EIGHTY YEARS AGO in February, 100,000 people died as the city of Manila burned.
For 30 days, the Philippine capital was caught up in a clash between the Japanese and American armed forces in a bloody, destructive battle at the tail end of World War II.
It is an event that many of the nearly 15 million current inhabitants of the gigantic metropolis that is Metro Manila have only a vague awareness of. It was, after all, 80 years ago, and the survivors who can tell the tale are fading fast. To combat this forgetfulness and to save the stories, every February is filled with events to memorialize the people and places who were caught up in the Battle of Manila.
This year, the Nilad Community, an organization composed of heritage and touring groups operating in Manila, is offering for the first time a series of Battle of Manila tours. The participating groups are Manila Girls, Don’t Skip Manila, The Heritage Collective, Renacimiento Manila, and WanderManila.
The series is set to take place on the following dates and locations: Feb. 8 in Sampaloc, Feb. 9 in Binondo, Feb. 15 in Malate, Feb. 22 in Intramuros, and March 1 in Ermita.
Across the five tours, the Nilad Community and its member groups aim to provide not just history lessons, but “an invitation to confront the reality of loss and, more importantly, the responsibility of preserving what remains.”
“We’ve each done our own iterations of this before, but this is the first time that it’s consolidated into one program, with one set of promotions for the entire series,” Renacimiento Manila founder Diego Torres told BusinessWorld in a short conversation in Manila.
Each of the five chosen neighborhoods in Manila will be showcased through their sites of catastrophe during the war.
For WanderManila head tour guide Benjamin Canapi, tours are one way to help “deepen people’s understanding of Manila beyond being a chaotic and confounding city.” Recently, he led the Luneta Art Fair that made Rizal Park a center of art for the second year in a row.
“The work we do is our way of presenting Manila in a new light,” he told BusinessWorld in an online interview in January.
Registration for the first two tours this weekend — those in Sampaloc, which focuses on the University of Santo Tomas which served as a Japanese internment camp for enemy civilians, and in Binondo, the oldest Chinatown in the world which turned into a battleground — close on Feb. 6.
Next up on Feb. 15 and 22 are Malate and Ermita, neighborhoods that endured unimaginable devastation and were the sites of some of the worst massacres of the war.
The series concludes on the first day of March, in the historic walled city of Intramuros, which was reduced to ruins in the battle’s final harrowing days. Only San Agustin Church was left standing.
Some of the trails have been adjusted, said Stephen John Pamorada of The Heritage Collective, which means those who have gone through any of the five participating heritage groups’ Battle of Manila-centered tours before can expect something new.
“This is more than a tour. It is a tribute to the courage, chaos, and sacrifices that shaped Manila’s history,” the members of the Nilad Community wrote in a post online.
“Together, let us honor the past and safeguard the stories that remain.”
All tours are P800 each, inclusive of commemorative merchandise. The full schedule and details regarding the Battle of Manila tour series can be found on the Nilad Community’s social media pages. Register via https://forms.gle/MT6imQqZUKtn7B4S8. — Brontë H. Lacsamana