The Battle of Manila, February 3–March 3, 1945
(Updated, February 1, 2019) February 3 to March 3 traditionally marks the period of commemoration for the Battle of Manila in 1945. The first diary to cover this period featured on The Philippine Diary Project was the first-hand account by Lydia C. Gutierrez, who was a young girl at the time. In fact her diary covers only ten days: from …
February 3, 1945 — LIBERATION DAY
A never-to-be forgotten day for the internees and prisoners of Santo Tomas and Bilibid Prison (old). It was about 5:30 p.m. when we heard repeated and long bursts of heavy caliber machine gun fire along the North road. There was a deep rumble which sounded like airplanes but as there were no planes in sight, it boiled down to — …
February 3, 1945
Well, looks like the Japs are getting ready to evacuate Manila and suburbs. Lots of fires early this morning — they are destroying supplies and from the looks of things, burning up half of the country in doing it. Oh yes, they have been throwing bones, etc. on the ground and in garbage cans whenever they butchered. Yesterday they gave …
February 2, 1945
There has been plenty of activity around here lately — both day and night. Well the boys are getting closer all the time. But our food is getting less every day and right now it is a toss up who gets here first — the troops with some food or the buzzards. The Japs are eating good; they bring cows …
January 24-25-26-27-28-29-30-31, 1945
That finishes that month. We all had great hopes that we would at least be getting something decent to eat by now. I felt too weak to write so let it go. 0
January 23, 1945
Breakfast, lunch, and supper same as yesterday. The camp is out of wood with the exception of green acacia. They have already burned dining tables and parts of the dining shed and yesterday and today they used benches and chairs from the fourth floor school room to supplement the acacia. This morning a large chunk of anti-aircraft shell tore a …
January 22, 1945
Had some soy bean milk with our mush. I liked it very much. Lunch today will be soy bean soup and for supper, soy bean and corn stew. We are getting plenty of soy beans. Lots of heavy bombing around this morning. Some more about yesterday. I saw the big bombers when they came over. There were six groups of …
January 21, 1945
Didn’t feel like writing yesterday. For breakfast — same thing. Might as well say, “Hebrews 13 Chap. 8 verse”, that would cover it every day. Lunch — soy bean soup and supper, soy beans – rice stew, not much rice but plenty of beans. They fill up much better than the other things we have been getting and are very …
January 20, 1945
Breakfast — sweetened mush (?). They had 80 kilos of sugar and 25 gal. of syrup for the whole camp — about 3,700 people so you can imagine just how sweet it was. Thin kidney bean soup for lunch and for a supper, soy bean, camote stew (thin). I got plenty of the beans but very little camotes. Anyway the …