Tag Archives: USAFFE

CAPAS – FILIPINO SACRIFICE IN THE SHADOWS OF NEW CLARK CITY

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Inside the three towers of the Capas National Shrine. Three columns representing Japan, the Philippines and the United States. A desire for peace.
Inside the three towers of the Capas National Shrine. Three columns representing Japan, the Philippines and the United States. A desire for peace.

The spire of the Capas National Shrine rises 240 feet into the air above the hot, humid plains of central Luzon.  There is lots of symbolism included in the site.  Three parts of the towering spire represent the peoples of the Philippines, the United States and … Japan.  Covering 54 hectares – 130 acres – over half of the grounds have been planted with 31,000 trees representing the 25,000 Filipinos and 6,000 Americans who perished here at Camp O’Donnell following the end of the Bataan Death March in 1942.  The park was named a national shrine by President Cory Aquino in 1991 with the tower was added in 2003 with a memorial wall behind with the names of those known to have perished here at the camp.

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MOUNT SAMAT HONORS THE VALOR OF BATAAN

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An old 155 mm US howitzer sits beneath the Shrine on Mount Samat.

MOUNT SAMAT REMEMBERING AMERICAN SACRIFICE

Visitors to the Philippines enjoy a day’s outing, boating across Manila Bay to see the old guns of Corregidor. Off the regular path lies an even more important monument atop a mountain in the southern region of the Bataan Peninsula – the National Shrine of Mount Samat – Dambana ng Katingnan (Shrine of Valor).

Bataan, the sight of the worst defeat suffered by American forces in history. 78,000 men – the vast majority Filipinos new to soldiering – surrendered after a campaign of just over four months. As bad as the long battle against the enemy, the harsh jungle environment, malnutrition and disease was, another type of battle would fall upon the men afterwards, the battle to survive.

A two-part post with the first dealing mostly with the Shrine, the campaign and US Army units remembered here at Mount Samat. The second post will cover the Philippine Army divisions honored here. It is important to remember as hard as it was for American units to suffer on Bataan, Corregidor and throughout the islands, the Filipinos were forced to take the suffering to another level, both with the Commonwealth Army and the civilian population, as a whole.

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ARTILLERY OF CORREGIDOR – BIG GUNS ON AN ISLAND

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12-inch gun of Battery Hearn
12-inch gun of Battery Hearn, one of the few guns having a 360-degree field of fire.

On the island of Corregidor at the entrance to Manila Bay, American coastal defense came to a high point in the big gun defense theory of protecting vital areas of a homeland.  Using some of the biggest guns in the American arsenal, the defenders held off the enemy for over five months.  The end came swiftly though, flaws in the system exposed terribly.  Capitulation meant the garrison force marched on to the horrors of Japanese prison camps.  With the fall of the island fortress, the theory of coastal defense would slowly re-evolve.

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PHILIPPINE SCOUTS WITH A UNIQUE STORY – MANILA ABMC CEMETERY

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Donato Cabading was a sergeant with the 45th Infantry Regiment - Philippine Scouts
Donato Cabading – right foreground – was a sergeant with the 45th Infantry Regiment – Philippine Scouts. He died the end of January 1942.

During the early battles in the southwestern Pacific, most of the defenders against Japanese aggressions were Filipino. Among the graves and the Walls of the Missing, you will find many of their names. In this post, some of the stories of the Philippine Scouts, a truly unique unit of the American Army, come forward.

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REMOVING MYSTERY FROM THE WALLS OF THE MISSING – Manila ABMC

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A few of the Walls of the Missing - Manila ABMC
A few of the Walls of the Missing – Manila ABMC

Over 36,000 names cover the Walls of the Missing at Manila ABMC Cemetery.  The men unaccounted for during World War 2 all over the southwestern Pacific.  Most serving on ships sunk at sea or planes never coming home.  There are plenty of others, bodies never found in the jungles of the Solomons, New Guinea, the Philippines, Burma or other locations.

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MANILA ABMC CEMETERY – HEROES LIE IN THE MYSTICAL SILENCE

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The chapel at Manila ABMC Cemetery flanked on either side by the hemicycles of the Walls of the Missing.

Surrounded by skyscraping condominium towers on the former site of the Fort McKinley, grass fields festooned with thousands of white granite crosses mark the largest American military cemetery outside of the United States.  The Manila American Battle Monuments Commission – ABMC – Cemetery holds the remains of 17.097 men who died mostly in the World War 2 fighting in New Guinea and the Philippines.  The names of another 36,286 men whose remains never discovered inscribed on The Tablets of the Missing place on limestone piers within two hemicycles separated by a small chapel atop a small hill.  The quiet is out of place in the frenetic world of Bonifacio Global City outside of the cemetery walls. 

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