World Battlefronts: Remember Manila

"At 1:46 p.m. a salvo of heavy bombs whistled down," wrote Frank Hewlett of the United Press from Manila. "With a roar that rocked the city for blocks, the bombs crunched down along the northern edge of the walled city."

In the chapel of Santo Domingo Church (built 1588) people were at their prayers. Few ever knew what hit them. Flames licked up over the brown stucco walls as more bombs rained down. They hit Santa Catalina College for girls, the Philippine Treasury Building. Fire swept a half-dozen square blocks. By next morning, first count of the raid's toll showed: 40 dead, 150 wounded. Next day at noon, the Japanese returned, again scored heavily in congested residential districts.

The city the Japanese chose to bomb was completely defenseless. Its streets were bare of uniformed soldiers, tanks, army trucks. Barracks and military headquarters were empty. Day before Japanese planes had scouted it, had met no antiaircraft fire. General Douglas MacArthur had kept his word: Manila was protected only by the international law of "the open city."

To the huddled mass of Chinese and Filipinos who lived in the death trap of Manila's old walled city, it meant little that the main objective of the Japanese planes had been ships and port installations, that this was not indiscriminate bombing. The bombs which, by accident or design had fallen short of the mark along the waterfront, had devastated their homes, drawn militarily useless, innocent blood. But Manilans were not terrified by this savage foretaste of what the Japanese might some day choose to loose against them. They refused to be panicked into headlong flight that might jam General MacArthur's vital military highways. They insisted they could take it, hoped the U.S. Army would come back.

In the U.S., many an American citizen awaited the day when wood-and-paper Tokyo should lie beneath the crisscross hairs of a U.S. bombsight.