Of all the commemorations being celebrated every February, perhaps the most overlooked is one that commemorates the Battle of Manila of 1945. Which is quite unfortunate considering how this sad and bloody chapter in the history of Manila transformed the city and the country on a macro perspective, causing destruction to so many cultural treasures in the city and death to more than 100,000 souls. On one hand, the horror of this event may have been a factor as to why many choose to, understandably, forget what happened. On the other hand, this preference to forget is seen as the cause as to why Manila today has lost its soul in…
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Manila 1945: Remembering A City’s Bloody Feburary
Originally posted on February 3, 2015, this post has been rewritten to add some new stuff and make the piece more “timeless” and less constrained from being a 70th anniversary post as it was originally written. February has been a traditionally known worldwide as the “love month,” as well as being as being historic month for the Philippines, especially in recent years due to the events of 1986 which culminated in what we now know as the first People Power Revolution. But not many people of another historic event that happened years back in 1945, one of the darkest and most devastating chapters in the history of Manila and of the…
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Manila1945: “Was the Destruction Necessary?”
One of the talks that were held in the midst of the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Manila in 1945 was a lecture held last February 12 at the Ortigas Foundation Library which asked the question that lingers on after 70 years: “Was the Destruction Necessary?” Dr. James Zobel, (not related to the landed Zobel family in the Philippines) who serves as executive director of the MacArthur Library in Norfolk, Virginia, helmed this lecture that attempted to answer that question. The Urban Roamer missed this lecture, but thankfully the Ortigas Foundation Library has uploaded the full lecture online. The talk itself is informative enough to check out as one can at…
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Remembering Manila1945 at the Ayala Museum
Truth be told, it has been a crazy period lately for the Urban Roamer. With so much going on, it is unfortunate that I could not get to attend some events that were being held, or could not get to hang out long enough to check out some events up close. It is especially unfortunate especially that so many events and exhibits have been going on around the metropolis on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Manila. But as the commemoration of #Manila1945 draws to a close, I could not miss out at least one exhibit about it, which in this case would be the exhibit at…