The Battle of Manila (Feb. 3-March 3,1945), the single deadliest urban warfare fought in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater of World War II, literally annihilated the downtown area of the city and caused an estimated 100,000 noncombatant civilian deaths by ‘Sword and Fire,’ i.e., Japanese mass
The Battle of Manila (Feb. 3-March 3,1945), the single deadliest urban warfare fought in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater of World War II, literally annihilated the downtown area of the city and caused an estimated 100,000 noncombatant civilian deaths by ‘Sword and Fire,’ i.e., Japanese mass killings and the indiscriminate shelling of the US.”
So begins the narrative of Nakano Satoshi of Hitotsubashi University on the destruction of Manila during the World War II and the reaction of two representative members of the urban elite, the distinguished writer Carmen Guerrero Nakpil and her brother, Ambassador Leon Maria Guerrero. Not coincidentally have they been chosen to articulate (or alternatively, not to) the horror of Manila folk at the holocaust that befell their beloved city, which turned it first into a wasteland, and then after postwar reconstruction (as in the district of their youth, Ermita), into a place “tawdry and… down at the heels.”
Both were splendidly gifted—Guerrero Nakpil making her mark in her witty columns, books and a trilogy of autobiographical memoirs, and Guerrero in his prize-winning tome on José Rizal, as well as his translation of the latter’s immortal work, “Noli Me Tangere.” They belonged to the famous ilustrado Guerrero clan of Ermita, which had produced “prominent scholars, artists, doctors, journalists and even a bishop.” Who better to describe the radical transformation of Manila as a result of World War II?
Wrangling
Satoshi begins the first part of her study (published in the Hitosubashi Journal of Social Studies in January 2017) by describing the wrangling that took place between the actress-turned-photographer Gina Lollobrigida—commissioned by First Lady Imelda Marcos to write two coffee-table books on the Philippines and Manila—and Guerrero Nakpil, who had been assigned to write the introductory essays.
Lollobrigida had approached the Philippines from an Orientalist and exoticist point of view by concentrating on nature scenery and photos which highlighted the Tasadays (supposedly a prehistoric tribe discovered by Manda Elizalde, who later turned out to be a hoax), while Guerrero Nakpil insisted that the book should not be about “a Stone Age tribe in the jungles of Mindanao” but the “45 million people who don’t live in trees.”
Yet her own introduction to the two books seemed to also evade reference to the New Society as it existed in reality with its ills and flaws (expected in a “pictorial book that promotes tourism”) and did not directly mention the Philippines and Filipinos, and instead describing Manila as a reflection of places like Tahiti, New York, Las Vegas, Long Island, Palm Beach, Beverly Hills and Miami.
As Satoshi states, “The text was but a victim of the enforced euphoria of the New Society: self-hypnotized, manic and jazzy, but something was missing, giving readers a feeling of hollowness.”
Since this was not the proper vehicle for speaking about the heartbreak of Guerrero Nakpil on the death of prewar Manila, it was not till decades later—
around 60 years since the World War II—that she was to finally record in her trilogy (at the urging of her children and late writer Nick Joaquin before his passing) her impressions of the idyllic Ermita of her youth and what it had finally become, as summarized by Satoshi—the “tawdry and down-at-the-heels” largest pleasure zone of Asia… popular for its ‘sex tours.’”
Back story
The back story of Guerrero Nakpil’s Potemkin wall-like description of Manila and the Philippines during the New Society is told in her description of her own “peonage under Marcos”:
Although having been a personal friend of Ferdinand Marcos and supporting his presidency during his first term (1965-69), she was convinced to join the ranks of dissident journalists. After the declaration of martial law, however, Guerrero Nakpil decided to make a deal with Marcos to secure the release of her son-in-law, Antonio Araneta, husband of her daughter and the former Miss International, Gemma. Then she had no choice but to accept whatever assignments she was given by Malacañang Palace, such as Unesco representative, director-general of the Technology Resource Center and others.
The Guerreros have had a long and storied past of serving the Republic, including Leon Maria Guerrero Sr., who was an eminent botanist, the first licensed pharmacist in the Philippines, and a revolutionary who served in both the Malolos Congress and the first National Assembly under the Americans. The eldest son, Cesar Maria, became the first auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese of Manila, the highest clergyman among the Filipinos at that time.
The father of the two younger Guerrero writers, Alfredo Leon, was a practicing doctor married to Filomena Francisco, daughter of a Tagalog novelist and the first Filipino female pharmacologist. Her nationalism was reflected in the poems and songs with which she lulled her children to sleep, which included Rizal’s “Mi Ultimo Adios.
