Jose P. Laurel has a somewhat mixed legacy for having served as President of the Japanese-sponsored Second Republic from 1943 to 1945. Whatever achievements his administration had were overshadowed by the specter of Japanese control over the country, especially with their “support” for an independent but pro-Japan Philippines, and the horrors of World War II at large, especially towards the end when fighting between the Japanese and the US-led forces brought about much death and destruction to the country. Despite this, he is regarded as a good president who had nothing but the Filipino interests at heart and did what he could in the situation prevailing that time in the face of…
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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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From Crystal Arcade to PNB Building to…Gone? The Saga of an Escolta Address
Escolta itself is a street has bore witness and reflected as well the ups and downs Manila’s history: from the glorious past, to the steep decline, to the present struggles and some triumphs of rebirth it is experiencing at the moment. While we have buildings such as Calvo, Regina, and First United to tell us the resilience of this old commercial and business district in the midst of these shifts in the city history, if you want to learn more about the more tragic side these shifts have caused, we have this particular address in Escolta we will be looking at today.
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Happy Birthday, Heneral Luna!
Today marks the 149th birth anniversary of one of the most colorful personalities in Philippine history, not to mention one of the most renowned Filipino military geniuses, the “Heneral” himself, Antonio Luna. And this year’s commemoration of his birth comes at an interesting time, right at the heels of the unprecedented success of the film “Heneral Luna,” the biographical film based on his life. Thanks in large part to the film, more and more people are becoming more aware of this man, his legacy, and his life’s tragedy. Thus, today the Urban Roamer pays tribute to this man on his natal day, in an urban roaming way that we often do here, as…