“Cannibals in the lowest strata of life could have pursued no crueler methods.”
—REPORT No. 13,
JUNE 11, 1945, WAR CRIMES BRANCH,
OFFICE OF THE THEATER JUDGE ADVOCATE
IWABUCHI KNEW THE BATTLE WAS NEARING ITS CLIMAX.
The convergence of the Thirty-Seventh Infantry from the north, the First Cavalry from the east, and the Eleventh Airborne from the south had by February 12 sealed the city, trapping Iwabuchi and his dwindling force of four naval and two army battalions. American mortar and shells rained down, destroying much of his few remaining artillery pieces. His hodgepodge troops were left with little more than rifles, bayonets, and grenades.
General Yokoyama, who had been slow to grasp the situation in Manila, finally realized how dire it truly was. If left inside the city, Iwabuchi and his men faced certain annihilation. Shimbu Group headquarters radioed Iwabuchi with a plan. Five battalions east of the city would depart the night of February 13 and charge the American lines near Novaliches, Quezon, Marikina, Mandaluyong, and Pasig areas at midnight on February 16 to create a diversion. “The Manila Defense Force,” orders mandated, “should then conduct a daring charge with its entire complement to effect a breakthrough of the envelopment.”
Conditions inside the city worsened as American troops closed in on Iwabuchi’s men. From his headquarters up in Baguio, General Yamashita, until now silent on the battle, finally intervened, censuring Yokoyama on February 15 for failing to rein in Iwabuchi and demanding the admiral immediately vacate Manila.
“Withdraw at once in accordance with our original plan,” the Tiger ordered.
Yokoyama again demanded Iwabuchi retreat to Fort McKinley, alerting him that troops would conduct a surprise attack on American lines as initially planned. “Counterattacks in our area are making some progress,” the Shimbu Group messaged. “The Manila Naval Defense headquarters hereafter will be located at McKinley. Maintain close liaison with Shimbu Group headquarters and strengthen and secure the defense of the vicinity.”
The base staff officer at Fort McKinley followed up with a message to Iwabuchi. “Today, Shimbu Group headquarters has ordered your headquarters to move to McKinley,” the officer radioed. “In view of the increasing difficulty to effect a break-through, it is urgent that you move immediately, tonight. Will the headquarters move?”
From Fort McKinley and the Shimbu Group headquarters to Yamashita’s Baguio stronghold, everyone waited for Iwabuchi’s answer. Would the admiral retreat and live to fight another day or would he choose to make a final stand in Manila?
“The headquarters,” he radioed at last, “will not move.”
For Iwabuchi, the time to die had arrived.
The admiral had fumbled his hopes of turning Manila into another Stalingrad, far outgunned by American artillery and overrun on all sides by Yank cavalry and infantrymen. What did it matter now if he disobeyed orders? Iwabuchi radioed Admiral Okochi, who had tapped him to lead the Manila Naval Defense Force, confessing his failure. “In anticipation of disruption in communications, I hereby submit this message to you,” Iwabuchi began. “I am overwhelmed with shame for the many casualties among my subordinates and for being unable to discharge my duty because of my incompetence. The men have exerted their utmost efforts in the fighting. We are very glad and grateful for the opportunity of being able to serve our country in this epic battle. Now, with what strength remains, we will daringly engage the enemy. ‘Banzai to the Emperor!’ We are determined to fight to the last man.”
Iwabuchi then sent a message to General Yokoyama.
“In view of the general situation, I consider it very important to hold the strategic positions within the city,” he radioed. “The transfer of the headquarters will hinder the execution of operations. We have tried to make ground contact with Fort McKinley but failed. Escape is believed impossible. Will you please understand this situation?”
Yokoyama’s headquarters continued to send desperate messages over the next few days to Iwabuchi, imploring him and his forces to try to escape.
“The night of the 18th will be the best time for your breakthrough,” one read.
But Iwabuchi ruled out such an operation, appearing resigned to his fate. Rather than escape, he and his men would hunker down. The Americans would have to dig them out of the few remaining urban fortresses, from Rizal Memorial Stadium and the Philippine General Hospital to the concrete government buildings and the ancient Walled City. There would be no retreat and no surrender. Iwabuchi would make the end as bloody as possible—for everyone. “We can hold out another week if we remain entrenched as we are. What is vitally important now is to hold every position and inflict severe losses on the enemy by any means. Fixed positions are our strong advantage. If we move, we will be weak,” he messaged Yokoyama. “Therefore, in conducting the main operation, please conduct your plan without considering us.”
JAPANESE TROOPS HUNTED the streets of southern Manila—the areas still beyond the bounds of the American’s control—shooting anyone who dared stray outside. Large massacres, like the German Club, Red Cross, and St. Paul’s went hand in hand with scores of small-scale atrocities as marauding troops attacked families in homes and pulled others out of bomb shelters and butchered them in the streets. The Japanese went so far as to lure victims into an open lot on Kansas Street by planting a Red Cross flag.
To escape the flames and artillery, refugees often congregated in the large compounds of some of the city’s wealthiest, whose elegant concrete homes offered protection from flying shrapnel and gardens that served as firebreaks. These gatherings, however, proved easy targets for the enemy. Troops murdered approximately one hundred on February 10 at the home of Walter Price, an American businessman who had made his fortune as the founder of Leyte Transportation Company before the Japanese interned him at Los Baños. Two days later marines killed twenty-eight more at the residence of businessman Carlos Perez-Rubio. A similar atrocity played out the morning of February 13, when troops slaughtered one hundred men, women, and children at the home of the late Pedro Campos, the former president of the Bank of the Philippines. Thirty-five more civilians fell February 17 at the home of Dr. Rafael Moreta.
Throughout southern Manila, the Japanese not only targeted large gatherings but also seized refugees singly and in small groups. Russian immigrant Helen Kremleff could only watch as marines marched off her husband Eugene, never to be seen again. Fellow Russian native Eva Gurevich suffered a similar horror when troops grabbed her husband Boris and twenty-three-year-old son Leonid. Desperate to intervene, she presented the Japanese with passports for her family, but the marine threw them to the ground.
“Go,” he barked at her, pushing her up the street.
“When I was about a half block away,” she recalled, “I heard three shots.”
The Japanese picked through the ruins of destroyed homes in search of victims. That’s where troops found Alexander Bachrach, the former agent for the Studebaker Corporation of America. He had just enough time to say farewell to his wife.
“Goodbye, Darling,” he called out. “This is it.”
“I looked around,” his wife would later tell war crimes investigators, “to see him shot in the forehead.”
Refugees realized that nowhere was safe.
“Japanese patrols were going back and forth,” recalled Dr. Augusto Besa, a surgeon. “If they saw anyone in the open, they would shoot him.”
German native Max Hahn witnessed the same. “I heard them shooting,” he later testified, “as they went from shelter to shelter up the street.”
Such terror forced some to do the unimaginable.
“Many mothers,” recalled British citizen Stella Mary Best, who hid for four days under a home with two dozen others, “had to smother their babies until they died in order to keep them from crying out and giving away all the people under that house.”
NEWS REPORTERS FLOCKED each day to the sixth floor of the battered National City Bank of New York building on Calle Juan Luna, which American forces had converted into an artillery observation post. Just a few hundred yards north of the Pasig River—and seventy feet above the booby-trapped streets and blood-soaked gutters—journalists could relax in safety and chart the battle’s progress. The view from atop Manila, glimpsed between the smoke from the fires, was unrivaled. Twenty-seven miles to the west, Corregidor climbed out of the dark waters of Manila Bay, while to the south reporters could see the radio towers of Cavite Naval Base. Down below spread the Walled City, its defensive moat that kept out invaders for centuries filled in to create an eighteen-hole golf course. Bomb craters and trenches carved up the fairways, greens, and tee boxes, while the once-lush grass was scorched black from fire.
American troops had seized the bank days after the start of the battle. Like so much else in Manila, the once-grand building had been reduced to a burned-out skeleton of concrete and steel. Ankle-deep rubble and crumbled plaster littered the lobby along with twisted metal filing cabinets and charred typewriters, artifacts of a once peaceful time. The Japanese had previously occupied the building as evidenced by straw mats, discarded grenade boxes, and ripped satchels of rice. A narrow path cleared of mines and traps led through the debris up the stairs to the third floor, where troops had stacked a double line of sandbags in the windows. Observers aimed field glasses down on the Walled City; a desk pushed lengthwise in front of the window supported a .30-caliber machine gun. “The gunner sat hunched behind the desk,” observed Yank magazine reporter Ozzie St. George, “one hand on the tripod.”
The sixth floor functioned as the nerve center for America’s artillery attacks against the Japanese, offering unobstructed views not only of Intramuros but also of the port and Ermita. As they did below, observers covered the windows, while a soldier sat in the hall, a field phone pressed at all times to his ear. In offices where brokers once worked, officers hunched over maps of Manila twenty-four hours a day, each block numbered and marked with its range. From this perch, artillerymen called in targets and reported the outcomes of attacks. “Here I found a vantage point for photographing a whole continuous action unequaled elsewhere in the war,” recalled Carl Mydans. “Almost every day of the siege I spent some time with the observers, covering the progress of the assault and enjoying, after I got there, ease and luxury I had not often experienced in battle, sitting there with a group spinning yarns.”
The reporters who visited each day invariably came away with a story, a window into the horror residents south of the Pasig now endured. “A short distance outside the wall I watched a Filipino woman frenzied trying to round up her brood of children,” wrote Newsweek’s Robert Shaplen. “Through the glasses I could see her looking with despair toward our side of the river, wondering how she could get across.” Time magazine’s Bill Gray, as shells soared overhead, shot a glance at Capt. Francis Shannon, Jr., of Cincinnati, sitting in a chair calmly reading a copy of Margery Wilson’s Pocket Book of Etiquette. “There is,” the journalist wrote, “no explaining war-time reading tastes.” Bill Dunn of CBS marveled not only at the precision of the artillery fire but at the enemy’s tenacity. “They are not trying to retreat, withdraw or reinforce,” he noted. “They are just staying put until such time as we kill them off.”
Enemy troops knew the Americans studied them from above, converting civilians into human shields. The Japanese packed women and children into the lower floors of buildings that housed artillery. Ira Rosenberg, a staff photographer with the New York Herald Tribune, observed the enemy one day preparing to transport cannons across an open park toward an apartment building. “Before moving the artillery pieces,” he recalled, “they would encircle it with civilians.” Another time Rosenberg watched enemy forces, trucking supplies through one of the gates of the Walled City, devise a devious means to fend off attack. “To facilitate this movement,” the photographer said, “the Japanese seized a young Filipina girl, stripped and lashed her nude body to a doorway, using her as their shield.”
For the reporters, safely removed from the hand-to-hand fighting in the streets, there was a theatrical experience watching death delivered from afar, one accentuated by the army’s generosity in providing visitors with light refreshments.
“Just have a chair,” one officer told Walter Simmons of the Chicago Tribune. “The show is about to start; the curtain will go up in just a minute.”
Like other reporters, Simmons thrilled at the experience, describing how the shells rumbled through the skies overhead with a roar similar to a freight train. Each time he saw flying stone, concrete, and dust seconds before he heard the explosion.
“Just across the river is Jap territory,” Lt. Joseph Gallaher of Youngstown, Ohio, told him. “You can see them moving around over there.”
The artillerymen watched a group of enemy troops dart from behind one of the walls of Intramuros and run toward Taft Avenue.
“Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,” said Pvt. Leon West, ticking off the troops who dove to the ground, guns raised. “Now they’re flopping.”
The Japanese troops stood a moment later and crept forward. Then more troops emerged from behind the wall, falling in behind them.
“Just watch,” one of the artillerymen advised Simmons.
Suddenly the area where the troops stood vanished in a cloud of black smoke. Other explosions followed. When the smoke cleared seconds later, two dead Japanese marines lay sprawled on the ground. The blast had likely vaporized the others.
“One of those babies hit just where a Jap was standing,” hollered First Lt. John Robohm of Minneapolis.
The few survivors stumbled toward the Metropolitan Theater, leaving the dead. “The Japs seem to have got into the theatre building, sir,” one sergeant said.
“That’s all right,” Robohm replied. “We’ll put on a little matinee for them!”
Royal Arch Gunnison with Collier’s magazine was in the observation post with Yank’s St. George one day when about a dozen Japanese troops began tossing furniture off a third-floor balcony of the Manila Hotel, about fifteen hundred yards south of the bank. Troops began to hoist up what appeared to be boxes of ammunition.
“God,” one of the artillerymen muttered. “What a target.”
The commanding officer of a 155 mm howitzer battalion jumped on the phone, relaying the details and asking for permission to fire his so-called “Long Tom,” capable of hurling a ninety-five-pound shell up to nine miles. “Each time the Long Toms shoot,” John Dos Passos observed, “it’s like being hit on the head with a baseball bat.”
The officer gave his troops the go-ahead.
“Boy,” one of the men announced, “this is going to be a beautiful sight.”
Gunnison, who had lived in Manila before the war and knew the history of the hotel, felt his heart sink. “It was like smashing the Waldorf-Astoria in New York or the St. Francis in San Francisco,” he wrote. “There it stood, its two red cupola towers across the river, half a mile away. There was MacArthur’s old penthouse apartment. Beneath was the palm lobby and the once air-conditioned dining room where presidential parties and visiting American and Oriental dignitaries had dined for years.”
To the artillerymen, none of that mattered. “The hotel,” St. George noted, “was just another target, a long dreamed-of lush spot that had gone the way of the other lush spots—the Army and Navy Club, the Spanish Club, the University Club.”
The sixth floor of the bank offered one of the best views of the pending attack. “This is like a $2.20 box seat,” exclaimed Staff Sgt. Leroy Erwin.
“It’ll take ’em a few minutes to line the guns,” the lieutenant announced.
Reporters and soldiers waited, all eyes glued on the hotel.
“On the way,” the artilleryman in the hallway called out.
The shell roared over the bank seconds later, just missing the hotel. “Five-zero left,” the commanding officer corrected, “five-zero short.”
“They have stopped throwing things,” one of the observers called out.
Everyone focused on the hotel.
“No,” the observer corrected, “the little sons of bitches are still on the porch.”
“On the way,” came the call again.
The freight trained rumbled overhead.
Another miss. Then another.
The observers and artillerymen rushed to correct the range as more shells roared through the skies. Suddenly smoke blanketed the top of the hotel.
A direct hit.
The wind wafted the smoke away moments later to reveal a hole in the red tile roof, an entry wound. The upper floors of the once-grand hotel now burned and would continue to do so throughout the night. The target had been eliminated. Dos Passos watched the barrage from a similar observation post at the Great Eastern Hotel with other correspondents, noting the smoke curling skyward.
“There goes our drink at the bar,” one lamented.
AMERICAN TROOPS on the ground saw a far different battle than the artillerymen perched atop the National City Bank of New York. The retreating Japanese had left a trail of massacres for the Americans to follow, like macabre breadcrumbs. Often lured by the rancid smell of the dead—or tipped off by survivors, family, and neighbors—troops cautiously entered the ruins of homes, schools, and churches only to discover hundreds of men, women, and children, slain by gunfire, bayonets, and swords.
In one such case, soldiers on San Antonio Street stopped at the home of Spanish businessman Bartolome Pons and his wife Rosario. The Japanese had brutally murdered most of the family and household staff. American forces tallied the dead—five women, two men, and an infant, the majority of whom had been shot. “The baby,” noted Maj. Donald Forward, “had been bayoneted.” Some of the deceased were dressed in pajamas. Around the neck of one woman dangled rosary beads. Another was pregnant. Several showed signs of abuse, including a victim whose head the Japanese had rammed into the coils of a rocking chair. “One of the persons was scalped,” Technician Fourth Grade Stevens Loska testified. “There were hairs lying on the floor.”
The soldiers explored the home, rescuing a dog that had refused to leave the bloated body of its master. The Japanese had eaten the food in the refrigerator and had stripped the residence of valuables before smashing the furniture and picture frames and even slashing cushions. Amid the scattered personal papers, troops found the Spanish and American passports of Bartolome Pons and his wife, Rosario. “There is no visible motive,” one report noted, “other than the desire to kill.”
The discovery of the dead in the Ponses’ home proved all too common for advancing American troops, who functioned not just as soldiers but as crime scene investigators. Outraged over the slaughter, MacArthur ordered all massacres investigated. “Desire full details,” the general cabled, “of all authenticated cases of atrocities committed by the enemy in the Manila area as soon as possible.”
The Japanese frequently attempted to cover up such massacres, largely by using fire as a means to destroy the bodies and the evidence. As the pace of the battle accelerated, enemy troops more often simply left the dead behind.
Along with the bodies, American soldiers occasionally found survivors. Pvt. First Class Serifine Ruggio with the 129th Infantry was advancing through Paco when he discovered a group of wounded civilians. Staff Sgt. Harlow Clark sliced the bindings of the survivors, while Ruggio helped them back to an American aid station. “All four of the men,” he noted in his affidavit, “were wounded and 2 of them had big, deep gashes in the back of their necks which looked as though they had been cut with sabers.”
“Japanese,” one said, imitating bayonet thrusts. “Stick, stick!”
Capt. William Kropf, a surgeon with the 129th Infantry, gave the survivors blood plasma and readied them for medical evacuation. He likewise treated a wounded mother and her six-year-old daughter, who also had survived the slaughter. “The woman had one bayonet wound in her chest and another in her thigh,” the doctor later testified in an affidavit. “The little girl had 6 bayonet slashes in her back and side.”
These few proved the fortunate ones.
Infantrymen found piles of bodies stacked several feet high behind the Shell Service Station and on the grounds of the nearby Tabacalera Cigar and Cigarette Factory. Troops counted a half-dozen babies—five males and one female—between the ages of six and eighteen months. “I examined the body of one of the babies,” testified Capt. William Gardner, “and found it had been bayonetted through the left cheek.” It was clear from Gardner’s report that the captain had seen enough. “A short distance away, another group of dead civilians lay, but I did not go over to examine them.”
Maj. David Binkley visited a few days later, one of many such sites the Thirty-Seventh Infantry Division’s sanitary inspector witnessed as part of his job chronicling the dead and arranging burials, often in mass graves. In his report on the massacre, Binkley singled out the murder of a mother and her children, all of whom had suffered saber blows to the neck and head. “The woman lay face down with an arm around each child,” he wrote. “One child had part of its skull sliced off.”
ON FEBRUARY 13, the day after the Garcia family reached St. Scholastica, American shelling increased dramatically. “The building shook and chunks of concrete and timber started to drop around us,” recalled Jack. “We huddled close to one another, pillows covering our heads in a vain attempt to protect us from the falling debris.”
The school suffered a direct hit, rattling the building and filling the air with acrid smoke. Ramon Garcia jumped to his feet in the passageway.
“We’re getting out of here right now,” he hollered.
The family members did as ordered. Some of the other refugees told them to stay put, but others followed Ramon Garcia’s lead. No sooner had the family vacated than an artillery shell exploded in the corridor behind them, filling the area with the thick dust of pulverized concrete. Ramon Garcia refused to stop, hustling his family toward the exit as panic seized the other refugees. Screams filled the air, and the school began to crumble. “Ceilings were collapsing and large chunks of concrete began to fall,” Jack Garcia remembered. “Fires in various parts of the edifice were now threatening.”
The panic magnified as the sudden throng of refugees bottlenecked the exits. Others tripped over the abandoned suitcases, bundles, and even pushcarts.
“Stick together,” Ramon Garcia shouted.
Jack ran sandwiched between his mother and older brother, while his father led the family, elbowing a path through the crowd. A shell suddenly detonated in front of them in the corridor, knocking the entire family to the floor. Dazed, Jack climbed to his feet, relieved to find his brother and parents unhurt. The youth then spotted the youngest son of Enrique Montaner, the chief engineer of the city’s water department. The Montaners had fled alongside the Garcia family when the shell exploded. Jack froze, staring at the youth’s shirt, now soaked red with blood. The boy’s mother howled and then collapsed upon her son, desperately trying to revive him. “Only a moment before he was running beside me,” Jack said. “Now he lay there dead.”
Another shell rocked the building. The blast wave again toppled the Garcia family members. Jack climbed back on his feet. The youth looked down and saw Mrs. Montaner still atop her dead son a few feet away, her arms wrapped tight around him. She did not move. Jack watched as a man lifted her off her son. “When he did, I saw blood flowing profusely from the back of her head,” Jack recalled. “It was a gaping wound just behind the right ear. Her blouse was covered in blood.”
Ida Garcia wailed at the sight.
Before Jack could move, someone grabbed his hand and pulled him down the corridor toward the exit, away from the dead mother and son. Shells continued to shake the building, and refugees choked on the dust and smoke that flooded the air. “Everyone was running, panic-stricken,” he recalled. “People were screaming, some asking for help, others searching for a loved one they had lost in the pandemonium.”
The family finally made it outside. Jack looked up to see that the normally blue afternoon sky was obscured by what he later described as cinnamon-colored clouds of smoke from surrounding fires. “It was an eerie sight. Manila’s leafy southern suburb, home to so many thousands, was burning uncontrollably around us.”
The thunder of artillery at times drowned out the screams of the wounded. The bloodied bodies of the dead and injured littered the grounds. Ida Garcia took a head count before the family moved under a large mango tree in the schoolyard. Darkness fell, and the family remained. Hundreds of others took up refuge around the campus, parking under trees or crawling into abandoned foxholes. Still others ambled out into the open, like zombies. Jack watched the building burn; the crackle of flames interrupted by the occasional crash of timbers. Machine guns rattled in the streets, while shells whistled overhead. Inside the schoolyard Jack listened to survivors call out the names of missing loved ones. Others whimpered in grief over the dead. “Most distressing of all,” he noted, “were the moans of the terminally wounded and dying.”
The night crawled past. Morning finally arrived, and the shelling subsided, at least until around nine a.m. when American howitzers opened fire again. Retreating Japanese troops added to the chaos, lobbing grenades over the wall into the schoolyard.
The family moved from under the mango tree into a shell crater, seeking better protection. Barely half an hour later, however, Ida Garcia suddenly demanded that everyone climb out. She had experienced a similar intuition about De La Salle. Even though she had taken clothes and food, she had balked at moving her family.
“Quickly,” she barked. “Now.”
“But we’re safe here,” Ramon protested.
“We are not!” she declared.
The rest of the family reluctantly followed her out of the crater, seeking shelter under a nearby tree. Two other families—one Filipino and one Chinese—climbed into the hole. Shells continued to zoom overhead. One detonated right over the crater, killing all five members of the Chinese family. “No more than ten minutes. That’s all the time that transpired from the moment Mum leapt out of the trench until the shell exploded,” Jack recalled. “This was no longer luck. We were truly blessed.”
The shelling escalated throughout the morning, leaving terrified refugees caught in the crossfire. “There was no let-up,” Jack said. “There was nowhere we could go. The shells were coming from all directions. There was no escaping.”
High overhead an American observation plane circled, drawing the ire of the refugees. “Can’t he see there are no Japanese here?” someone yelled. “Bastard!”
In a desperate effort, refugees climbed out from under trees and from foxholes to link hands and form the letters S-O-S. The shells continued to thunder overhead as the minutes felt like hours. “That’s enough,” someone finally shouted.
Refugees scurried back to safety, waiting to see if the makeshift message would have any effect. Shells continued to whistle and explode, but moments later the artillery miraculously stopped, replaced by a deafening silence. No sooner had the American guns fallen silent than Japanese troops again hurled grenades over the wall into the schoolyard. But a distinct new sound joined the chorus of explosions—a low and steady grumble, distant at first but coming closer. The high adobe walls blocked any view, prompting refugees to sit up and listen. “The sound was unmistakable,” Jack recalled. “It was the metallic reverberating sound of metal cleats on the asphalt road.”
Tanks.
But were the tanks American or Japanese?
No one knew. Many assumed that the armor must be Japanese, as enemy troops encamped at the nearby stadium and had constantly harassed the refugees. Were the Japanese coming to reinforce the others? What would happen to the refugees?
The clatter grew louder.
Grenades continued to land in the schoolyard, exploding amid the sea of civilians, many of whom darted for cover. “Fragments of red-hot shrapnel flew in all directions, inflicting further injury to many,” Jack said. “Those already wounded and who could not move from where they lay were the worst affected. It was chaotic.”
The wall suddenly crumbled, hurling shattered stone blocks and filling the air with dust. A lone tank rolled over the debris. The turret swiveled in front of the Garcia family. A second tank motored in behind it, followed by a third. Soldiers in odd uniforms surged into the schoolyard behind the armor, rifles drawn.
“The Japanese have come back to kill us,” someone screamed. “Pray!”
The troops ran straight toward the Garcia family. Jack clung to his mother and closed his eyes, prepared to die.
His mother squeezed him. “Pray my son,” she whispered in Spanish. “This is where they finish us off.”
The troops closed the distance. The Garcias, who had survived so much, huddled together awaiting the rattle of gunfire and slashing of bayonets.
“Don’t be afraid,” someone shouted. “We’re here to help you.”
Jack Garcia opened his eyes.
A woman nearby fainted.
Others cheered and then swarmed the American liberators. “Don’t move,” one of the officers warned. “Stay where you are. There may be snipers out there.”
The officer’s orders did nothing to stifle the current of excitement that electrified the crowd of refugees who for eleven terrifying days had survived the burning and barbarity of the Japanese. They mobbed the troops. Soldiers secured the school and passed out hardtack biscuits to the children. “The sound of distant gunfire didn’t matter anymore,” Jack said. “We didn’t care. Everything was going to be all right!”
Jack and his older brother Ramon met several troops, one of whom gave Jack a chocolate bar. The siblings perched on the edge of a crater, legs hanging over the side. The buzz of an incoming mortar interrupted the conversation. The troops dove for cover, but neither Jack nor Ramon moved. Jack heard the thud of the mortar hit and looked up to see it lodged in the ground just a few feet in front of him, close enough that he could see the bomb’s rear fins. “My brother and I just sat there mesmerized by the sight of an unexploded shell,” he said. “We had never seen a live bomb before. As I stared at it, I felt two hands grab me by the shoulder and pull me down from the crater’s edge.”
But the Americans had little time to celebrate. Troops prepared for a Japanese counterattack, and hundreds of civilians only complicated any such fight.
“You should go to Santa Ana where you’ll be well cared for, fed and told where to seek temporary refuge,” one of the officers instructed them. “So make a move.”
The news shocked many of the refugees, who this afternoon had felt safe for the first time in years. Now American troops planned to send them back out into a chaotic city seared by fires, treacherous with booby traps, and full of marauding Japanese. It was late in the day. Darkness would soon fall. Many of the families had injured relatives or young children and elderly family members, promising to make a miles-long hike through the war-ravaged city all the more perilous. “There was no other way,” Jack recalled. “We had to move.”
JUST A FEW BLOCKS from St. Scholastica, sixteen-year-old Lourdes Reyes struggled in her family’s backyard bomb shelter. She had survived the direct hit on the makeshift lean-to, the night of February 9, that had killed her mother, grandmother, and a dozen others. Someone had pulled her from the crater moments after the explosion and placed her on the ground beside her wounded aunt Purita, who had moaned throughout the rest of the night until she, too, finally died the next day.
The Reyes family servants later helped Lourdes back over the fence, where she joined others in her family’s shelter, waiting out the battle. “For four days more I miraculously survived, though all around me people were being killed by bombs and grenades, by hunger and thirst,” she recalled. “It seems there is no limit to human endurance, however unbearable the loss of loved ones.”
The horror of what she had seen would haunt her, an experience bookended by the final words of both of her parents. Her father, moments before the Japanese stormed the home, had implored her to remain strong. “Be brave,” he told her.
Her mother, even after seeing her family murdered, absolved the killers. “I forgive them,” she repeated seconds before her death. “I forgive them.”
For four days, Lourdes waited underground in the darkness, plagued by fear, hunger, and thirst. Now after all she had suffered, she heard the rumble of tank motors and the distinct clank-clank-clank of steel treads on pavement.
The Georgia Peach, one of the Sherman tanks that had liberated Santo Tomas eleven days earlier, crashed through her family’s gate and rolled up the driveway to find the once-grand home reduced to charred and smoldering ruins.
“What’s the matter there, George?” she heard one of the soldiers say.
This was the picturesque moment of liberation Lourdes and her father had envisioned—American tanks and soldiers at last.
But none of it mattered now.
“There were no flags nor wild cheering from my family to greet them: Bob from Texas and Anthony from Louisiana bringing freedom. What did they mean to me now?” Lourdes later wrote. “We had waited and waited for the liberators but for many it was in vain, because the enemy went berserk in the face of defeat.”
MAJOR HENNE AND HIS fellow troops with the Third Battalion, 148th Infantry, closed in on Manila Bay late in the afternoon of February 15, the air filled with the salty smell of the sea. Since crossing the Pasig River eight days earlier, the infantrymen had fought through the districts of Pandacan, Paco, and Ermita one intersection, one building at a time. The battle had proven a slog, leaving troops wearied and nerves frazzled. “Relaxing is impossible for uncontrollably muscles tighten and teeth are clenched,” Henne recounted. “The blast of a heavy shell is an unforgettable experience as is the dud that rings ears to go bouncing overhead down a cobble stone street. The close ones leave a chalky taste in one’s mouth; probably from newly ground molars.”
The block-by-block combat that had come to symbolize the Battle of Manila was best summarized by the First Cavalry Division’s report. “As the noose tightened in the heart of Manila,” it stated, “progress was measured in feet and yards.” The fanatical Japanese defenders who reduced the pace of the battle to a crawl had not only worn out the frontline troops but also exhausted American commanders, including General Griswold, who took to his diary to vent his frustration over the fight. “The strain of this battle is very noticeable on us all,” the XIV Corps commander wrote. “Very slow progress, with bitter fighting. We are constricting the enemy in a smaller space day by day.”
Just as Iwabuchi realized that he was trapped, so, too, did American generals. Griswold had ordered the Eleventh Airborne, following its rapid drive north from Nasugbu, to halt at the city’s southern border, so as not to intrude into the area assigned to the First Cavalry Division. American forces meanwhile held the city north of the Pasig, while Manila Bay blocked any Japanese escape to the west. The Thirty-Seventh Infantry and the First Cavalry now pushed side by side toward the waterfront. Adding to Iwabuchi’s challenge, the Fifth and Twelfth Cavalry regiments had already reached the bay on the city’s southern boundary and would soon turn north, driving up Taft Avenue in a straight shot aimed at the Walled City barely three miles away.
American commanders knew that some of Iwabuchi’s remaining forces had holed up in several strongholds along Taft Avenue and Dewey Boulevard, including the Rizal Memorial Stadium, the Philippine General Hospital, and the neighboring University of the Philippines. As the infantry and cavalry closed in on the bay, U.S. troops surrounded and isolated these fortresses. Each of these buildings would have to be taken in a series of battles that would begin with a pummeling of artillery followed by the charge of assault teams armed with rifles, bazookas, and flamethrowers. The capture of each structure, involving room-by-room fighting, would serve as a mile marker along the road to the Walled City, which promised to be the finale in the Battle of Manila. “Intramuros,” Griswold lamented, “is a formidable obstacle.”
Major Henne and his men, having crossed Dewey Boulevard that afternoon, stole glimpses of the bay’s blue water ahead. Japanese marines on destroyed ships in the harbor targeted the advancing American troops with machine guns and auto-cannons, forcing the infantrymen to take cover until mortar teams could silence the enemy. Infantrymen then charged ahead, reaching the bay at five-thirty p.m. Along the seawall, riflemen killed several pockets of Japanese marines who failed to put up much of a fight. Everyone, both friend and foe, was exhausted. “The Japs offered little resistance,” Henne observed. “They seemed resigned to being killed. They were.”
Throughout the afternoon and evening, infantrymen secured the lines, from Herran Street south to Harrison Boulevard. Much fighting still remained, but the troops had achieved a major goal. The infantry had reached the bay and isolated the Japanese. Lt. Jimmy Falls, the popular battalion intelligence officer, wanted to glimpse the blue waters that he had fought so hard for since he reached the city. With his eyes glued on the horizon, Falls failed to spot a Japanese antitank and -personnel mine, known because of its circular shape as a “tape measure mine.”
His foot stepped atop the bomb, which required as little as seven pounds of pressure to detonate. There along the city’s waterfront, the last vision he would see was the dark blue of Manila Bay. “Jimmy, killed instantly, was badly mutilated,” Henne recalled. “The small bundle of his remains returned to the Battalion command post was shocking to those close to him. He was only gone—gone somewhere.”