by Xinhua writers Zhang Yisheng, Li Meng
MANILA, May 10 (Xinhua) -- In the Manila Clock Tower Museum, a massive replica of a World War II (WWII) bomb hangs suspended in the center of the exhibition hall. Pointing directly at the floor, it captures a moment frozen in time: the "rain of fire" that leveled this city more than 80 years ago.
Japan invaded the Philippines in December 1941, completing its primary occupation the following year. Over the next three years, more than one million Filipinos were killed or wounded by the occupiers. Manila, once celebrated as the "Pearl of the Orient," was reduced to scorched earth.
In recent weeks, the former aggressor has brazenly sent combat forces to Philippine soil once again. Through deception and inducement, Tokyo seeks to transform Manila into a strategic forward bastion for its neo-militarism and an overseas testing ground for its weaponry.
"This is both an irony and an insult to the Filipino people," several citizens and scholars told Xinhua, emphasizing that the crimes of the Japanese invasion must never be forgotten, the alarm bells of history must ring perpetually, and the victims of WWII can not remain silent.
AGONY OF "OPEN CITY"
In the heart of the Philippine capital stands the Memorare Manila Monument, erected to honor the more than 100,000 civilians slaughtered in 1945.
Before the Pacific War, Manila was renowned across Southeast Asia for its economic vitality and multiculturalism. Under the Japanese occupation, it was transformed into a living hell.
The tragedy began on Dec. 8, 1941, mere hours after Japan attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. Japanese forces soon landed on Luzon Island and advanced rapidly toward Manila.
On Dec. 26, 1941, Manila was declared an "open city" in a desperate bid to shield its civilians and centuries of cultural heritage from the machinery of war. Under international law, this meant the city was undefended and should not have been attacked.
Yet, the Imperial Japanese Army responded with a rain of fire. Japanese aircraft systematically pummeled the capital, reducing historic buildings to rubble and turning schools and hospitals into graveyards.
Japanese troops also carried out brutal reprisals against captured soldiers and civilians. Many surrendered troops, wounded or not, were executed, with some burned alive. Civilians accused of defying occupation rules were tortured and killed.
The darkest hour arrived in early 1945. From Feb. 3 to March 3, Manila became the site of the bloodiest urban battle of the Pacific War. More than 100,000 civilians were slaughtered -- bayoneted, shot, burned alive or raped in deliberate acts of mass violence.
In the walled city of Intramuros, Japanese troops sealed all gates and turned the ancient district into a killing field. The carnage radiated into the surrounding districts. In Malate, at Saint Paul's College, a dining hall became a death trap as explosives were detonated among hundreds of terrified residents seeking refuge.
By the time the fighting ended, more than 600 city blocks were destroyed, along with centuries of cultural and architectural heritage.
Henry Keys, a war correspondent who witnessed the aftermath, wrote that Manila had become "a city of nightmarish horror."
BATAAN DEATH MARCH
In Tarlac province, just over 100 km from Manila, more than 30,000 trees stand solemnly at the former site of the Camp O'Donnell concentration camp. Each tree symbolizes a soldier who perished there during the war.
In April 1942, the Japanese military orchestrated one of the most infamous war crimes in history: the Bataan Death March. Alongside the Nanjing Massacre and the Thailand-Burma Death Railway, it remains one of the three most significant atrocities of the Far East.
About 78,000 prisoners of war were forced to march roughly 120 km from the tip of the Bataan Peninsula to Camp O'Donnell under extreme conditions. Deprived of food, water and medicine, they were subjected to the "sun treatment," where prisoners were forced to stand motionless in the blistering noon heat until they collapsed.
"We marched to the San Fernando station where we were herded into crowded boxcars like cattle getting ready for the slaughterhouse," wrote survivor Mariano Villarin in his book, "We Remember Bataan and Corregidor."
Delfin Jaranilla, another survivor who later served as a Justice on the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, recalled: "Those who fell on their knees were beaten and bayoneted by the merciless Japanese," and those who could not walk "were murdered in cold blood."
Historians estimate that as many as 15,000 prisoners died during the march, while tens of thousands more died during subsequent internment due to systematic abuse and neglect.
HELL UNDER THE "CO-PROSPERITY" LIE
The National Museum of Fine Arts in Manila houses over 20 paintings depicting the occupation: emaciated prisoners, slaughtered civilians, and scorched fields. These works puncture the myth of Japan's "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."
During the occupation, Imperial Japan plundered the archipelago's resources, triggering a man-made famine that decimated rural communities. Education was weaponized through mandatory Japanese-language indoctrination.
Between 1942 and 1945, approximately 1,000 Filipino women were forced into sexual slavery as "comfort women." For many survivors, the suffering lingered long after the war ended.
In 2017, a memorial statue honoring "comfort women" was erected in Manila, only to be removed months later following intense diplomatic pressure from Tokyo.
In March this year, approximately 100 Philippine anti-war activists and descendants of WWII victims gathered in Manila for a day of demonstrations.
"Japan has never offered a sincere public apology," said Sharon Cabusao-Silva, coordinator of Lila Pilipina, a group advocating justice for Filipino victims of wartime sexual slavery by Japanese troops during WWII.
Cabusao-Silva lamented that even now, Japan still refuses to officially acknowledge its role in these wartime crimes.
MODERN ALARM
The echoes of history are growing louder.
From April 20 to May 8 this year, Japan dispatched combat units to participate in the U.S.-Philippines Balikatan exercises, even firing Type 88 surface-to-ship missiles for the first time from Philippine territory.
This maneuver involved two unsettling "firsts": The Japan Self-Defense Forces shifted from "observers" to substantive participants, and Japan launched offensive missiles outside its own borders for the first time since World War II.
This remilitarization move has stirred visceral memories and sparked widespread skepticism. On the day the exercises began, protesters gathered outside the headquarters of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
"The Japanese invaders killed countless Filipinos ... their combat troops are not welcome back," one protester declared.
Herman Tiu Laurel, president of the Asian Century Philippines Strategic Studies Institute, a Manila-based think tank, told Xinhua that the return of Japanese combat forces is "a flagrant challenge" to the victories achieved in the global war against fascism. He warned that Japan's neo-militarism poses a severe threat to Asia-Pacific stability.
For political commentator Wilson Lee Flores, the reconstruction of Manila does not grant permission to bury the past. "We must remember the blood and tears," Flores said. "History is not a dusty pile of old papers. It is a bell that never stops tolling." ■