Embassy in Manila – and later hanged for war crimes.
High Commissioner’s Residence – now the U.S. It is ironic that whereas Hitler’s order to burn Paris went unheeded, thereby saving Paris, General Yamashita’s command to leave Manila without defending it, which would have saved the city, was also disobeyed, but with contrasting and devastating consequences. According to General MacArthur, next to Warsaw, Manila was the most devastated city in WWII. The Battle of Manila, which raged throughout the month of February 1945, cost the lives of over 100,000 Filipinos and completely destroyed Manila, considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world at the time and commonly referred to as the Pearl of the Orient. Here’s a photo of the “Battlin Basic” from Steven Zaloga’s Tank Battles of the Pacific. Santo Tomas was the largest of several internment camps established by the Japanese throughout the Philippines and liberated in February 1945. 44th Tank Battalion and was the first glimpse of liberation for over 4,000 civilians – mostly Americans and British citizens, including Australians and Canadians – interned at the university from January 1942 to February 1945. The tank, a composite hull M4 Sherman named the “Battlin Basic” by its crew, belonged to Company B of the U.S.
Seventy-one years ago today, on the evening of February 3, 1945, a Sherman tank barreled its way through the front gates of the University of Santo Tomas, in Manila, Philippines.
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