate the city
and its inhabitants from Japanese tyranny into a massive slaughter of non-combatant
civilians and the total devastation of downtown area. While the U.S. strategy of carpet
shelling the center of Manila has come under increasing criticism in recent years as a
major cause of the city’s destruction and associated civilian casualties, it is the atrocities
and indiscriminate massacres by Japanese Imperial Army and Navy forces remaining in
Manila that have been primarily blamed for causing both the bulk of civilian deaths
there—allegedly amounting to one hundred thousand—but also emotional trauma to the
survivors and the bereaved. It is these victims and those who commemorate them who
have remembered the battle as “the Death of Manila” with an accompanying sense of
loss from which they have not fully recovered despite the city’s postwar physical
reconstruction.1
Japanese war crimes in the Philippines, particularly during the Battle of
Manila, were once given considerable publicity in the early postwar years both
internationally and even in Japan. The Philippine government assumed the role of a
main critic of Japan’s return to the international community. The deep animosity felt
among the Filipino people towards Japan prevented the two countries from
normalizing diplomatic relations for more than a decade. The Philippines, however, is

1
On overall history of the battle, see Richard Connaughton, John Pimlott and Duncan
Anderson. Battle for Manila. London: Bloomsbury, 1995; Alfonso J. Aluit. By Sword
and Fire: The Destruction of Manila in World War II 3 February – 3 March 1945.
Manila: National Commission for Culture and Arts, 1994; James M. Scott. Rampage:
MacArthur, Yamashita and the Battle of Manila. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2018.
currently viewed by the Japanese government as one of the most “Japan-friendly”
countries in the world, while by the end of 1980s Japanese war crimes and atrocities in
the Philippines had almost completely been erased from Japanese collective memories.
Multiple factors that have brought about this remarkable and bewildering
transformation will be discussed later in this chapter.
The fiftieth anniversary of the battle in February 1995 signified a shift against
this trend towards forgetting and was marked by the dedication of the monument erected
by Memorare Manila 1945, a small but influential group of the battle’s survivors and the
bereaved. This group could have become a vocal opponent of the Philippines-Japan
diplomacy of mutual forgetting and was indeed poised to become the one in the
mid-2000s. It has turned out otherwise, however. Japan’s preventive diplomacy, the
Memorare’s attitude of restraint towards Japan, and a growing recognition of the
battle—not only in the Philippines but also in Japan—have all helped prevent another
history war in Asia. The state visit of Japan’s emperor and empress to the Philippines in
January 2016 once again proved to be a uniquely Filipino-Japanese pattern of
reconciliation, which differentiates its bilateral relations from the troubled ones between
the Northeast Asian nations.

2. The Battle

Manila before the Battle

Manila had been the capital of the Philippines under Spain from its establishment as a
colony in the late sixteenth century. The United States occupied the city in 1898 during
the Spanish-American War and later annexed the remaining islands of the Philippines.
Facing the South China Sea and developed along the northern and southern banks of
Pasig River, the city had a population of 623,492 according to the 1939 census.2 On the
southern bank of Pasig River lies Intramuros, the oldest and the historic district that was
the original walled city of Manila. Located further south of Intramuros are Ermita and

2
Commonwealth of the Philippines, Bureau of the Census. Census of the Philippine
Islands 1939. Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1940-1943.
Malate districts, which rapidly grew to become the city’s urban center during the World
Wars. These three districts used to be home to the city’s most affluent.
In 1935, the Philippine Commonwealth was established as the autonomous
government preparing for full-fledged independence, which was to be granted in 1946.
The country, however, remained under U.S. sovereignty and, with the threat of war with
Japan becoming imminent, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the Philippine
Commonwealth Army into the service of the U.S. armed forces in July 1941,
formulating the U.S. Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), with Douglas MacArthur
as its commander. On opening of hostilities, Japanese bombers effectively neutralized
the U.S. air power based in the Philippines within hours of the Pearl Harbor attack in
Hawaii. MacArthur ordered all USAFFE forces in Luzon to retreat to Bataan peninsula
and he himself evacuated to the fortified island of Corregidor at the south end of the
peninsula, declaring Manila as an “open city” to save it from destruction. MacArthur left
the Philippines and arrived in Australia, making the famous pledge “I shall return” in
March 1942, while the remaining USAFFE forces in Bataan and Corregidor surrendered
in the following months.3 It was on 20 October 1944 that the Allied Forces in the
Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) led by MacArthur landed on the beaches of Leyte as he
promised, which commenced the battle for the liberation of the Philippines.
Throughout the war, the Philippines was the most hostile territory to Japan in
Southeast Asia. Because the country had already planned for its full independence in
1946, Japan’s war propaganda depicting Japanese rule of Asians as liberation from
Caucasians was pointless, while Japanese occupation precipitated only economic
3
The American and Filipino prisoners of war then faced the ordeal of “Bataan Death
March,” a forced transfer by foot in the brutal heat costing the lives of hundreds of
American and thousands of Filipino POWs, for which General Homma Masaharu, the
supreme commander of invading Japanese forces, was later tried by a U.S. military
tribunal on violating international rule of war and executed in April 1946. On Japanese
War Crimes Trials, see Yuma Totani. Justice in Asia and the Pacific Region, 1945-1952.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. In Japanese language, see Hayashi
Yoshifumi. BC-kyu Senpan Saiban [Trials of BC Class War Criminals]. Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 2005; Nagai Hitoshi. Firipin to Tainichi Senpan Saiban: 1945-1953
[The War Crimes Trials and Japan-Philippines Relations, 1945-1953]. Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 2010.
collapse and misery. The occupiers became increasingly intolerant of the guerrilla
insurgency and the other resistance activities. In Manila itself, the Japanese Kempeitai
(Military Police) and the other forces attempted to maintain a tight grip, taking the lives
of both of resistance fighters and of the innocent. U.S. air raids, starting in September
1944, killed a small number of civilians. During the last months of Japanese occupation,
the influx of refugees from outside of Manila bloated the city’s population to almost one
million while the collapse of rice market/rationing, including confiscation of rice by the
departing Japanese forces, made the food shortage so serious that the Allied press
reported that hundreds were dying of starvation daily in Manila in late January 1945.4
By then, the greater part of some 270,000 troops of the Imperial Japanese
Forces evacuated the city and headed north to Baguio and Mountain Province in
Northern Luzon, while more than 80,000 forces eventually remained in Central and
Southern Luzon including Manila. In postwar military tribunals, General Yamashita
Tomoyuki, the supreme commander of the Imperial Japanese forces in the Philippines,
and other commanding generals insisted that they thought the city was not defendable
and directed the forces under their command to get out of the city to fight the protracted
war in the eastern mountainous area. There are, however, various conflicting accounts
on what exactly the Japanese defense forces in the city were ordered (or understood they
were ordered). After all, Manila was not declared as an “open city” and approximately
20,000 army and navy soldiers deployed as Manila Defense Forces remained in the city,
determined to fight to the last against the U.S. forces.5 Some of the city’s non-combatant
civilians, sensing the danger of the urban battle, evacuated the city. The bulk of
downtown residents, however, chose to stay, partly because they did not expect the
battle would become so deadly and partly because they thought it would be safer to stay
within the inner city where there were many fireproof buildings and large residences for
them to take shelter during the coming battle.

4
“Starvation in Manila.” Sydney Morning Herald, 26 January 1945, 1.
5
Connaughton, et al., 70-1; Maehara Toru. Manira Bo’eisen: Nihongun no Toshi no
Tatatakai [The Battle of Manila Defense: The Japanese Forces Urban Combat].
Tokyo: Boei Kenshujo [National Defense Institute], 1982, 59-133.
By Sword and Fire
The battle started on 3 February 1945 with US liberation of some 3,700 Allied civilian
internees, mostly Americans, at Santo Tomas University Internment Camp in the
northern part of the city. The almost bloodless liberation was made possible through
careful negotiation between the Americans and a Japanese unit that took 200 internees
as hostages. This would stand in stark contrast to the near-total neglect of civilian lives
in the subsequent month-long urban warfare. Japanese forces torched the Tondo district,
blasted the North Harbor facilities, and destroyed the bridges in their chaotic retreat to
the south of Pasig River, which then became the major battle zone between the two
forces. By 12 February 1945, the U.S. forces led by the 37th Infantry, 1st Cavalry and
11th Airborne Division completely besieged the downtown area in the south of Pasig
River, i.e., Intramuros, Ermita and Malate districts, which would become fierce
battlegrounds and horrendous scenes of Japanese war crimes. U.S. heavy artillery
barrage launched from the outskirts of the city wiped out most of the flammable
structures in the area, while Japanese forces continued to hold major buildings of solid
construction until being annihilated by shelling or after close combat. Intramuros
remained a nightmarish battle zone while the residents and refugees endured a
seemingly never-ending hostage crisis, atrocities at the hands of the Japanese, and U.S.
shelling. The governmental buildings between Intramuros and Ermita districts became
the last strongholds of the Japanese defense forces; the structures were shelled to ruins
by the U.S. artillery fire. It was on 3 March 1945 that the U.S. troops took the Finance
Building after mopping up all the Japanese soldiers remaining inside and thus
effectively finishing the Battle of Manila.6
The body count of Japanese soldiers was recorded as 16,665, whereas
American forces counted 1,010 killed and 5,565 wounded. While there were no official
statistics for the loss of civilian lives, the postwar Philippine government cited one

6
On detailed accounts and chronology of the battle, see Aluit, Connaughton, et al. and
Scott.
hundred thousand as the estimated number of non-combatant civilian deaths.7 The
Philippine National Artist Nick Joaquin used the words “by sword and fire” in the last
lines of his play A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino (1966) to describe how the battle
brought about “the death” to “the old Manila.8” “Sword” signifies the Japanese soldiers’
bayonets, used to kill so many civilians during the battle, whereas “fire” signifies both
the fire of Japanese machine-guns, grenades, and mines and, even more poignantly, the
destruction of U.S. shelling. Military historians estimate the U.S. shelling might have
been responsible for as much as the 40% of civilian deaths,9 arguing that MacArthur’s
politically motivated impatience for victory and the field officers’ urge to use the
heavier artillery in order to minimize U.S. casualties should be blamed for allowing the
massive and unnecessary collateral damage to the civilians, who “stoically and
philosophically accepted decimation” of their families by the American artillery.10 In
one case, at the Remedios Hospital in Malate on 12 and 13 February 1945, apparently
misdirected shelling killed almost four hundred civilians in or around the hospital.11
Criticism on the U.S. shelling, however, does not change the fact that mass
killings and other atrocities committed by the Japanese forces constituted the primary
cause of the civilian casualties. In order to secure the operational positions against U.S.
forces and to eliminate the hostile population that certainly would have assisted them
in the coming battle, Japan’s Manila Defense Forces indiscriminately killed people
using bayonets, machine guns, grenades, and by setting fires. Japanese defendants in
the war crimes trials as well as the surviving veterans all acknowledged the tactical
difficulties in distinguishing guerrillas from civilians. The magnitude of atrocities
committed by the Japanese forces during the battle, however, could hardly be justified

7
Robert Ross Smith. United States Army in World War II. The War in the Pacific:
Triumph in the Philippines. Washington DC: Office of the Chief of Military History,
Dept. of the Army, 1963, 306–7.
8
Nick Joaquin. A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino (An Elegy in Three Scenes). Manila:
MCS Enterprises, Inc., 1966, 116.
9
Cannaughton, et al, 121.
10
Ibid., 174.
11
Ibid., 145; Pedro M. Picornell. The Remedios Hospital, 1942-1945: A Saga of
Malate. Manila: De La Salle University, 1995.
or explained by such claims. The surviving records of the military telegrams
exchanged between the Tokyo Imperial General Headquarters and the Army and Naval
defense forces in Manila suggest that some of the Japanese units deemed it appropriate
to report the slaughter of the civilians as their military achievements while the units
could not reach the front lines and engage in close combat with the U.S. forces.12

3. Authenticity of Victimhood in the Battle of Manila

War Crimes Investigation

The victims of the Battle of Manila in particular and of the Philippines in general had a
good reason for believing that authenticity of their victimhood is beyond controversy,
since they could believe that their victimization had been well established through war
crimes investigation conducted immediately after liberation and subsequent military
tribunals. Certainly, the investigation reports of the war crimes committed by the
Japanese forces during the Battle of Manila might well be counted among the most
extensive and accurate among all the World War II war crimes investigation reports as
far as establishing facts from the victims’ perspectives is concerned. This is partly
because the atrocities took place exactly during the time and on the grounds that U.S.
forces in each theater were busily organizing war crimes investigation units in
preparation for future prosecutions. In accordance with the establishment of United
Nations War Crime Commissions in 1943, the Judge Advocate General (JAG) of the
U.S. Army established the War Crimes Office in Washington, D.C. in October 1944
and ordered the commander of each theater, including SWPA, to establish a war-crimes
branch at the judge-advocate section in each headquarters.13

12
Some of the after-action reports of sneak attacks [kirikomi] found in the Japanese
Army and Navy telegrams seem to support this theory. See Hayashi Yoshifumi.
“Shiryo Shokai: Nihongun no Meirei Denpo ni miru Manira-sen [Introduction of
Documents: Battle of Manila as Seen in Japanese Forces Orders and Telegrams].”
Shizen-Ningen-Shakai 48 (2010): 69–95.
13
Greg Badsher. “The Exploitation of Captured and Seized Japanese Records Relating
to War Crimes, 1942–1945.” in Edward Drea, et.al. Researching Japanese War Crimes
Records: Introductory Essays. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records
Administration, 2006; “Establishment of War Crimes Office.” 25 December 1944.
 The atrocities also took place exactly in the locations being approached by
U.S. forces and where the liberation was therefore imminent. As early as 25 February
and into the first week of March 1945, the XIV Army Corps Inspector General Office
conducted a preliminary investigation into the alleged Japanese atrocities in Manila.
Colonel Emil Krause, the officer in charge, made multiple rounds of interviews at such
hospitals as Psychopathic, Quezon, San Lazaro, and Chinese General as well as at the
University of Santo Tomas, where the survivors were taken care of immediately after
the liberations. Testimonies were compiled into a report dated 9 April 1945 that was
submitted to the Manila War Crimes Branch,14 which would later conduct full-scale
investigations in order to establish the cases of all the Japanese war crimes in the
Philippines in preparation for future prosecutions and war crimes trials.
One important example is that of the De La Salle College massacre between 7
and 14 February 1945, one of the well-known cases of Japanese atrocities during the
battle. Colonel Krause recorded testimonies as early as on 2 March 1945 at San Lazaro
Hospital and on 7 March 1945 at Santo Tomas University.15 The full investigation by
the Manila Branch followed and resulted in the report No. 27, dated 4 July 1945, which
gathered numerous documents, including 23 duly sworn statements and 33 photo
exhibits. The report concluded that 15 “Brothers” of German and other nationalities, 16
Filipino and five Spanish civilian refugees and college employees were murdered, and
the College President Brother Xavier who was an Irish national, as well as four other
Filipino civilian refugees and college employees were presumed killed. The report
concluded that “[t]he brutal and savage manner in which the wholesale execution was

RG153: Records of the Judge Advocate General (Army), Entry 145, Box 73. U.S.
National Archives at College Park (NACP).
14
“Report of Investigation of Alleged Atrocities by Members of the Japanese Imperial
Forces in Manila and Other Parts of Luzon, Philippine Islands Made by Colonel Emil
Krause, IGD, and Lieutenant Colonel R. Graham Bosworth, IGD, Headquarters, XIV
Corps.” 9 April 1945. RG331: Records of Allied Operational and Occupation
Headquarters, World War II, Entry 1358, Box 1993. NACP.
15
“Testimony of Miss Emiliana Gonzaga taken at San Lazaro Hospital, Manila, on 2
March 1945,” in Ibid.: Exhibits, 35; “Testimony of Father Francis J. Cosgrave,
Redemptorist [sic] Monastery, taken at Santo Tomas University, Manila, on 7 March
1945,” in Ibid.: Exhibits, 69–70.
conducted is revealed by the indiscriminate bayonetting and killing of women and
children and the later attempt to violate wounded and dead victims” and that the
perpetrators, if and when identified and apprehended, would be tried and the Imperial
Japanese Government held responsible for the crimes.16
In this way, the investigating officers obtained detailed and first-hand accounts
from the surviving victims and witnesses of mass killings and rape. The war-crimes
investigation report (Manila Report No. 94) concluded that in Intramuros alone 132
Spanish nationals, despite being citizens of a neutral country, were killed as were 104
Dutch, American, English, Spanish, Chinese, and Filipino patients and members of the
medical staff at San Juan de Dios Hospital; in addition, approximately 50 female and
2,000 male Filipino civilians were presumed to have been killed by Japanese forces.17
The investigation also exposed numerous cases of atrocities around Ermita and Malate
districts, including the Red Cross Building (Manila Report No. 11: more than 50
murdered victims); St. Paul’s college (No. 53: 432), Paco (No. 59: 400), German Club
(No. 66: 500), Price House (No. 70: 100), Rubio Residence (No. 13: 29), and other
fire-resistant buildings and residences in those districts. Rapes were rampant and well
organized. Especially in the case of the Bay View Hotel in Ermita district (No. 61), at
least 40 women were systematically gang-raped; girls of apparently Caucasian
appearance were disproportionately targeted.18

Public Trial of Yamashita Tomoyuki

These reports were compiled by the prosecution’s in preparation for the public trial of
General Yamashita Tomoyuki held in Manila during 29 October to 7 December 1945.

16
“Manila Report No. 27: Investigation of The Massacre of 41 Civilians; Attempted
Murder of 15 Civilians, All of Various Nationalities; Rape and Attempted Rape of 4
Filipinos at De La Salle College, 1501 Taft Avenue, Manila, Philippine Islands,
between 7 and 14 February 1945.” 4 July 1945. RG331, Entry 1214, Box 1110. NACP.
17
“Manila Report No. 94: Atrocities committed by Japanese at Intramuros, Manila,
P.I., during February 1945.” 30 October 1945. RG331, Entry 1214, Box 1118. NACP.
18
Scott, 261-8; Hayashi Hirofumi. “Manira-sen to Beibyu Hoteru Jiken [The Battle of
Manila and Bay View Hotel Case].” Shizen-Ningen-Shakai 52 (2012): 49–83.
Yamashita was accused of “willful disregard and failure to discharge his duty” to take
control as commander in preventing his subordinates from committing the war
crimes.19 The trial opened at “the shell-scarred ballroom at the High Commissioner’s
Residence on Dewey Boulevard,”20 only a few blocks from the scenes of horrendous
war crimes in Ermita. During the first week of the public trial, such witnesses, among
others, as the following testified: the movie star Corazon Noble (Patricia Abad), whose
ten-month-old daughter was bayoneted three times and slowly died in her arms at the
Red Cross Building, Father Francis J. Cosgrave, a survivor of the De La Salle
Massacre, victims of the Bay View Hotel rapes and the inhabitants of Ermita/Malate
districts who lost their friends and families. 21 After five weeks, the military
commission found Yamashita guilty and sentenced him to death by hanging. The
Supreme Court of the United States refused the defendant’s appeal in a five-to-two
decision, and Yamashita was hanged on 23 February 1946.
Ever since the verdict, the trial has been criticized as unfair, hastily arranged,
and even as an act of personal revenge by Douglas MacArthur. The argument is that
Yamashita was hanged not for what he did but for what he failed to do.22 U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy reflected this criticism in his dissenting opinion,
writing, “[t]he recorded annals of warfare and the established principles of
international law afford not the slightest precedent for such a charge.”23 It should be
noted, however, that even Yamashita’s defense counsel accepted most of the
prosecution’s evidence establishing the facts that war crimes were committed by the

19
On Yamashita Trial, see Richard L. Lael. The Yamashita Precedent: War Crimes and
Command Responsibility. Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1982.
20
“Yamashita Charged With 123 Crimes as Trial Begins Today.” Manila Times, 29
October 1945, 1.
21
United States vs Tomoyuki Yamashita, Public Trial, Proceedings, Vol.2-8. 29
October to 3 November 1945. RG331, Entry 1327, Box 1720, NACP.
22
One of the early and important criticism was given by A. Frank Reel, who was a
government-appointed defense counsel for Yamashita: A. Frank Reel. The Case of
General Yamashita. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949.
23
Supreme Court of the United States. Application of Yamashita (1946), No. 61. 4
February 1946. 327 US 1. http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/327/1.html
(all the website links cited in this chapter were last accessed on 31 July 2019).
Japanese forces under his command. Of the 123 war crime case reports submitted to
the military commission, 42 reports were related to the Battle of Manila, which found
“[o]ver 8,000 men, women and children, all unarmed, non-combatant civilians were
killed and over 7,000 mistreated, maimed and wounded without cause or trial.”
Yamashita was also accused of other war crimes committed under his command
throughout the Philippines, especially in the area surrounding Manila, including the
killing of more than 16,000 people in Batangas province alone; hundreds in Bulacan;
3,000 in Laguna; and 750 in La Union. The Battle of Manila was just the tip of the
iceberg.24
In total, the Manila Branch compiled more than 350 official investigation
reports plus thousands of closed case reports by the beginning of 1947. An undated
memorandum prepared by the JAG War Crimes Office suggests that the grand total of
the Filipino civilian victims reported in these investigation reports amounted to more
than 91,000. 25 It was usually very difficult, however, to identify the individual
perpetrators on the ground, and especially so in the Manila atrocity cases, because the
most witnesses encountered the perpetrators for the first time in the midst of the
chaotic battle, and most of the perpetrators were presumed to have been killed by the
time the investigation took place. Many cases were thus eventually closed without
having apprehended the actual perpetrators of the crimes.

Urban Elite as Victims

Another reason why Japanese atrocity during the Battle of Manila became one of the
most accurately recorded war crimes is because the survivors of the month-long urban
battle included urban and affluent elites, both Filipino and foreign. Warfare in general

24
General Headquarters, U.S. Army Forces, Pacific, Office of the Theater Judge
Advocate. “Review of the Record of Trial by a Military Commission of Tomoyuki
Yamashita, General, Imperial Japanese Army.” 26 December 1945. RG331, Entry 1327,
Box 1720, NACP.
25
89,818 murdered, 1,258 tortured, 7 starvations and neglect and 101 mistreatment
and other assaults. War Crimes Office, “Inf. Re Statistical Reports and Post Trial
Activities (general),” 116–20. Undated. RG153, Entry 145, Box 111, NACP.
tends to victimize the less privileged because more means are available for the affluent
to save themselves. In Manila, however, the privileged and the affluent—including
European foreign nationals, and even Germans and neutral Spanish—could not escape
the atrocities and were even targeted by the Japanese soldiers.
<The picture> may be of some help in understanding what happened to urban
elite families during the battle. The picture was taken on 19 February 2011 at the
annual memorial service held by Memorare Manila 1945, an event to be discussed later
in this chapter. Ambassador Miguel Perez-Rubio (“1” in photo) was the only member
of his family not killed by the Imperial Japanese Marines during the Perez-Rubio
Residence Massacre on 12 February 1945 (Miguel was fighting in the outskirts of
Manila as a guerrilla at the time).26 Ambassador Juan Jose Rocha (2) lost his mother to
the U.S. shelling and eleven members of his family during the Japanese massacre. Ms.
Lourdes R. Montinola (3), the daughter of Far Eastern University founder Dr. Nicanor
Reyes, lost her parents and two siblings during the Japanese attack on their residence,
about which she published a memoir in 1996.27 Ambassador Isabel Caro Wilson (4),
then fourteen years old, barely escaped rape by the Japanese officers at the Bay View
Hotel and became the witness of the horrific group rape case. Ms. Gemma Cruz
Araneta (5), who won Miss International 1964, lost her grandfather and father as well
as many of her relatives by Japanese massacres and U.S. shelling.
The urban elite of Manila’s dwellers exemplified above, having been affluent
and thus able to afford better education, were deemed more reliable witnesses in the
war crimes investigation as well as at the courtrooms. They also have had more
opportunities to disseminate what they want to tell about their experiences throughout
the postwar years especially since the mid-1990s, by writing for newspaper columns,

26
“Manila Report No.13: Alleged Shooting, Bayonetting and Burning of Civilians at
the Perez Rubio Residence, 150 Vito Cruz Street, Singalong, Manila, Philippine
Islands, on 12 February 1945.” RG331, Entry 1214, Box 1109, NACP; Miguel A.
Perez-Rubio. Nine Lives: The Reminiscences of Miguel A. Perez-Rubio. Manila: Vibal
Foundation, 2017.
27
Lourdes R. Montinola. Breaking the Silence (Philippine Writers Series). Quezon
City: University of the Philippines Press, 1996.
publishing memoirs, novels, poems, theatrical plays, and so on, which have tried to
convey their feelings that the Battle of Manila not only physically destroyed the city
but left its inhabitants with incurable trauma of massacre, ruining their culture and the
way of life. Indeed, the survivors and the bereaved did not have the enthusiasm to
rebuild their lives on the very site of their traumatic experience. By the end of the
1960s, the bulk of the city’s affluent evacuated to the newly fortified gated
communities in suburban Makati, while Ermita/Malate became one of the Asia’s
largest pleasure districts, attracting the foreign tourists including Japanese for sex
28
tourism.

4. Reconciliation and Forgetting

Animosity to Amnesia: A Remarkable Transformation

Japanese people in the early postwar years had plenty of opportunities to learn the
history of Japanese atrocities during the Battle of Manila. The public trial of Yamashita
received much publicity in Japan because of Yamashita’s popularity as a war hero.
During the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1946–1948), prosecution of
Japanese war crimes in Manila and the Philippines in general (“Philippine phase”) was
given five days session, which was remembered by those Japanese present at the
proceedings as “the most disturbing scene for me at the tribunal”; “One unbelievable
fact after another… It was one of the most awful four days I’ve ever spent.”29
Another focal point of Japanese historical memory regarding Manila grew out
of Nagai Takashi’s important book, The Bells of Nagasaki (Nagasaki no Kane). This
moving account, authored by a Christian radiologist involved in rescue efforts despite
being severely wounded himself, was published in 1949 and became the first
28
One early and outstanding example speaking out about their ordeal is Carmen
Guerrero Nakpil, who survived the battle as a pregnant woman with an infant daughter
Gemma (5): Nakano Satoshi. “Methods to Avoid Speaking the Unspeakable: Carmen
Guerrero Nakpil, the Death of Manila, and Post-World War II Filipino Memory and
Mourning.” Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies Vol.48 No.1 (January 2017): 27-41.
29
Recollections by Takigawa Masajiro and Fuji Nobuo: Nagai Hitoshi. “The Tokyo
War Crimes Trial,” in Ikehata Setsuho and Lydia N. Yu Jose, eds. Philippines-Japan
Relations. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2003, 280.
bestselling book in postwar Japan. The publication, however, was allowed by General
Headquarters, Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (GHQ/SCAP) on the
condition that the book should include an appendix entitled “The Tragedy of Manila,”
compilation of Japanese translation of affidavits gathered by Colonel Emil Krause
during the preliminary investigation.30
Given the depth of pain the Philippines suffered during the Japanese
occupation and the war, it was only natural for the Filipino people to harbor deep
animosity towards Japan for decades afterwards. The level of bilateral exchange
continued to be restrained to the minimum for more than a decade after the war.
Yukawa Morio, the first postwar Japanese Ambassador to the Philippine Republic,
recalled that when he was assigned there in 1957, “although I had prepared, I was so
surprised at the depth of the bad feeling towards Japan.31”
With this deep-seeded resentment in mind, it might seem to be a diplomatic
miracle that the Japanese government portrayed the Philippines in a press brief in 2016
as “currently the most Japan-friendly-and-collaborating country, having overcome the
obstacles connected with the past tragedy.”32 On the other hand, the Battle of Manila
in particular and the Battle of the Philippines in general has gradually but steadily
disappeared not only from Japanese collective memory but also from the shared
narratives between the two nations, as wartime past has seldom been referred to by the
government officials on the table of bilateral issues. In other words, Japan’s recent
relations with the Philippines can be characterized as an “amity through amnesia” that
contrasts greatly with the discord or “rekishi mondai [history issues]” that exists
between Japan and Japan’s Northeast Asian neighbors, which forces Japanese to face

30
Nagai Takashi. Nagasaki no Kane: Manila no Higeki [The Bells of Nagasaki:
Tragedy of Manila]. Tokyo: Hibiya Shuppan, 1949.
31
Tsuchitan Naotoshi, ed. Yamayukaba Kusamusu Kabane [Corpses among the Weeds
on the Hill]. Tokyo: Nippon Izokukai, 1965, 91.
32
Gaimusho Nanto Ajia 2-ka [Foreign Ministry Second Southeast Asian Division].
“Firipin Kyowakoku no Gaiyo [Outline of the Republic of the Philippines].” January
2016. This is a press brief material distributed to the Japanese media on the Emperor
and the Empress’s state visit to the Philippines.
up to the past connected with Japanese colonial rule in Korea (1910-1945) and the
Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), whenever unsettled past war issues, such as
history textbooks, comfort women, conscripted workers, the number of victims during
the Nanjing Massacre and the Yasukuni shrine controversies, arose.33

Conditions of Reconciliation: Victory and Punishment

Several factors have likely enabled the Philippines and the Filipino people to move
gradually towards more recent forgiveness. Above all, there is no room to question
about the relationship between Japan and the Philippines during World War II as being
the one between a perpetrator and a victim. While the U.S. responsibility for
indiscriminate shelling and bombing could certainly be debated, it would not at all
change the victimizer/victimized relationship between Japan and the Philippines.
Ironically enough, this irrefutable relationship may have made it far more easier for
Japanese to position themselves as an apologizer asking for mercy and forgiveness
from Filipinos, than asking for the same from Koreans and Chinese, with whom
contents of apology and necessity of repeating them have been viewed as more
divisive issues in Japanese contemporary politics.34
Second, the Philippines and the Filipino people defeated the enemy and
liberated themselves by fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Americans and driving
the Japanese out of their soil. The subsequent war crimes trials, first conducted by the
United States and later passed to the Philippine government,35 gave the Filipinos the
opportunity to not only punish Japanese war criminals but also show mercy by
33
On the East Asia’s recent “rekishi mondai (history issues)” in general, see Togo
Kazuhiko and Hasegawa Tsuyoshi, eds. East Asia’s Haunted Present: Historical
Memories and Resurgence of Nationalism. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2008;
Thomas Berger. War, Guilt, and World Politics after World War II. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2012.
34
See Berger, 175–229.
35
The U.S. military tribunals held in Manila tried 215 alleged Japanese war criminals,
195 of whom were found guilty, 92 were sentenced to death and 69 were executed. The
Philippines military tribunals tried 151; 137 were found guilty, 79 were sentenced to
death and 17 were executed. Eventually, 108 Japanese war criminals were granted
amnesty and repatriated to Japan in 1953: Hayashi (2005), 61, 83; Nagai (2010), 8.
commuting sentences, by repatriating the accused and finally by granting them
executive clemency by President Elpidio Quirino in December 1953. It was a
well-known fact in the Philippines and even in Japan that President Quirino lost his
wife and the three out of five children during the battle.36 Having been able to exert
agency through the above-mentioned experiences of victory, punishment, and
clemency on Filipinos’ own initiative might well have made it psychologically more
acceptable for the nation to gradually move forward to reconciliation.

Victimhood as a Diplomatic Weapon

Third, despite the experiences of pain and resentment, the Philippines could not, during
the Cold War, afford to overlook the need for Japan as a potential ally belonging to the
same U.S.-led anti-communist bloc. The San Francisco Peace Treaty Conference in
September 1951 offered an opportunity for the Philippines to accept this reality. On the
other hand, the country was also able to use its victimhood as a powerful diplomatic
weapon. During the pre-conference negotiations, the Philippine government strongly
opposed to the American proposal of no reparations from Japan, having the U.S.
government withdraw its earlier proposal and accept clauses pertaining to Japanese
reparation in the Peace Treaty be retained.37 The provisions of reparation, however,
was still too generous to Japan and Secretary of Foreign Affairs Carlos P. Romulo
voiced serious reservations on the provisions, stating: “we do not pretend that the
attitude of the Filipino people towards Japan has been completely untouched by
emotion. We would be less than human to make such a claim.”38 Nishimura Kumao
(then the director of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s Treaty Division) recalled it was so
painful to listen to the speech “showing how deep their hatred and distrust of Japan

36
On Quirino family’s ordeal, see Aluit, 217–8.
37
Ohno Takushi. War reparations and peace settlement: Philippines-Japan relations
1945-1956. Manila: Solidaridad Pub. House, 1986.
38
“Excerpts of Speeches Delivered by Delegates at the Japanese Peace Treaty
Conference.” New York Times, 8 September 1951.
 39
was.”
The Philippines signed the peace treaty but declared to postpone its
ratification pending the conclusion of reparation agreement. Philippines and Japan then
tackled the difficult but necessary negotiation of the agreement, which was finally
concluded in May 1956 and ratified along with the peace treaty, which led to the
normalization of diplomatic relations in July of the same year. The amount of
reparations, equivalent to US$550 million plus a twenty-year payment of US$250
million, was the largest reparation package agreed between Japan and the signatories of
the Peace Treaty.40
During the consideration of the reparation agreement in Japan’s Diet, the
opposition Socialist Party criticized the proposed amount as “excessive,” while Kotaki
Akira, a governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Councilor who was sent to the
Philippines during the war as a diplomat, countered, “even 8 billion U.S. dollars (the
initial claim by the Philippine government) was not baseless. We should express our
respect for their statesmanship reaching a compromise with this moderate amount of
reparation.”41 In the decades after the war, it was not uncommon to find Japanese like
Councilor Kotaki in key positions who were sensitive enough, based on their own
contemporary knowledge and experiences, to accept the victimhood narrative spoken
by the Philippine government. The reparation agreement paved the way for the two
countries to forge stable and mutually beneficial economic relations that continue to
date. The Philippines has been ranked the fourth-largest recipient of Japanese official
development assistance (ODA) programs in terms of accumulated total amount of the

39
Nishimura Kumao. Nihon Gaiko-shi 27: San Francisco Heiwa Jouyaku [Japan’s
Diplomatic History Vol. 27: San Francisco Peace Treaty]. Tokyo: Kashima Kenkyusho
Shuppankai, 1971, 267.
40
US $200 million for Burma (concluded in November 1955), 223 million for
Indonesia (January 1958) and 39 million for Vietnam (May 1959): Miki Y. Ishikida.
Toward Peace: War Responsibility, Postwar Compensation and Peace Movements and
Education in Japan. New York: iUniverse, 2005, 27.
41
Sangi’in Gaiko I’inkai [House of Councilors, Foreign Relations Committee], 3 June
1956, retrieved from Kokkai Kaigiroku Kensaku System [Diet Proceedings Search
System] http://kokkai.ndl.go.jp/
bilateral assistance, while Japan has long been both the greatest ODA donor and one of
the top-trading partners for the Philippines.42

A Virtuous Circle of Apology and Forgiveness

With bilateral relations gradually improving, more Japanese tourists began to visit the
Philippines, especially after the Japanese government liberalized foreign travel in 1964.
Interestingly, the Philippine government and the Filipino people as a whole would soon
find that showing the visiting Japanese their forgiveness and kindness without referring
to the horrific past could prove effective in establishing positive relations with them.
One of the most publicized path-breaking experiences was Prince Akihito and Princess
Michiko’s visit in 1962. The royal couple as well as the embedded Japanese press
corps were fully prepared for demonstrations of animosity by Filipinos but were
greeted with a warm welcome and few visible signs of protest. This very much
impressed the royal visitors as well as the Japanese press, who in return expressed deep
gratitude for their hosts’ generosity.43
The royal couple’s experience was not a privileged exception, but rather
would be shared widely among Japanese visitors, especially surviving Japanese
veterans and the bereaved families. Because of the vast number of Japanese who died
in the Philippines during the war—some 518,000 (combatant and non-combatant
combined)44—commemorative events by the Japanese were more widely held in the
Philippines than in any other country outside Japan. The Japanese built more than 400
memorials to their war dead throughout the Philippine Islands.45 Many also visited the

42
Gaimusho, “Firipin Kyowakoku Kihon Deta [Basic Information of the Republic of
the Philippines].” http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/area/philippines/data.html#section6
43
Mainichi Shimbun, 13 November 1962, evening edition, 2; Shoji Junichiro, “Joko
Jokogo Ryo Heika no Firipin Gohomon: Irei no Tabi no Shutaisei toshite [The Visit of
Their Majesties the Emperor Emeritus and Empress Emerita to the Philippines: as the
final compilation of pilgrimage tours],” NIDS Commentary 98 (6 June 2019): 2-3.
44
Koseisho Shakai Engo Kyoku [Ministry of Health and Welfare Bureau of Social
Welfare and War Victim’s Relief Bureau], ed. Engo 50 nenshi [Fifty Years of War
Victim Relief]. Tokyo: Gyosei, 1997, 578-9.
45
Firipin Senbotsusha Ireihi Hozon Kyoukai [Philippine War Memorial Preservation
country joining the government-sponsored missions to recover the remains
(“ikotsu-shushu,” literally meaning bone collecting) and/or “pilgrimage tours” to
former battle sites. The visitors generally were aware, or told to be aware, that they
should be sensitive, well behaved, and apologetic about what harm Japan as a nation, if
not their dead loved ones in particular, inflicted on the Philippines. Local Filipino
communities were and continue to be mostly welcoming and accept the Japanese
visitors, showing forgiveness and astonishing levels of hospitality. Japanese visitors
often tried to show their gratitude by bringing gifts, offering support to local
communities through donations to elementary schools, and so on. While such cases as
“trade” in human bones, arrogant attitudes of some of the veteran tourists and bone
gathering missions show the relation between the pilgrim tourists and their hosts did
not always deserve such reciprocity, positive efforts to maintain reciprocity in many
cases developed into important grassroots, locally based non-governmental civic
exchange between the two nations.46
As early as the 1980s, the pattern which we may call “a virtuous circle of
apology and forgiveness” became an established pattern even at the national level,
where the Japanese side would demonstrate remorse and the Philippine side would
accept it in good faith. When Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro visited the Philippines
in May 1983, he was so moved by the welcoming crowds (apparently mobilized by
then-dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos) that he personally redrafted his banquet speech, in
which he said, “our country deeply regrets and repents having caused your country and
people such trouble in the past war. The more you treat us with warm friendliness and
generosity, the deeper should we repent and castigate ourselves.” 47 Another
noteworthy event occurred during President Corazon Aquino’s state visit to Japan in
November 1986, when Japan’s Emperor Hirohito allegedly “kept apologizing for what
the Japanese caused the Philippines” while Ms. Aquino told the Emperor “to forget

Association, Inc.] http://www.pwmemorial.gr.jp/index3.htm

46
For more details on the Japanese memorialization practices in the Philippines, see
Nakano Satoshi. “Politics of Mourning,” in Ikehata and Jose eds., 337–376.
47
Asahi Shimbun, 5 May 1983, morning edition, 1.
about this.”48
An equally important fact is that the Japan’s largest war bereaved family
association, Nippoin Izokukai [Japan War Bereaved Association, hereinafter JWBA],
has shared much of the above-mentioned experiences in their very satisfactory
relations with the Philippines, which was well summarized in Itagaki Tadashi’s address
at the 1977 memorial ceremony held in front of the “Memorial for the War Dead in the
Philippines” in Carilaya Memorial Park, the first war dead memorial built by Japanese
government on foreign soil in 1973.

Sincerity and truthfulness of the war bereaved families has opened a

way to heart-to-heart exchange between our two nations, transcending
love and hate and leading to the establishment of amicable relationships
due to the efforts of people in the both countries. This is ample proof of
the fact that EI’REI [those who died heroically] on both sides will live
forever as the foundations of peace.49

Such satisfaction as expressed by one of the top JWBA officials, who would
later be elected to House of Councilor as a LDP politician advocating the prime
ministers’ official visit to the Yasukuni Shrine and other conservative nationalist causes,
had a significant political implication. While those politicians, many of them relying
on the JWBA’s support for their election bids, used to express strong resentment
concerning the Japanese “diplomacy of apology” towards China and Korea especially
during the 1980s to 1990s, it was and has been hardly possible to find any complaints
grumbled by the same politicians on the postwar Japanese-Filipino apologizer-forgiver
relationship. The absence of violent language on history issues is significant because it
has made the Japanese relations with the Philippines much less strained than the ones

48
Washington Post, 11 November 1986, A23. There have been conflicting accounts on
what exactly the Showa Emperor Hirohito spoke to Corazon Aquino at the meeting:
Shoji, 3.
49
Nippon Izoku Tsushin [Journal of Japan War Bereaved Association], No.313
(February 1977).
with China and Korea.
There is, however, the flip side to this story of reconciliation. The virtuous
circle of apology and forgiveness may have worked very well among the
contemporaries who know what happened in the war. The relationship worked,
however, not so much to preserve the war memories but rather to quicken erasure of
them without any institutionalized memory being transferred to subsequent generations.
Consequently, Japanese public memory of their war in the Philippines has been
wearing dangerously thin, even to a level of near-total amnesia among the younger
population, which has learned little about the wartime past. In the short term,
suppressing ugly memories and encouraging both parties to forget them may prompt
relaxation of tensions and creation of mutual amity. In the long run, however, erasure
of war memories may result in unsettling the bases of mutual understandings about the
past.

5. Commemoration and Protest against Forgetting

Memorare Manila 1945 and the 50th Anniversary

For the survivors and the bereaved of Japanese atrocities during the Battle of Manila,
the master narrative of Filipino-Japanese bi-national reconciliation may have had a
twofold effect on what they have been concerned about. On one hand, the authenticity
of their victimhood has been intact because it has seldom encountered challenges from
Japanese rightwing revisionists. On the other hand, absence of controversy without
public efforts of remembrance resulted in allowing Japan and the world to forget the
tragedy. By the 1990s, it became apparent in the eyes of the survivors and the bereaved
that the Battle of Manila had almost completely lost recognition/publicity it deserves.
The fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Manila in February 1995 marked the
beginning of protest against forgetting. The Memorare Manila 1945 Foundation
(hereafter “Memorare”)—a private and non-profit organization founded by the battle’s
survivors and the bereaved— erected a monument that commemorates the
non-combatant victims during the battle. The foundation was created in October 1993
with the aim of “the gathering of the names of the non-combatant who died in the
battle for the liberation of Manila, the erection of a monument in Intramuros for those
victims, and the offering of a Requiem Mass for them.” Many of the foundation’s
sponsors were the urban elite survivors of the battle including those in <the picture> as
well as Victoria Quirino Delgado, Elpidio Quirino’s surviving daughter and Jaime
Zobel de Ayala, then the chairman of Ayala Corporation, the country’s real estate giant
and the largest corporation. The country’s major media as well as industrial
corporations also joined the list of sponsors.50
For the first project, the gathering of the names of the non-combatant victims,
Memorare were able to gather thousands of the victims’ names, with abundant and
specific information on how they were killed (whether by Japanese massacre or by U.S.
fire, etc.), frequently with diaries and personal accounts on the battle attached. These
materials are now stored and available for the public and researchers at the Filipinas
Heritage Library in Makati, Metro Manila.51
The foundation’s primary aim was to build the monument in Intramuros,
which was unveiled on 18 February 1995 at Plazuela de Santa Isabel in Intramuros.
The monument, created by sculptor Peter de Guzman, features eight figures: a hooded
woman weeping for a dead child in her arms at the center and six other figures in each
way expressing the anguish and pain of innocent victims of war. The monument’s
inscription composed by Nick Joaquin reads:

This memorial is dedicated to all these innocent victims of war, many of

whom went nameless and unknown to a common grave, or never even
knew a grave at all, their bodies having been consumed by fire or
crushed to dust beneath the rubble of ruins.
Let this monument be the gravestone for each and every one of the over
100,000 men, women, children and infants killed in Manila during its
Battle of Liberation February 3 – March 3, 1945. We have not forgotten

50
Memorare Manila 1945 Brochure, 1995. Memorare Manila 1945 Papers, Filipinas
Heritage Library, Makati, Metro Manila.
51
Memorare Manila 1945 Papers, Filipinas Heritage Library, Metro Manila.
 them, nor shall we ever forget.
May they rest in peace as part now of the sacred ground of this city: the
Manila of our affections.
February 18, 1995

The dedication of the monument was followed by a requiem mass at the

nearby Manila Cathedral in the evening “to honor the non-combatants who perished in
the Battle for Manila.” Mozart’s Requiem was sung with the Philippine Philharmonic
Orchestra, and Jaime Cardinal Sin acted as main celebrant. One of the Prayers of the
Faithful, apparently addressed to the Japanese perpetrators, was read by Mr. Fernando
Vasquez-Prada, who was five years old at the time of the De La Salle College
Massacre and the sole survivor of his family of six:

For those who killed and

Raped and slaughtered that
they may acknowledge
their guilt and seek forgiveness
let us pray to the Lord52

The Philippines’ media coverage of these commemorative events was large

enough to mark the beginning of restoring the battle’s place in the collective memory
while there was no coverage on these events in Japan, nor would be any, for more than a
decade to come.

The 60th Anniversary and Japan’s Preventive Diplomacy

Ever since the dedication of the monument, Memorare and its members have tried to
influence the public and the government by sponsoring events such as annual
commemorative gatherings and public lectures, themselves publishing books and
writing newspaper columns (as cited in this chapter) and making appearances on the

52
Memorare Manila 1945, “Requiem Mass (program leaflet with lyrics),” 18 February
1995.
news and documentary films. The group and its sympathizers could have become vocal
opponents of the Philippines-Japan diplomacy of mutual forgetting and almost did so on
the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary in 2005.
Maria Isabel Ongpin, a founding sponsor of Memorare, in a February 2005
column lamented that their memorial gathering had not been attended either by the
Philippine government officials or congressmen but only by the diplomatic corps from
the United States and European Union. Ongpin stressed the importance of
remembrance and thoughtful reflections of the past as a part of “universal awakening
that has risen all over the world affected by World War II.”53 The Manila Bulletin
published a letter to the editor from a person orphaned during the Battle for Manila
who protested the observance of the Philippines-Japan Friendship Month in February.54
Bambi L. Harper, a cultural writer and a columnist for the Philippine Daily Inquirer,
claimed in a November 2005 column that the Japanese government made no official
apology for past aggression, 55 which was in fact not correct but nonetheless
represented displeasure shared by the Filipino intellectuals about insufficient Japanese
attention to the Philippines in matters of war memory.
Although these columns rarely sought to rouse antagonism—and indeed even
showed objectivity and tolerance—they nevertheless represented signs of gathering
clouds that might develop into a storm if not properly addressed. Protests against
forgetting, however, did not lead to any greater conflicts between the two countries,
mostly thanks to the preventive diplomacy launched later in the year by the Japanese
Embassy. Yamazaki Ryuichiro, then the Japanese ambassador, did not participate in the
sixtieth-anniversary events but attended every major memorial gathering of the
sixty-first anniversary, with words of sincere apology beginning with the Leyte

53
Maria Isabel Ongpin. “Ambient Voices.” Today, 19 February 2005.
54
“Not in February!” Manila Bulletin, 22 February 2005. Since 2006, the Friendship
Month events have been moved to July. See Lydia N. Yu Jose. “Japan's soft power
viewed through the lens of the Philippines’ commemoration of historical events.”
Philippine Political Science Journal 33, no. 2 (2012): 146–160.
55
Bambi L. Harper. “Resentments.” Philippine Daily Inquirer, 8 November 2005.
Landing. 56 Shortly thereafter, Bambi L. Harper, almost certainly having been
approached and informed by the Embassy of Japan about the government’s official
position of apology, published a column in January 2006 that focused on the brighter
side of postwar Philippines-Japanese relations, referring to the remarks made by both
the Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro and the Ambassador Yamazaki that on several
occasions equally acknowledged “the misery brought about by Japan’s colonial rule
and aggression on the people of Southeast Asia.”57
In February 2006, Memorare held the sixty-first anniversary commemoration
with the very first attendance by the Ambassador Yamazaki, who took the opportunity
to make the following statement:

With this historical fact in mind, I would like to express my heartfelt

apologies and deep sense of remorse over the tragic fate of Manila. Let
me also reiterate the Japanese Government’s determination not to allow
the lessons of that horrible World War II to erode, and to contribute to
58
the peace and prosperity of the world without ever waging a war.

Bambi L. Harper, who was in attendance, offered the following observation:

There was hardly a dry eye in the audience when Ambassador Juan
Rocha, who lost his mother in that holocaust, remarked that it had been
difficult to forgive when there was no contrition. Yamazaki’s sincere
regrets may go a long way in healing those festering wounds.59

In this way, Japanese diplomacy successfully rescued a virtuous circle of apology and
forgiveness at least for the time being and did so with the involvement of Memorare. It

56
“Japanese Envoy Expresses Remorse over WWII.” Philippine Daily Inquirer, 21
October 2005, Section 7.
57
Bambi L. Harper. “That Time of Year.” Ibid., 25 January 2006.
58
Remarks by H.E. Ambassador Yamazaki Ryuichiro on the occasion of the 61st
Anniversary of the Battle for the Liberation of Manila at Plazuela de Santa Isabel,
Intramuros, Manila. 18 February 2006.
59
Bambi L. Harper. “Closure.” Philippine Daily Inquirer, 21 February 2006.
should also be noted, however, that the ambassador’s apology was not given any
considerable coverage in Japanese media, leaving the Japanese public unaware of of
what happened in the Philippines during the war.

The 70th Anniversary and the Emperor’s State Visit in January 2016
By the time the seventieth anniversary of the Battle of Manila in February 2015
approached, however, signs of a significant shift in the environment surrounding
historical amnesia, especially in Japan, had gradually emerged.60 In August 2007, the
first-ever major Japanese TV documentary on the battle was produced and aired by
NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), titled “Testimonies: the Urban Warfare of
Manila (Shogen Kiroku Manila Shigaisen).61” Further coverage by NHK documentaries
on the topic followed, which might moderately contribute to the increasing awareness of
the Japanese public of the battle once largely forgotten in Japan.
Another noteworthy development was that Memorare found their Japanese
counterpart in Bridge for Peace (BFP), a small, non-profit peace advocacy group of
Japanese led by the young [wakamono], predominantly individuals in their twenties and
thirties.62 The group was organized in August 2004 by Jin Naoko (“6” in photo), a
twenty-six years old Japanese woman, who launched the project by bringing video
messages from the ex-Japanese soldiers, including many who admitted their guilt and
sought forgiveness, to Filipino survivors and the bereaved of war. The group, though
small, has attracted considerable attention from Japanese media mainly because of the
uniquely nonpartisan and youthful character of the group and its activities.63 Through

60
The following observation of recent developments surrounding the seventieth
anniversary and the imperial state visit may be subject to observer bias. I have been
actively involved in the campaign for raising awareness of the Battle of Manila in
Japan in such capacity as an advisor to NHK and other newspaper journalists as well as
a mediator between Bridge for Peace and Memorare.
61
Shogen Kiroku Manila Shigaisen: Shisha 12-man, Shodo he no Ikkagetsu
[Testimonies: the Urban Warfare of Manila: 120,000 deaths, one month to the scorched
earth], DVD. Tokyo: NHK Enterprise, 2012.
62
http://bridgeforpeace.jp/aboutus/english/
63
http://bridgeforpeace.jp/quaternarycat/media/
the author’s mediation, Jin Naoko and BFP received an invitation from Memorare to
attend its annual commemoration ceremony on 19 February 2011. The Memorare
members who attended the event welcomed the first-ever Japanese invitees since the
Ambassador Yamazaki and were even consoled by their presence as described by Dr.
Benito Legarda Jr. in his article on the event.64 The group has been invited to every
annual commemoration gathering since then.
Throughout February 2015, numerous events including exhibitions, public
lectures, and film showings were held in Manila, and the Philippine government
launched the first-ever official website commemorating the Battle of Manila. 65 It
seemed that recognition of the battle as a national tragedy finally reached the level long
sought after by Memorare. On 14 February 2015, Memorare held a seventieth
anniversary ceremony, which for the very first time was covered by the major Japanese
news media and was aired on primetime news programs.66
Even further unexpected developments followed. From 2 to 5 June 2016, the
Philippine President Benigno Aquino III made a state visit to Japan and in turn invited
the Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko for a state visit to the Philippines, which was
realized in an unusually short interval, from 26 to 30 January 2016. Prime Minister Abe
Shinzo issued the statement announcing that the visit was aimed to “further strengthen
the intimate relations of friendship and goodwill” with the Philippines on the occasion of
the sixtieth anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two
countries, 67 while the Japanese media widely reported that the Emperor wished to
commemorate the war dead not only of Japan but also of the Philippines. Upon his

64
Benito Legarda Jr. “A Remarkable 66th.” Philippine Free Press, 5 March 2011, 18,
33.
65
http://malacanang.gov.ph/battle-of-manila/
66
Including the following: “Umoreta Manira Shigaisen: Shinjitsu wo [Forgotten
Battle of Manila: Seeking the Truth]” in Kokusai Hodo [International Journal],
NHK-BS1, 4 March 2015, retrieved from NHK Chronicle Database:
https://www.nhk.or.jp/archives/chronicle/index.html
67
“Statement by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Their Majesties’ Visit to the
Philippines,” 4 December 2015.
http://www.mofa.go.jp/press/release/press4e_000950.html
departure for the Philippines from the Haneda International Airport, the Emperor made a
televised address, officially referred to as “His Majesty’s words [okotoba],” in front of
the Prime Minister and others:

During World War II, countless Filipino, American, and Japanese lives
were lost in the Philippines. A great many innocent Filipino civilians
became casualties of the fierce battles fought in the city of Manila. This
history will always be in our hearts as we make this visit to the
Philippines.68

The Emperor’s mention of the Battle of Manila was entirely unexpected since it was
unprecedented for the Emperor to refer to a particular event of war as such in any of his
addresses. The Battle of Manila was thus suddenly but definitively brought out of the
decades of amnesia to the absolute recognition in the records of “His Majesty’s words,”
while critics still could say his words stopped short of making apology.
Arriving in the Philippines, the Emperor and Empress followed their words
with careful and deliberate body language; they choreographed themselves by bowing
on the stairs of the airplane, which they had not done on their 1992 state visit to China.
They also bowed deeply in front of the National Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at
Libingan ng mga Bayani (Hero’s Cemetery) for unusual length (more than a full minute),
showing their sense of remorse without uttering a word. The Philippine media warmly
embraced the aged Imperial Couple, who had returned to the Philippines after 56 years
to a very warm welcome.69 In August 2016, Akihito made a televised address to the
nation hinting that he wanted to retire and consequently abdicated in April 2019, making

68
http://www.kunaicho.go.jp/e-okotoba/01/address/speech-h28e.html#AIRPORT
69
Asahi Shimbun reported they bowed for “nearly two minutes.” Asahi Shimbun
(digital edition), 27 January 2016.
http://digital.asahi.com/articles/ASJ1N2RNTJ1NUTIL00B.html; As an example of the
favorable coverage by the Philippines media, see “Emperor urges youth to learn from
WWII.” Philippine Daily Inquirer (digital edition), 28 January 2016.
http://globalnation.inquirer.net/135733/emperor-urges-youth-to-learn-from-wwii
his Philippines state visit as the compilation of his “pilgrimage tours”.70

6. Conclusion

It may be fair to say that Memorare’s protest against forgetting and their efforts to
commemorate victimhood has been largely successful in mobilizing the media and
scholars within and outside of the Philippines—including the author, who attended the
dedication of the monument and the Requiem Mass in 1995—to devote more attention
to the battle and its historical significance. Akihito’s 2016 “okotoba” and state visit to
the Philippines might have offered an opportunity to bring the two nations a step closer
to sustainable and deeper level of reconciliation through remembrance.
Caution should be taken, however, in appreciating the postwar
Filipino-Japanese reconciliation as well as the recent developments leading to the
increasing awareness among Japanese public of victimhood in the Battle of Manila
simply as a success story. The growing media attention on the Battle of Manila and of
the Philippines as well as the Emperor’s state visit to the Philippines require careful
examination of the current circumstances in a much larger context of East Asia’s
memory politics. This context entails differentiated bilateral relations of Japan with the
Philippines, China, and Korea, respectively, involving deeply intertwined issues of
regional security, border disputes, and economic rivalries. Growing presence of
Chinese and Korean capital and their soft power could reshape the geography of
memory politics in a way to challenge the established narrative of Filipino-Japanese
bi-national reconciliation.
It should also be reminded that the Filipino-Japanese pattern of
forgiver-apologizer relationship has most effectively worked among the “generation of
war” contemporaries while the same relationship, without any institutionalized public
memory, worked rather to promote Japanese forgetting and amnesia. Even a seemingly
absolute recognition given by Japanese Emperor in 2016 did not change the basic
structure of Japanese national war memory, which has been criticized as over-focusing

70
Shoji, 5-6.
 on their own victimhood thus contributing to Japan’s national amnesia over its wartime
aggression.71 As the amity achieved among the wartime contemporaries is evaporating
away in the 21st century, absence of the necessary conversation between the following
generations of Japanese and the Filipinos will be likely to bring the failure to preserve,
deepen and cement reconciliation worthy of the name.

<Picture> A photo taken at the annual Memorial Service held by Memorare Manila
1945 at Plazuela de Santa Isabel, Intramuros, Manila, 19 February 2011.

71
James J. Orr. The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in
Postwar Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001.

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