#wwii philippines

[brother-emperors]

The Burning of Sto. Domingo, Ruins of Legislative Building, The Burning of Manila, Fernando Amorsolo / The Open City, Japanese photograph (no further credits were listed)

On the 26th of December, Manila was declared an open city. Banners were hung in Manila with Open City written on them, and defenses were removed as to avoid provoking the Japanese military.

The Fall of the Philippines, Louis Morton

The voluntary disarmament of Manila went ignored.

The Fall of the Philippines, Louis Morton

Manila would become one of the most devastated capital cities in the entire war.

Kristoffer Pasion/(indiohistorian) wrote a twitter thread on this that I only just noticed when I got halfway through making this post, and it has more depth and detail! here's the link for further reading.

[captain-price-unofficially]

Soldiers of the 40th Infantry Division planting an American flag on Hill 1700 on Luzon, Philippines. 25 February, 1945

[theworldatwar]

US troops examine a knocked out Japanese Type 95 light tank - Philippines, April 1942

[lonestarbattleship]

USS TEXAS (BB-35) undergoing post-operation repairs and maintenance while in San Pedro Bay, Leyte Gulf, Philippines. On her bow, a stage is set up for the road show performance of Oklahoma! for the crew's entertainment.

Date: May 17-22, 1945

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department: 2003-1012-52

[cid5]

Japanese troops guard American and Filipino prisoners in Bataan in the Philippines after their capture on 9th April 1942.

[carbone14]

Un soldat américain avec des philippines après l'invasion du golfe de Lingayen ��� Campagne des Philippines (1944-1945) – Guerre du Pacifique – Dagupan – Luçon – Philippines – 18 janvier 1945

[ifelllikeastar]

Captain Colin Kelly was a World War II B-17 Flying Fortress pilot who flew bombing runs against the Japanese navy in the first days after the Pearl Harbor attack. He is remembered as one of the first American heroes of the war after ordering his crew to bail out while he remained at the bomber's controls trying to keep the plane in the air before it exploded, killing him. His was the first American B-17 to be shot down in combat.

* Kelly was with the 14th Bombardment Squadron, 19th Bombardment Group, United States Army Air Corps

Colin Purdie Kelly Jr. died December 10, 1941 at the age of 26.

[uss-edsall]

man, the more I learn about my mother’s side of the family, the more I’m absolutely, utterly amazed that she and her two sisters came out as such nice people

there is s o much drama around my grandmother and my late grandparents

[southeastasianists]

Filipina comfort woman Hilaria Bustamante has passed away at age 97, the group Lila Pilipina has announced.

Bustamante was a member of Lila Pilipina, an organization of Filipino comfort women who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of Japanese soldiers in World War II by being captured and forced into sexual slavery.

Bustamante reportedly died of old age, a representative of Lila Pilipina confirmed.

Her passing has come within weeks after the United Nations released their finding that the Philippines failed to provide compensation for these women who were victims at the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army.

Just days earlier, comfort women group Malaya Lolas (Free Grandmothers) also urged President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to immediately seek reparations from Japan on their behalf, as “many among us are now dead and the few of us remaining do not have long to live. Some of us are already bedridden because we’ve become old, ill or senile,” its group leader, Maria Quilantang Lalu, said.

The UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women coincidentally released its finding on International Women’s Day (March 8), saying that the Philippines has failed to provide reparation, social support, and recognition for comfort women, which has led to “ongoing discrimination against them that continues to this day.”

Bustamante, who was 16 years old when Japanese soldiers captured, enslaved, and repeatedly raped her for over a year, was one of “several plaintiffs who sued the Japanese government in 1993 at a Tokyo District Court.” Although she received a letter of apology from then-Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto and atonement from the Asian Women’s Fund, she insisted that the Japanese government should offer official compensation to comfort women and issue a formal public apology.

[hibiscusbabyboy]

Women at War

(Dividers by @animatedglittergraphics-n-more )

[walkingthroughthisworld]

Sherman tank appreciation, photos and art

[captain-price-unofficially]

Gen. Douglas MacArthur with aide Col. Lloyd Lehrbas, en route to a USAF landing site at Lingayen Gulf, Philippines. 1945

[theworldatwar]

US troops hit the beaches of Leyte during Operation King II and come under fire from Japanese held positions - Philippines, Oct 1944

[lonestarbattleship]

Loading drop tanks on Curtiss SB2C Helldivers aboard USS LEXINGTON (CV-16) before a search mission.

Date: October 25, 1944

U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command: 80-G-284381

[evidenceof]

Paz Márquez-Benítez on the Philippines, Filipinos, after the Battle of Manila, after WWII:

"Except for masks of dust, all that we recovered from the fall-out, we were alive. And to the naked eye appear unscarred.  Extermination was not our lot; we were grateful and liberated to look for our own kind of dying. In being removed from the blow-up, we were not tragic in the grand sense. We are islanders; self-intoxicated, self-hypnotized. We cannot be but our own true lovers and faithful assassins; we sigh, looking at smuall parts of ourselves in tiny handmirrors held up to the cruelest light.  Enchanting no one then but ourselves, we hope to be the greatest sorcerer yet (as in Jorge Luis Borges' blinded eyes), who, by sleeping, "dreamed the universe." .../"

Manila found itself in the crossfire of the United States and Japanese forces in the Second World War, the Legislative Building, the Manila Post Office, and the Ayuntamiento among many landmarks were gunned and bombed to the ground. Imperialism is so embedded in us that we rebuilt movie theaters before we did our own houses after Manila was burned and gunned to the ground. So we could see Hollywood again. So we could shout, “Victory Joe! VICTORY JOE!” at the screens. At the same Allied forces that massacred an entire island population of Balangiga. The orders, “I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States.” Waller asked how young. “Ten years,” Smith replied. Because we are a footnote in history, the dead are inconsequential, counted by the thousands and as backgrounds in photographs.

I'll never forget how years ago when I still worked in a museum, a representative from the Smithsonian met with us to discuss the lending 19th century Hidalgo paintings. She said, “this exhibit we want to set up might be problematic because you know the Smithsonian was one of the institutions that agreed to annexing the Philippines. We sent anthropologists and scientists to study the Philippines.”

She then very quickly laughed and said, “Thank god I wasn’t born then!”

Is pain inherited, do you think? Why is it that, I wasn’t born then, but reading the lists of the dead, seeing piles of Filipino soldiers in ditches, the ones we shipped off to World Fairs to be displayed in human zoos—why do I inherit pain while she can choose not to inherit their title as colonizer? We didn't die. Not really, not completely, not enough for the white man that made sure we remain haunted and hunted. Mangled islands trying to survive the only way we knew how. Several ways. By betraying ourselves or dying trying to fight for a nation we didn’t even know existed, for the promise of something better than a footnote.

[carbone14]

Evacuation sanitaire à bord d'un Curtiss C-46 Commando depuis Manille – Campagne des Philippines (1944-1945) – Philippines – 1945

©National Museum of Health and Medicine, Silver Spring - D45-416-34G