February 1945: The Rape of Manila.

Faithful’s duty to fight human.

To this day, much is heard of the Rape of Nanking when the rampaging Japanese Imperial Army killed 300,000 from 1937 to 1938, and raped 20,000 women in that Chinese capital.

Pitifully few, though, in the Philippines and even fewer elsewhere, know that in Manila, in February 1945, World War II at its agonizing climax brought forth 100,000 burned, bayoneted, bombed, shelled and shrapneled dead in the span of 28 days.

Unborn babies ripped from their mothers’ wombs provided sport: thrown up in the air and caught, impaled on bayonet tips.

With rape on the streets and everywhere else, the Bayview Hotel became Manila’s rape center. After the dirty deed was done, nipples were sliced off, and bodies bayoneted open from the neck down.

William Manchester in his book “American Caesar,” wrote that “Once Rear Adm. Sanji Iwabuchi had decided to defend Manila, the atrocities began, and the longer the battle raged, the more the Japanese command structure deteriorated, until the uniforms of Nipponese sailors and marines were saturated with Filipino blood.

“The devastation of Manila was one of the great tragedies of World War II. Seventy percent of the utilities, 72 percent of the factories, 80 percent of the southern residential district, and 100 percent of the business district were razed…Hospitals were set afire after their patients had been strapped to their beds.

The corpses of males were mutilated, females of all ages were raped before they were slain, and babies’ eyeballs gouged out and smeared on walls like jelly.”

From ‘Pearl’ to rubble

The envy of other Far Eastern cities before the war, lovely Manila, a melting pot of four cultures and the acknowledged Pearl of the Orient, turned completely to rubble and smoldering ash, wrack and ruin in the 28 days it gasped its last. Its face changed forever, national as February 1945: The Rape of Manila

Joan Orendain

@inquirerdotnet

Philippine Daily Inquirer

12:31 AM | Sunday, February 16th, 2014

816

Faithful’s duty to fight huma

To this day, much is heard of the Rape of Nanking when the rampaging Japanese Imperial Army killed 300,000 from 1937 to 1938, and raped 20,000 women in that Chinese capital.

Unborn babies ripped from their mothers’ wombs provided sport: thrown up in the air and caught, impaled on bayonet tips.

With rape on the streets and everywhere else, the Bayview Hotel became Manila’s rape center. After the dirty deed was done, nipples were sliced off, and bodies bayoneted open from the neck down.

The corpses of males were mutilated, females of all ages were raped before they were slain, and babies’ eyeballs gouged out and smeared on walls like jelly.”

From ‘Pearl’ to rubble

Its face changed forever, national as well as city administrators since then have barely seen to its proper post-war urban planning and reconstruction, with the exception of a few government buildings rebuilt to their original states. (Zoning laws? What’s that?)

In dramatic foreshadowing, the Irish Columban priests at Malate Church got a taste of what was to come. An unknown volunteer worker at the Remedios Hospital wrote that on Dec. 22, 1944, “most beloved” Father Patrick Kelly and Father John Lalor, were taken away by enemy soldiers.

On Christmas, Dec. 25, 1944, the priests offered dinner for 200 poor folks.“We had to put up a brave front with smiles on our faces and lead in our heart.”

The missing priests returned to Malate on Dec. 29 to great rejoicing, but they never talked about what strife they had undergone.

A timeline of bloody events as they unfolded helps to remind us that war is hell, through which Manila agonized.

Feb. 1, 1945: “Roll out the barrel, Santa Clause is coming,” is the note wrapped in goggles dropped by a plane to starving Allied countries’ civilians interned at the University of Santo Tomas (UST).

Feb. 3: American troops arriving from Lingayen liberate the 3,700 interns at UST. Japanese troops commence burning buildings and homes north of Pasig River.

Feb. 4: Japanese marines commanded by Rear Adm. Sanji Iwabuchi retreat to Intramuros, blowing up all the bridges across the Pasig.

Feb. 9: Ermita and Malate are put to the torch. Nicanor Reyes’ living room is piled high with furniture and drapes; gasoline is poured over them.

The founder of Far Eastern University and some members of the family burn there after being bayoneted, but young daughter Lourdes who has hidden in a closet, and her wounded mother and aunt, flee to Leveriza to join her grandmother.

Against a wall, the four set up a makeshift shelter with burned GI sheets. In the shelling, Lourdes’ mother who is shielding her, and her aunt, and grandmother, are killed.

Sen. Elpidio Quirino’s wife and two daughters, fleeing to his mother-in-law’s home, are felled by Japanese machine guns.

THE BATTLE of Manila left the city in total devastation and killed 100,000 Filipino civilians. Photo courtesy of Albert Montilla

Jesus Cabarrus Jr. has shrapnel embedded in his skull to constantly remind him of the terror-filled days in Ermita.

Ordered by enemy troops to converge at nearby Plaza Ferguson, the men are separated from the women and children, and brought to Manila Hotel (where Jesus Sr. and other men become water boys, and where he saw Walter Loving, the Constabulary Band chief, stabbed to death).

Hotel turns into hell

Wives and children are ordered to Bayview Hotel where the only water is out of toilet water tanks, and females are wantonly raped. Amid screaming when the building begins to burn, the Cabarruses flee, stepping over bloodied bodies dead and dying.

They run to Judge Felix’s house on Arquiza, where 150 refugees have taken cover. His grandmother and baby sister lie on a bed, with the rest on the floor. Shelling, explosions and finally, a cannon shell, flames, screams and smoke.

Older sister Maria Ines and he wait in the garden, their mother dashes into the flames for her baby, emerging with the infant whose legs are severed, and head bloodied. She soon expires. An aunt’s head has been blown off, while his grandmother burns to death.

Fleeing into Celso Lobregat’s home, in their new shelter, his mother sustains multiple shrapnel to her head, face, arms and chest, while his sister suffers a deep leg wound. He is unconscious with many pieces of shrapnel in his head.

His mother, an American citizen, is brought in a US Army ambulance to the UST Military Hospital, but she lies in a coma for six months. Jesusito also survives after a craniotomy at the US Military Hospital in Muntinlupa.

Feb. 10: Massacre of scores at the Philippine National Red Cross in Ermita. At the German Club, five Germans and 400 refugees including the family of former Ambassador to Spain Juan Rocha, the Beech y Rochas numbering 11.

One of them, a 15-year-old, is raped and gutted. At the Malate Church, Fathers Kelly, John Henaghan, Peter Fallon and Joseph Monaghan, together with a group of parishioners, are marched from the convent to nearby Syquia Apartments, never to be seen again.

Feb. 11: Under artillery fire by Americans, the German sisters at Saint Scholastica’s College, seeing a spotter-Piper Cub in the air, lie on the ground to form the letters SOS and are saved.

Feb. 12: Hundreds are slaughtered at Saint Paul’s College. Doctor Rafael Moreta’s residence, other homes in Paco, the Mandaluyong Mental Hospital, and in Binondo and New Manila, suffer the same fate.

Across the street from where the Century Park Hotel now stands on Vito Cruz, the Carlos Perez-Rubio home, like the Reyes’, is set to the torch.

Escaping from their home, Carlos is instantly shot, and his son Javier, 23, bayoneted to death. The matriarch, Milagros Alvarez de Perez-Rubio, and other members of the family and house help, together with refugees, are all killed wherever they hide.

Their son Miguel, 19, future presidential Protocol Officer, escapes the massacre because he is being held prisoner by the Japanese in Baguio.

He says his sister Lupe, 17, who tried to escape, was killed, but may also have been raped. His brother, Carlos II, was beheaded at the Masonic Temple together with his fiancée Helen McMicking and her family, some of whom were bayoneted.

as city administrators since then have barely seen to its proper post-war urban planning and reconstruction, with the exception of a few government buildings rebuilt to their original states. (Zoning laws? What’s that?)

In dramatic foreshadowing, the Irish Columban priests at Malate Church got a taste of what was to come.

An unknown volunteer worker at the Remedios Hospital wrote that on Dec. 22, 1944, “most beloved” Father Patrick Kelly and Father John Lalor, were taken away by enemy soldiers.

On Christmas, Dec. 25, 1944, the priests offered dinner for 200 poor folks. “We had to put up a brave front with smiles on our faces and lead in our heart.” The missing priests returned to Malate on Dec. 29 to great rejoicing, but they never talked about what strife they had undergone.